The Awakening of Dr. Brown

Chapter 1

“Who you gonna be this time?” Doveman turned on the piano bench as a final riff of music dropped from his gnarled but still-nimble fingers, effortlessly as raindrops from the sky.

The rock-and-roll legend known as Phoenix pulled her gaze away from the window to look past him, tilting her head slightly as she replayed the music inside her head, then tried it again paired with the lyric Who am I this time? A smile played across her lips and her heart quickened; together in just such a way, she and Rupert Dove had created more hit songs over the years than she could count.

She tossed away the question with a shrug, and the smile grew wry. “Hey-I’m open to suggestion. I’ve done vamp and virgin, waif and glamour queen-”

“Don’t forget punk.” Doveman’s voice was even drier than his usual Black Jack-and-Camels rasp.

“I try to, daily,” Phoenix replied, mimicking both tone and manner.

Doveman’s cackle of laughter was affectionate. “You was young, girl. Cut y’self some slack. You done traveled a long, long road since those days.”

He swiveled back to the keyboard, his fingers finding their way so surely the sounds they produced seemed to come from the air itself rather than human hands. And so clever and intricate was the variation, even Phoenix didn’t recognize for a moment the main theme from “Pretty Mary,” the biggest hit single from her last album, Fire and Ice. The song that had won them both multiple Grammys, the one that had prompted critics to say of the album and the subsequent world tour that “Phoenix has entered a new dimension of sophistication and maturity.”

But that had been four long years ago. An eon measured in pop culture time.

Phoenix turned back to the window, feeling chilled in spite of the heat haze that shrouded the city like fog.

Behind her, Doveman’s voice rode gently on the current of his music. “That one-that Fire and Ice tour, now-that was a good one. Done real good with that one. But the river rolls on, girl, it don’t go back. You got to go on to somethin’ new.”

The river rolls on… But I have gone back, Phoenix thought, her gaze skipping past the city’s redbrick jumble to the tiny sliver of harbor waters sparkling in the sun like a diamond in a rubbish heap.

Down there, between the newly renovated harbor with its tourist havens and pricey high-rise apartment buildings, and the converted loft on the edge of a newly renovated warehouse district in which she stood, blocks and blocks of dingy, dilapidated row houses straggled like defeated soldiers to the water’s edge. Down there, hopeless people still passed empty days on sagging stoops and street corners and children played and skinned their knees on crumbling sidewalks with broken curbs.

This she knew. Oh, yes, she-and only one other-knew that it was on one of those same streets that multimillionaire rock icon Phoenix had played as a child. But she still had the scars on her knees to prove it.

“The Phoenix shall rise again,” she intoned.

Doveman chuckled, missing-or ignoring-the irony. He nodded without turning. “That’s right. Phoenix is gonna rise up again. Question is, who she gonna be this time? You got to decide, child.”

Who am I? Standing at the window with her back to the old piano man, Phoenix drew a catching breath.

“Here’s an idea for you.” Doveman’s voice had softened. And she realized the melody hidden in the blues variations that tumbled so easily from the piano keys wasn’t “Pretty Mary” any longer, but something slow and sweet and hauntingly familiar.

An indefinable sadness clutched at her throat. In response to it, her voice hardened. “Shoot.”

“How about for this tour, for this album, you just be yourself? Joanna Dunn?”

Doveman’s music faded with his last word, so her laugh gusted into silence. The emotion gripping her now wasn’t sadness, nor was it indefinable. What it was, she knew full well, was fear-raw and unreasoning fear. The fear of a small child abandoned in the darkness.

Jerking around to face him, she said, “Get real!” in a brittle voice that sounded like anger.

Not the least bit perturbed by her fit of temper, Doveman shrugged. “Why not? Girl, it’s who you are. Time you let folks see who Phoenix is.”

She shook her head; a derisive sound puffed softly from her lips. But as she gazed at the coffee-brown face of the man who’d been like a father to her for more than twenty years, she felt her anger drain away. When it did, only the fear remained.

With her voice still hard as stone she said, “Doveman, I haven’t been that person for so long, I wouldn’t even know who she is now.”

Unwillingly, her glance went back to the window, pulled inexorably by its view of row houses, tenements and despair. “Besides-” and now suddenly her voice had gone sharp and bright, pain disguised as laughter “-who in their right mind is going to pay money to listen to somebody named Joanna Dunn?”

