‘You have to understand,’ Dr Holcombe said as he sat behind his enormous mahogany desk, a cup of coffee cradled between his hands, ‘the procedure we performed on you, Emerson, was necessary in order to save your life.’

 

‘I get that,’ I said. ‘I doubt you go around doing brain transplants on people who don’t need it. Although I don’t know how I got lucky enough to be the first.’

 

Dr Holcombe cleared his throat. ‘Er . . . ’

 

‘Wait.’ I stared at him. ‘I was kidding. You mean . . . I’m not the first?’

 

‘Oh, my word, no,’ Dr Holcombe said, laughing heartily. ‘The youngest, definitely. But not the first, by any means.’

 

I blinked at him. ‘But . . . wait a minute. I just saw a documentary on brain transplants a few months ago. It said none had ever been successfully done on a human being before.’

 

‘Well, none that we’ve ever publicized, no,’ Dr Holcombe said. ‘None of our recipients has ever cared to make the procedure public. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact—’

 

‘Recipients? You’ve mean you’ve done this . . . a lot?’

 

‘Oh yes,’ Dr Holcombe said. ‘My team and I perfected the procedure some time ago. We’ve been performing it for several years now. It’s extremely expensive – and still quite rare. You came to us with injuries that, in any ordinary circumstances, would have been instantly fatal. It was pure serendipity that a viable whole-body donor became available at the same time your heart gave out.’

 

‘Viable whole-body donor?’ I echoed. I was shocked. ‘You mean . . . Nikki Howard? I can’t believe you just called her that. I mean, Nikki . . . she was a person.’

 

‘Doctor Holcombe is aware of that, Em,’ my mom said quickly. She and Dad were sitting in a pair of leather chairs in front of Dr Holcombe’s desk, while I sat between them, with Dr Higgins and Mr Phillips, a ‘legal representative’ of Stark Enterprises, sitting on a couch a few feet away. When I’d asked, ‘What does Stark Enterprises have to do with all this?’ Mr Phillips had said, ‘You’re actually under the care of the Stark Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery, a division of Manhattan General Hospital, of which Stark Enterprises is a primary donor. It’s the one and only medical centre in the world that performs whole-body transplants. Stark Enterprises doesn’t publicize the institute’s existence – or its connection with it, of course – because there are still some, er, bioethical concerns involved in the procedure.’

 

‘You mean because in order for someone to get a whole-body transplant,’ I’d said, ‘somebody else has to be declared brain-dead so they can snatch their body for the recipient’s use?’

 

‘Er,’ Mr Phillips had said, ‘that’s simplifying the matter a bit, but . . . yes, more or less.’

 

‘Emerson,’ Dr Higgins explained gently now, ‘Nikki Howard suffered from a rare congenital brain defect that no one – not even Nikki herself – was aware of. It was an aneurysm – basically a ticking time bomb in her head, that could have gone off at any time . . . but happened to go off at almost the same moment you were so gravely injured. Because there were so many medical personnel on hand at the time – the Stark Megastore staff had requested that an ambulance, in addition to a team of paramedics, be on site throughout the day in the event that the protests during the grand opening grew violent – they were able to act quickly enough to keep her – and you – alive for transport to this hospital. But once you both arrived here, it was quickly determined that neither of you had a chance to survive . . . at least, not on your own.’

 

‘Right,’ Dad said, his eyes looking very bright for some reason. I was shocked to see that the brightness in his eyes was due to tears. I had never seen my dad cry before. Except during Extreme Home Makeover, of course. ‘By the time your mother and I arrived, you were on a life-support machine. They basically told us to say goodbye to you.’

 

‘Until,’ Mom added, her eyes equally shiny, ‘Doctor Holcombe showed up and examined you. Then he told us there might be one way to keep you alive . . . but that it was extremely risky. And that there’d likely be . . . complications.’

 

‘You mean like I’d wake up in someone else’s body?’ I asked. ‘That kind of complication?’

