A Heartbeat Away — Barbara Rogan

"Fetch a resident quickly. The boy's bleeding internally...." Crow Durango, housekeeper in Mercy Hospital's Emergency Room, can't believe that this doctor, whom she's never seen before, is asking her to get help. Later she discovers that her description of him strongly resembles Dr. Elias Glass, former head of Mercy ER, who died sixteen years earlier. Crow doesn't believe in ghosts. Her faith is street-bred; what you see is what you get. But the phantom doctor won't leave her alone....

The recent widow of a brilliant jazz musician, Crow keeps her head low and her pain to herself. "I don't want nothing I can't afford to lose" is her motto. But though she believes herself to be invisible, (row is the object of one man's growing fascination. Dr. Thomas Graystone, Mercy ER's aloof chief physician, is surprised to discover himself drawn to this earthy woman from the projects. In the intimate rhythms of a Greenwich Village jazz club, a slow fuse lights between an unlikely couple, and love begins improvising its way into their lives. Amid the feverish heartbeat of the ER, Crow learns that there is life after death ... in more ways than one.