She didn’t wait for the answer to that, didn’t expect or want one. She jerked herself away from the window and announced, “I’m going out,” as she snatched up a pair of sunglasses and a New York Yankees baseball cap that were lying on the white leather sofa.

Rupert Dove only said mildly, “If you’re walkin’, better take one of the boys with you. This ain’t exactly a strollin’-around neighborhood.”

And he watched as the rock star’s famous lips curved with a small, sardonic smile. He said nothing more, knowing it would fall on deaf ears; in all except music matters, Phoenix listened to no one but herself.

He watched silently, then, as she twisted her long black hair and stuffed it beneath the baseball cap, as unforgettable silvery eyes vanished behind mirrored sunglasses. “Be careful out there,” he drawled by way of a farewell. She threw him a wave, went out the door and left him shaking his head and chuckling to himself.

He doubted she’d have heard the sadness in his laughter, even if she’d stayed.

Doveman’s heart was heavy with concern for the girl-child he’d raised and loved as his own for more than twenty years. Not for the sake of her physical safety-he knew she was capable of handling anything those mean streets might throw at her. Nor was he afraid she might be recognized, even on the streets of the city of her birth. Phoenix had always been a master of the art of disguise.

It was the part hidden away beneath all the layers of her disguises he worried about, the part only one old black piano man even knew existed. The part named Joanna Dunn.

Swiveling once more to the keyboard, Doveman reached into the bowels of the baby grand and drew out his hidden stash-a crumpled pack of Camels and a half-used up book of matches from the convenience store down on the corner. He preferred matches over a lighter, always had; liked listening to the sound of the matchhead scraping grit, liked the flowering flame, the faint smell of sulfur. Now, touching the flame to the tip of the cigarette, he closed his eyes and drew the forbidden smoke deep into his lungs. His body reacted to the abuse with a violent fit of coughing, which he accepted philosophically. His lungs were shot to hell anyway; the way he saw it, he might as well enjoy what life there was left to him.

But that was another reason why he worried.

“Doctor? I put that otitus media in exam three, when you’re ready.” Ruthie Mendoza, casually dressed in jeans and a pink cotton smock with kitty-cats printed on it, waved a clipboard from the opposite end of the counter.

“Thanks, Ruthie.” Dr. Ethan Brown returned his pen to its customary place in the pocket of his lab coat and tried to sneak a glance at his watch as he laid the chart he’d just completed back on the pile.

Bibi Schmidt, whose mild gray eyes missed little, glanced at him over the tops of her half glasses as she reached for it. “You gonna try and get some shut-eye this afternoon, Doctor? It is your night to ride-along, isn’t it?”

“It is, and I’d hoped to.” The smile Ethan gave the clinic’s volunteer administrator/receptionist was wry. “I don’t know what it is with this sudden epidemic of ear infections. Lord, it’s June-cold and flu season should be over with by now.”

“Swimming,” said Mrs. Schmidt, returning to her paperwork. “School’s out, it’s hot, these poor kids are out there trying to cool off in that filthy river.” Bibi had been a school administrator in a former life, and Ethan didn’t doubt she knew whereof she spoke.

After a moment, the bookkeeper glanced up again. “Who are you going to be riding with tonight?” Her expression was bland, her tone casual but with a particular undertone.

Ethan had come to know that look and that tone well in the six months or so he’d been serving at the South Church Street Free Clinic; behind Mrs. Schmidt’s stern and stony schoolmarm’s demeanor lurked the soul of a schoolboy prankster.

Playing along, he replied in a similarly casual tone, “Oh, I don’t know. Most likely be Kenny.” He slid a sidelong glance toward the other end of the counter, where Ruthie was poring over an upside-down chart and pretending complete disinterest in their conversation.

“Baumgartner?” Behind the half glasses, Mrs. Schmidt’s eyes were now openly twinkling. “Why, that’s that nice Jewish boy, isn’t it? The one that has such a crush on our Ruthie.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a crush,” Ethan mused. Then, following a pause, “More like…the hots.”

“He does not!” That brought a rich, warm color to Ruthie’s cheeks. “And even if he did, so what? I’m not interested.” She dropped the clipboard with a clatter and went flouncing off.

“A good thing she isn’t,” said Mrs. Schmidt in a dry undertone, watching the nurse walk away toward the back of the cavernous room that had once been a fire station’s engine bay. “What kind of a future can there be for those two-a nice Jewish boy in love with a sweet Catholic girl whose twin brother just happens to be a priest?”

