A construction worker in his fifties is seriouslly injured in the collapse of a scaffold….A middle-aged railroad dispatcher develops a high fever that makes him wildly delirious…. A young worker nearly severs his hand from his arm in an accident ….A woman traveling alone has persistent chest pains and is treated by a doctor on a TV screen ….A mother of three is diagnosed with a deadly disease….

Michael Crichton is the author of The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, The Terminal Man, The Lost World, Airframe and Timeline. He is the winner of an Edgar Award (1980; The Great Train Robbery) as well as an Emmy, a Peabody, and a Writer's Guild of America Award for the television series ER.