 

‘It’s true you’re not . . . well, you any more, Em,’ Mom said. ‘On the outside, anyway. But you’re still you on the inside. That’s why Doctor Holcombe and his team felt it was better not to tell you right away what had happened. You had already been through so much. You just needed time . . . time to adjust—’

 

‘Oh God.’ I dropped my head into my hands. I couldn’t believe this. I couldn’t believe any of this was happening to me.

 

And that Stark Enterprises was apparently behind it.

 

‘Look,’ I said, fighting back tears. How could my parents have gone along with any of this? How could they have allowed this to happen? ‘This isn’t right. You can’t do this. It’s . . . it’s sick.’

 

‘Now see here, young lady,’ Dr Holcombe said, looking annoyed. ‘What’s sick about it? Thousands of people are declared legally brain-dead every year, and thousands more find themselves in bodies too infirm to continue living in. What is so wrong with providing those patients with a second chance at life? Besides which,’ he added, a little less irritably, ‘I honestly don’t think you have any right to complain. You went into my surgery a grievously injured girl, and came out a supermodel! Millions of girls would die – literally – to be in your shoes right now!’

 

That’s when I realized that even though this man had saved my life – even though at one time, he’d wrapped his hands around my brain, gently lifted it, and then spent hours carefully stitching it into place inside someone else’s head – he didn’t know me.

 

He didn’t know me at all.

 

‘But you didn’t have my permission,’ I accused him.

 

‘Ah,’ Mr Phillips said, ‘but we had your parents’ permission.’

 

I swung an accusing look at Mom and Dad. Mom’s eyes, I saw, were as bright with tears as my own.

 

‘You were going to die otherwise, honey,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t be here, if it weren’t for what Doctor Holcombe and his team did.’

 

I just looked at her. I may have had Nikki Howard’s heart now, but it felt every bit as heavy as mine ever had when I was upset about something.

 

‘Fine,’ I said, trying to sound reasonably adult – which wasn’t easy to do, considering how high-pitched and childish Nikki Howard’s voice was. ‘But if Stark Enterprises really wants to keep this whole whole-body transplant thing a secret . . . well, it’s not going to stay a secret for long. Because people are going to notice something is up when I walk into school on Monday and I look just like Nikki Howard, but I’m going around calling myself Emerson Watts.’

 

Mr Phillips cleared his throat.

 

‘That isn’t going to happen,’ he said calmly.

 

‘But –’ I looked from him to my parents and back again. Why did my parents look so . . . so guilt-stricken? What was going on? ‘Yeah, it is. I mean, I can’t not go back to school.’

 

‘Emerson Watts won’t be going back to school,’ Mr Phillips said. ‘Because Emerson Watts no longer exists.’

 

‘What do you mean, I no longer exist?’ I asked. ‘I’m sitting right here.’

 

‘Em –’ my dad’s voice was gentle – ‘look . . . ’

 

I glanced at him. There was something about his expression – something I couldn’t put my finger on.

 

But I knew I didn’t like it. I saw that Mom, sitting next to him, wore much the same look on her face . . . sort of panicky, but sort of pleading at the same time. They both looked over at Mr Phillips, then back at me.

 

Wait. Why were they looking at him?

 

‘When we first got to the hospital,’ Dad went on, ‘and Doctor Holcombe here told us about the transplant, there were . . . well, there were certain conditions. Things we, as your parents, had to agree to before they would consider doing the surgery.’

 

I looked from Dad to Mom and then back again.

 

‘What kind of things?’ I asked, wondering what on earth they could be talking about.

 

Mr Phillips pulled a thick pile of papers from a briefcase beside his chair and handed me a heavy stack from the top. I looked down and saw forty or fifty pages of fine print, neatly stapled, and notarized. At the bottom of each page were my parents’ signatures.

 

‘Well,’ Mr Phillips said, flipping through the copy of the contract he had in front of him, ‘for one thing, they agreed that, in the event that your surgery was a success, you would honour all Nikki Howard’s contracts, endorsements and licensing agreements.’

 

My eyes bulged.

 

‘What?’ I looked frantically towards my parents. But both of them had their gazes glued to the floor.