For a moment Ethan allowed his own gaze to follow Mrs. Schmidt’s, before he jerked it back to the counter and its pile of charts. Ruthie was a sweet girl and he was fond of her, in a way. But the fact was, there was simply no place in his life for entanglements-not now, and not for the foreseeable future. At least for the next year and a half, while Everett Charlton Brown was still in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and his entire family under a constant media microscope and his son’s future in limbo as a consequence.

Ethan didn’t resent the notoriety his father’s choice of careers had forced upon him-he truly didn’t. At least, not anymore. Rhett Brown was a good man and a great president, and he’d done some wonderful things for the country-the world, even. But to be honest, there were times when Ethan thought about his childhood back in Iowa, thought about holidays spent on his aunt Lucy’s farm, or building a tree house in the backyard in Des Moines with his sister Lolly…

He thought about Lauren, and how she’d managed to escape the limelight practically on the eve of their father’s presidency. And yes, he envied her sometimes, with her law practice and her two kids and her Native American lawman husband, living out there on an Apache reservation in the wilds of Arizona, far from the glare of TV cameras.

Back then, while struggling through med school and internship out in California, he’d mostly been too busy to think about his own future…about personal relationships, anyway. A family, a wife, children…it had all seemed too far off to worry about. Lately, though, he had begun to think about it-something to do with being on the verge of turning thirty, he imagined-and whether it would ever be possible for a man in his position to meet someone he could fall in love with. Someone who would love him back, for the right reasons. Ethan didn’t consider himself to be shy-although others might disagree with him, and he supposed he might have been shy, as a child. Now, as far as he was concerned, he was just a very private person. And one thing he knew for certain: if and when he did meet someone, there was no way in hell he was going to risk having his personal life, his emotional affairs turned into public entertainment like some huge Hollywood production!

Another thing. If he ever did decide to brave the media attention over a woman, it was going to have to be something pretty compelling-the real thing, nothing less-which was a long way from the kind of gentle affection he felt for Ruthie. The truth was, he thought of her as…well, a younger sister.

Of course, part of the reason for that attitude may have been the fact that Ruthie’s twin brother, the priest, happened to be Ethan’s former college roommate and best friend.

Also, both the Mendoza twins and Mrs. Schmidt were among the very few in town who were fully aware of Ethan’s identity. Not that he could have kept it a secret, even with the well-trimmed beard and longish hair he’d tried to cultivate in an attempt to disguise his all-too-familiar face, given the presence of the pair of Secret Service agents who passed their days in vigilant boredom upstairs in what had once been the firehouse’s kitchen. Not to mention the news crews that showed up on the clinic’s doorstep from time to time in defiance of the unspoken agreement between the media and the White House that the president’s children were to be strictly off-limits. There’d been more than one occasion when Ruthie, Father Frank or Mrs. Schmidt had been called upon to run interference with a camera crew while their quarry escaped out the back door.

Ethan’s sense of gratitude toward the three was therefore deep and heartfelt, not only for their loyalty and discretion, but for refusing to allow the unfortunate accident of his parentage to stand in the way of genuine friendship. He’d learned the hard way, during the six and a half years his father and stepmother had occupied the White House, how rare and valuable such friendships were.

So it was for that reason he took advantage of every opportunity to promote EMT Kenny Baumgartner’s cause. Tonight’s ride-along, which was part of the arrangement with the city that allowed him to put in his hours at the clinic free of charge, he devoutly hoped would provide him with a few more of those chances.

Ethan gave Mrs. Schmidt a wink and a wave as he picked up the clipboard Ruthie had abandoned, and turned to confront the unhappy patient in the curtained cubicle designated as exam room three.

The patient-a boy about seven or eight years old, dressed in the standard urban uniform of baggy jeans and oversized T-shirt and a baseball cap turned backward-sat slumped on the paper-covered exam table. The boy’s mother had been sitting beside him, but she slid off the table at the doctor’s entrance and now faced him, one nervous and protective hand resting on her son’s knee.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Brown,” said Ethan in a brisk but friendly tone designed to put them both at ease, offering his hand first to the mother, then the boy. He glanced down at the chart in his hand. “And you are…”

“This is Michael,” the boy’s mother offered, and in a fiercely whispered aside to her son, accompanied by a glancing swat on his denim-draped leg, “What you doin’, boy? Get that hat offa your head.”

