Final Minutes

A hidden bomb is ticking inside Odyssey Memorial Hospital, and Jason Whittaker is lying in an operating room with his brain exposed. Before the story begins, agents of the criminal mastermind Dr. Alexander Dervishi have implanted a tiny computer chip in Jason's head, a device that lets them read his thoughts and steal the secret military codes he knows. Now surgeons are racing to remove it, and Dervishi's people have planted a bomb to stop them. When the "code black" alarm sounds, the hospital erupts into a frantic evacuation.

Connie Kendall stumbles onto Dr. Rusk, the famous neurosurgeon, huddled in a stairwell with Sky Feldstein, the news reporter who secretly planted the bomb. Rusk smoothly covers for himself and hurries back toward the operating room, but Connie is suspicious enough to text a warning to Dr. Lily Graham: don't trust Rusk. Meanwhile, Whit and NSA agent Jillian Marshall stay beside the bomb itself, working with a bomb expert over the phone. The explosive can only be stopped with a password, and they get just three tries. "Snakeskin," the name of the enemy's operation, fails. So does "Odyssey." One guess remains, and the expert has nothing more to offer.

Upstairs, Detective Polehaus orders everyone out of the operating room, but Dr. Calhoun refuses to abandon his patient, and when he learns the man on the table is Jason Whittaker, his mind is made up. Dr. Graham arrives and scrubs in to help, quietly warning Calhoun that something about Rusk isn't right. Calhoun finds the implant and lifts it free, murmuring, "Tiny device. Big problems." But moments later Jason seizes, his heart stops, and the doctors fight to bring him back with the defibrillator, praying as they work. On the third shock his heart finds its rhythm again. "By God's grace," Calhoun breathes.

The bomb, however, is still counting down. Rusk secretly begs Dervishi to shut it off, but Dervishi answers that only his mysterious boss, the Chairman, can do that, and the Chairman coldly refuses. With the device removed, Jason is worthless to him, and he plans to let the blast destroy the evidence and pin everything on Rusk and Sky. In the final seconds, Jillian remembers a strange word Sky once scribbled on a piece of paper: Helsinki. With twenty seconds left, they type it in, and the countdown stops. Whit and Jillian, shaking with relief, thank God they're alive.

The danger isn't quite over. Rusk returns to the operating room, pulls a gun, and announces he is putting the device back into Jason's head. Thanks to Connie's warning, Dr. Graham has come prepared. Pretending to assist, she jabs Rusk with a syringe of anesthesia, and the traitorous surgeon crumples to the floor. Outside, Sky tries to slip away, but Polehaus, whom she once endured a blind date with, cheerfully intercepts her, describes their next outing as a place with metal bars, orange jumpsuits, and plenty of police officers, and arrests her on the spot.

In the aftermath, the pieces fall into place. Rusk turns out to be the one who broke into the antique shop and invented his story on the spot when Whit arrived. Federal agents storm Dervishi's compound in Denmark and arrest him, though the Chairman, apparently a high-ranking official hidden somewhere in the Pentagon, slips away, a threat for another day. Jillian decides to keep her scatterbrained cover identity in public, stay in Connie's house, and keep working at the antique store while she waits to be reinstated as an agent.

Back at Whit's End, a recovered Jason helps Connie unload ice cream. Connie points out that the real Jillian is everything on Jason's list: intelligent, godly, wise, adventurous, and interesting. "Jason, ask her out!" she urges, but Jason protests that dating an agent is weird and complicated, and besides, Officer Burke has already invited Jillian to the movies. Life in Odyssey settles back to normal, which means Connie's car battery is dead again, and Jason, sighing, promises her monogrammed jumper cables for Christmas.