Twenty-three-year-old Michael “Mitt” Fuller starts his surgical residency with great anticipation at the nearly three-hundred-year-old, iconic Bellevue Hospital, following in the footsteps of four previous, celebrated Fuller generations. The pressure is on for this newly minted doctor, and to his advantage he’s always had a secret sixth sense, a sensitivity to the nonphysical. But quickly one patient after another assigned to his care begin to die from mysterious causes.

Senator Ashley Butler is a quintessential Southern demagogue whose support of traditional American values includes a knee-jerk reaction against virtually all biotechnologies. When he's called to chair a subcommittee introducing legislation to ban new cloning technology, the senator views his political future in bold relief; and Dr. Daniel Lowell, inventor of the technique that will take stem cell research to the next level, sees a roadblock positioned before his biotech startup.

Newly minted chief resident at Boston Memorial Hospital Noah Rothauser is swamped in his new position, from managing the surgical schedules to dealing with the fallouts from patient deaths. Known for its medical advances, the famed teaching hospital has fitted several ORs as "hybrid operating rooms of the future" - an improvement that seems positive until an anesthesia error during a routine procedure results in the death of an otherwise healthy man.

Twenty-eight-year-old Sean McGillin is the picture of health, until he fractures his leg while in-line skating in New York City's Central Park. Within 24 hours of his surgery, he dies.

Et si ceux qui prétendent nous soigner faisaient tout pour nous tuer ? Dans le métro de New York, une jeune femme, apparemment en bonne santé, est prise de frissons violents et commence à suffoquer. Elle décède à son arrivée à l'hôpital. Il semblerait qu'elle ait succombé à un mystérieux virus. Une hypothèse aussitôt confirmée par des décès similaires dans les jours qui suivent. La tension monte alors d'un cran et le médecin légiste Jack Stapleton redoute qu'une terrible pandémie s'abatte sur New York.