“Okay, Mike-”

“It’s Michael.” Obeying his mother while at the same time thrusting his chin defiantly upward, the boy slid proud amber eyes toward Ethan. “Like Michael Jordan. Ain’t nobody ever called Michael Jordan Mike.”

“You’re right about that,” Ethan agreed, instantly charmed. He gave the boy’s mother a wink and was gratified to see her relax, if only slightly. “Michael it is, then. So, I understand you’ve been having earaches?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t of brought him for such a little thing,” the boy’s mother said, tense and defensive again. “But, my sister Tamara? A woman where she works told her her boy had earaches, and they was so bad his eardrums busted. Said they had to operate on him, put tubes in his ears. I don’t want my baby to have to have no operation. Don’t want him to have no tubes in his ears. So I thought-”

“No, it’s good you brought him in.” Ear scope at the ready, Ethan leaned toward the child, who, predictably, pulled away with a sharp “Ow!” Ethan eyed him sternly. “Come on, now, you think Michael Jordan would raise a fuss about such a little thing?” Again the amber eyes slid toward him with that look of proud disdain. “Hey, I just want to take a look inside your ears, see what’s going on in there. Okay?”

Michael nodded, but grudgingly. But he sat perfectly still for the duration of Ethan’s exam.

“How is he?” Hugging herself, the boy’s mother hovered at his side, all hunched-up shoulders and worried eyes. Dark eyes, Ethan noticed, rather exotic, tilted, almond shaped and much darker than her son’s. “His eardrums-they ain’t busted, are they? Maybe I shoulda brought him in sooner, but I couldn’t get offa work-”

Ethan assured her the boy’s eardrums were still intact. “Looks pretty red and angry in there, though. We’re going to get him started right away on some antibiotics-”

“Am I gonna hafta get a shot?” Chin cocked, Michael regarded him with his brave golden glare.

Ethan laughed and squeezed the thin shoulder. “Nah-you just get to take some nasty orange medicine. You take it all, though, every time your mama tells you to, no arguing, okay? Otherwise you’re just gonna make those germs that’re causing your earaches good and mad, and then they’ll come back twice as mean next time. You understand?”

Trying not to look relieved, Michael nodded. Ethan scribbled a prescription for the antibiotic and handed it to the mother, explaining in an undertone the procedure for getting it filled free of charge at a nearby pharmacy and securing her promise to bring her son back for a checkup in three days.

Then, remembering what Mrs. Schmidt had told him about the most likely cause of the current rash of ear infections, he turned back to Michael, who had already hopped down from the exam table and was looking much happier now that he no longer felt the need to keep up a macho front worthy of his namesake and hero. “And no swimming, you hear me? Not until those ears are completely cleared up.”

At that, his mother gave a gasp and dusted her son’s shoulder with her glancing swat. “Michael! You been swimming in that filthy river again? After I done told you? Didn’t I tell you stay away from that filthy water? What am I gonna do with you, boy?” She turned eyes glistening with hopelessness to Ethan. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but I got to work, I can’t watch him all the time. My sister Tamara, she supposed to watch him days, but she got the baby… It wasn’t so bad when he was in school, but now, with summer vacation and him home all day…”

Ethan nodded in automatic sympathy as he drew aside the exam room curtain; it was a story he’d heard many times before, one that unfortunately he had no answer for.

Just outside the curtain the woman stopped, turned abruptly and asked, “So, how much I owe you?”

It caught Ethan by surprise; he was already moving on, his mind leaping ahead to other things-the afternoon’s schedule, Ruthie’s lovelife, the evening’s four-to-midnight EMS ride-along. He turned back with a frown, poking absently at his lab coat pocket. “There’s no charge, ma’am, this is a free clinic.”

But the woman-Ethan glanced now at the chart, searching for her name…Louise, that was it, Louise Parker-drew herself up, somehow seeming inches taller. And in the proud lifting of her chin, reminded Ethan suddenly and for the first time of her son.

“Uh-uh-I got me a job, I been offa welfare for a year, now. I ain’t no freeloader. Michael and me, we pay our own way.”

Ethan glanced imploringly at Mrs. Schmidt, who had heard the exchange and was watching with great interest from her cubbyhole behind the reception counter. The woman drew a folded bill from the pocket of her faded jeans and thrust it at him. “Here-it’s all I got right now. If it’s not enough I’ll give you the rest next time I come. Let’s go, Michael.”