 

‘In other words,’ Mr Phillips continued, apparently thinking I didn’t understand what he’d just said. Except that I had understood. I was just hoping against hope that he was wrong, ‘you will continue fulfilling Nikki Howard’s duties as spokeswoman for Stark Enterprises. Failure to do so will result in a full and immediate reimbursement to Stark Enterprises of the cost of the surgery, and possible legal ramifications.’

 

Now I wasn’t just staring. I was gaping.

 

‘Wait,’ I said. My heart was starting to hammer, hard, inside my chest. Or rather, Nikki Howard’s chest. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

 

‘I’m not certain what you think I’m saying, Miss Watts,’ Mr Phillips said. ‘But if you mean, am I saying that if you do not honour all Nikki Howard’s Stark-related professional commitments, your parents will owe this hospital two million dollars, in addition to legal fees – and fines, including possible jail time, if confidentiality is also breeched – then yes, that is what I am saying.’

 

No. No, this wasn’t possible. This was a hallucination. The part with Gabriel Luna? That had really happened. But this was unreal –

 

‘Oh, and there was something else your parents agreed to,’ Mr Phillips went on.

 

‘There’s more?’ I groaned.

 

‘This part,’ Dr Holcombe said, ‘I can assure you is quite standard, Emerson. We require it of all our patients. For the protection of the institute. We can’t let what we do here get out, of course. There are people – religious leaders, politicians – who wouldn’t understand that what we do saves lives. If people were to leave here with entirely new bodies and faces, but still insisting they were the same person they were when they came in . . . well, as you suggested earlier, word would get out very quickly. That’s why we require all our patients to allow us to declare their previous identities legally dead.’

 

My jaw dropped. ‘But I’m not dead!’

 

‘Legally,’ Mr Phillips said, ‘I can assure you that you are. It all comes down to the locus of identity. Just what is the locus – or perceived location – of our identities . . . our souls, as it were? Is it the brain? Or is it the heart and body? Nikki Howard’s brain, it’s true, is no longer functioning. Her heart, on the other hand, continues to beat.’

 

‘Her . . . heart?’

 

I laid a hand over my heart. Or, I guess I should say, I laid Nikki Howard’s hand over Nikki Howard’s heart. I felt its steady thump-thump-thump. Up until that moment, the sound of my heartbeat had always been reassuring to me.

 

Now, it sounded . . . well, foreign.

 

‘Emerson Watts’s heart, however,’ Mr Phillips continued, ‘stopped beating well over a month ago. If all motor function has ceased in a body, and the brain is removed, then that person, by the legal definition set in place by a landmark 1984 court decision here in New York state, is deceased. Whereas the person with the living brain and beating heart – in this case, Nikki Howard – is, legally, alive.’

 

My eyes widened. I couldn’t understand any of this. Did this guy not realize I’m only in eleventh grade? Granted I’m in all AP classes. But still. ‘What?’ I asked again.

 

‘What I’m trying to explain, Miss Watts,’ Mr Phillips said, slowly, as if by his taking more time to pronounce them, his words would make more sense to me, ‘is that approximately thirty-four days ago, Emerson Watts – according to the current definition of the word as mandated by the laws of the state of New York – died.’

 

I did not like the sound of this. I did not like the sound of this one bit.

 

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘So according to the state of New York, I’m dead?’

 

‘Emerson Watts is dead,’ he corrected me.

 

‘But . . . I’m Emerson Watts,’ I cried.

 

‘Are you?’ he asked with a little smile.

 

It was the smile that did it. Suddenly I was afraid. More afraid than I’d ever been in my life . . . including when I’d seen that plasma screen television start to fall right where my sister was standing.

 

‘Yes,’ I said, leaning forward in my chair. ‘Yes. Why are you – I mean, why are we – even discussing this? What are you trying to tell me? Are you really going to sit there and tell me that I’m dead, and that Nikki Howard is still alive?’

 

‘Not at all. What I’m telling you, Miss Watts, is that you are Nikki Howard.’