Speechless, Ethan watched Louise Parker and her son until the clinic’s front door had closed with a click behind them. Then he unfolded the bill. “My God,” he whispered, showing it to Mrs. Schmidt. “Twenty dollars-I’ll bet that’s a lot of money to her.”

“Probably.” As she went back to her books Mrs. Schmidt added in a musing tone, “That is one lucky little boy, you know that? With a mother like that, he might actually have a chance.”

Across the street from what had once been the South Church Street Fire Station, a thin black woman hurried along the sweltering sidewalk. So preoccupied was she with the scolding she was administering to the small boy dressed in baggy clothes and a backward baseball cap shuffling along beside her that she failed to notice a similarly dressed youth-this one Caucasian and of indeterminable gender-until they had all but collided.

“Michael!” The woman’s sharp whisper accompanied a light swat to the sagging seat of the boy’s trousers. “What you doin’, boy? Mind your manners! Say ‘excuse me.”’

“’Scuse me,” the boy dutifully mumbled, just as the “youth” was muttering, in a voice several tones deeper than her own distinctive contralto, “No, no, that’s okay-my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

The woman had done a double take and was now regarding the youth with an appraising stare, taking in the pale hue of her skin, the mirrored sunglasses, the New York Yankees logo on her baseball cap. “Hey,” she demanded on a rising note of incredulity, “you lost?”

Safe in her disguise, Phoenix reached out to give the bill of the little boy’s baseball cap a tug-why, she didn’t know, she normally had little use for children. “Nah,” she said with a wry smile, “not exactly. I was just looking for something…a place I used to know.”

“Yeah, well…” Looking extremely doubtful, the woman was edging away from her now, hands protectively on the child’s shoulders. “If I was you, I’d be askin’ Father Frank.”

“Who?”

“You know-the priest? Over there at St Jude’s.” She pointed, then hurried off in the opposite direction, calling back over her shoulder, “He can probably help you.” But she sounded, Joanna thought, as if in her opinion any white person dumb enough to be walking around alone in that neighborhood was most likely beyond help. She wondered if the woman knew St. Jude was the patron saint of lost causes.

Half a block down the street in the direction the woman had indicated squatted the ugly redbrick pile trimmed in white that housed the rectory of St. Jude’s Catholic Church. Next to it on the corner, the church itself-for which the street had been named nearly a century before-was only a slightly more graceful edifice, brightened somewhat by a Victorian abundance of stone trim and stained glass windows. On a tiny patch of grass tucked between the two, a stocky man dressed in black bermuda shorts and a white T-shirt had paused in his task of manhandling an old-fashioned push lawn mower in order to watch the exchange. Now he came toward Joanna, wiping sweat from his face with the sleeve of his T-shirt.

“Can I help you?”

Joanna hesitated. Normally she had no more use for priests than she did for children. But the man’s eyes were kind. “Maybe,” she said grudgingly, and jerked her head toward the street. “Didn’t there used to be a firehouse around here somewhere?”

The priest smiled. “That’s right-that’s it over there, across the street. Used to be the old Church Street station. They moved it a few years ago-three blocks over, on Franklin. Got too small, the street too crowded, I guess. Anyway, they’ve got a big new station over there-police, fire and EMS, all in one building. Go back down a block, then over three-you can’t miss it.” He paused, liquid dark eyes narrowing with concern. “Is everything okay? Anything I can do for you? You need to use the phone-”

Joanna shook her head. Then, for reasons she couldn’t begin to understand, heard herself explain, “I used to live around here-years ago. I was just wondering…” She paused and drew a careful breath, released it in a soft laugh. “I guess things have changed quite a bit.”

“Yes, I guess they have.” The priest’s eyes rested on her now with gentle appraisal. She felt herself tense under their scrutiny, and was instantly annoyed. Priest or not, the man was probably younger than she was; what right had he to make her feel like a truant?

But instead of turning her back and walking away, for some reason she hesitated still, her eyes going once more to the narrow redbrick building across the street. A man was just emerging from the arched front entrance, pausing the way people do when they come from air-conditioning into the heat, as if he’d just missed bumping into something solid. A young man, he appeared to be, with a tall, healthy, well-built body dressed in blue jeans and a short-sleeved shirt with a collar, open at the neck. Sort of preppy looking, in spite of a neatly trimmed beard. Definitely not from this neighborhood. Even from this distance-just something about the way he moved, maybe, the way he carried himself-she could tell he was good-looking, even handsome in a wholesome, blond, shredded wheat sort of way. Nice.

Memories crowded in, filling her chest with a treacherous sadness. Nice voices…kind faces, smudged with soot. Your momma’s gone, honey, you come with me now…it’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay…

“It’s a free clinic now,” the priest was saying, and his eyes were friendly and young once again. “Staffed by volunteers, mostly. My sister works there part-time-she’s a nurse over at Community Med. Hey, if you happen to drop in over there, tell Ruthie Mendoza her brother Frankie said hello.”

But the rock icon known as Phoenix barely heard him. She was already moving away down the cracked and dirty sidewalk, walking quickly, one hand going to her mirrored sunglasses as if to reassure herself the disguise was still in place.

Ethan could hear a stereo thumping before he’d even reached the door of the EMS station. Classic light rock-so he’d guessed right about Kenny Baumgartner being his ride-along partner. Kenny was thirty-one, considered ancient for a paramedic, so his tastes in music tended to run pretty close to Ethan’s, which made him a welcome relief from some of the younger EMT’s and their mind-numbing, not to mention ear-deadening preferences. Ethan wondered if it was a sign of advancing middle-age, now that he was approaching thirty himself, to be finding fault with the younger generation’s music.

“Ah…good song,” he said as he walked into the EMT’s lounge to a driving beat, the familiar and haunting chorus of “Pretty Mary.”

“Classic,” Kenny agreed without looking up. The paramedic was sprawled in a chrome and plastic kitchen chair poring over his latest sailing magazine, bobbing his head and whistling tunelessly in time to the beat. “One of the all-time top ten-right up there with the Boss, man. Might even beat out “Born To Run.”

That brought a snort from the lanky and obscenely young EMT who was lounging with one elbow propped against the countertop, waiting for something in the microwave. Any comment the paramedic had intended as a follow-up was preempted by the oven’s prolonged beep, and he uttered instead a satisfied, “Ah!” as he popped open the door. The smells of pepperoni and processed cheese filled the off-duty room.

“Heard she’s got a new CD coming out.” Kenny tossed aside the magazine and tilted his chair back at an alarming angle. “Supposed to be starting a big worldwide tour, is what I heard.”

Concentrating on separating mozzarella from cardboard, the young paramedic glanced up long enough to say, “Who?” just as Ethan was exclaiming, “No kidding?” So then both Ethan and Kenny had to pause to give the kid a look of incredulity.

“Phoenix-who the hell are we talking about?” Kenny said, shaking his head as if in profound disgust at such ignorance, as Ethan set his medical bag on the floor and sank into a chair, wiping sweat with his shirt sleeve.

“Oh, yeah, Phoenix…right.” The EMT-Leon, according to the tag on his uniform pocket-shrugged, licked his fingers, then added, “Isn’t she supposed to be in town?”

Again, both Kenny and Ethan stared at him. And again it was Kenny who asked, “Who? Phoenix? Here?”

Leon placed his pizza on the table and shrugged.

“Where’d you hear that?” Kenny demanded, clearly in disbelief.

“Hey,” said Leon, looking offended, “I read Rolling Stone.” He glanced from Kenny to Ethan and back again. “It’s true. Supposed to be getting ready for some big new gig.”

It was Kenny’s turn to snort in derision. “Nobody kicks off a tour from this town, man. This town is where tours come to die.”

Leon could only shrug, being totally committed to the lava-hot mozzarella he’d just bitten into. Presently he managed to mumble through the mouthful, “Just tellin’ you what they said, man. It was like, she used to be from here or something.”

Once again both Ethan and Kenny were struck momentarily dumb by that news, but the stunned silence lasted only a second or two before it was filled by the raucous blast of the alarm. It was a sound that never failed to send a bolt of electricity through Ethan, kick his heart rate into high and lift up the hairs on his forearms, and in that instant he lost all interest in the likely whereabouts of the rock-and-roll legend called Phoenix.

Kenny righted his chair with a thump. “We’ll take it,” he said to the younger paramedic, who was hunched over his pizza, desperately trying to sever the umbilical cord of cheese that bound him to it. Ethan was already on his feet and reaching for his medical bag. Kenny signaled to him with a jerk of his head. “Time to rock ’n’ roll.” He grinned at his own cleverness, then let the grin slide toward wryness as he added, “Starting in early tonight. Must be the heat.”

Kenny’s words proved prophetic. During the course of Ethan’s four-to-midnight ride-along, he and Kenny had already handled two multi-injury MVAs, a jogger with chest pains, the combatants in a bar brawl, and a portly fellow who’d fallen off a ladder while attempting to install an air conditioner in a second-floor bedroom window. So, when the Klaxon sounded at eleven-forty-five, Leon and his partner, Scott, generously offered to take it.

“’Bout time for ol’ Doc, there, to be headin’ for the barn, anyways,” was the way Leon put it, a blatant reference to Ethan’s age. Which had been the source of a running, and in Ethan’s opinion not very funny, joke among the younger EMTs for quite a while now.

Kenny, who had been listening to the dispatcher, shook his head. His face was grim as he gave Ethan the head-jerk signal to roll. “Balcony collapse over in The Gardens,” he said, referring to one of the worst of the many slum neighborhoods in that part of the city, one well-known to police, fire and rescue squads who’d nicknamed it The Gardens because it was anything but. “Sounds like one for you, Doc. Do you mind?”

Ethan was already a step ahead of him going out the door, adrenaline pumping. “That’s only a few blocks from here,” he pointed out as he signaled to the driver of an anonymous dark sedan parked in the No Parking zone in front of the station. He climbed into the EMS wagon and pulled his safety belt across his shoulder as the wagon rolled down the drive. Watching in the side view mirror, he saw the sedan take up its customary position a couple of car-lengths behind as they sped down the dark street, lights whirling and siren wailing.

High in her converted loft, Phoenix heard sirens and woke from a restless sleep. It was not the first time; the sirens had been busy tonight. As all the times before, she woke with her heart racing and her body slick with sweat, and it was a minute or two before the chill of terror faded and her breathing grew quiet again.

But you’re safe here…safe.

From somewhere a melody came to her and she sang it softly to herself in her mind. Yes, and she remembered now, remembered where she’d heard it most recently. It was the melody Doveman had played that afternoon, segueing from “Pretty Mary,” except that he’d played it in a minor key and with a bluesy rhythm.

The words came to her, and she sang them to herself, too, finding in them a familiar comfort.

Hush little baby, don’t say a word,

Papa’s gonna buy you a mockin’bird…

Often, in times of dire emergency, Ethan’s mind entered a zone of quiet, a place from which it could operate calmly and efficiently, protected from the distractions, the fear, the sights, sounds and smells of crisis that surrounded him. He didn’t know when it had begun; it just seemed that it had always been so, and he was grateful for the gift.

It stood him well now, as the EMS wagon screeched to a halt at a curbside crowded with people, in a shadowy darkness noisy with panic, anger, shock and uncertainty.

“Paramedics-move aside, please, let us through. Step back please…”

From somewhere out beyond his zone of quiet he heard Kenny’s voice, calm but loud, and weighty with authority. He heard sobbing, a woman’s voice, many voices speaking rapidly in tones of panic, shock and fear, speaking all at once, explaining, imploring…praying.

“It was so hot, you know? The air conditioner don’t work. The babies was in bed…she was just gonna sit for a while, out where it’s cool…”

“There was this noise…and then the whole thing came down!”

“Just tore right out the wall!”

“Wasn’t nothin’ I could do…wasn’t nothin’ anybody could do…”

“Oh, Lord Jesus…Oh, God…somebody gotta help her!”

“Somebody…”

With that faraway part of his mind, Ethan felt himself climbing over rubble, kneeling on chunks of bricks and wrought iron that cut his knees even through his jeans. He could feel adrenaline pumping through his body, feel the sweat running in rivers down his face, feel his hands moving swiftly and surely, exploring crushed and mangled flesh. He heard his own voice shouting orders, firing instructions, heard himself calling for the equipment, the fluids, the tubes and lines and wraps that could and so often did salvage lives that seemed beyond saving. With the distant part of his mind he felt and heard those things…even while the quiet, protected part knew it was hopeless.

“Hey, Doc, there was nothing you could do.” Kenny’s gravelly voice came from somewhere behind him, heavy with regret, gentle with acceptance. “The femoral artery was cut clean through. She bled out in a matter of minutes.”

“Yeah,” Ethan muttered, “I know.” Emerging from his quiet place, he now felt shaken, exposed and vulnerable. He tore off a glove and drew the hand across his eyes, and then as his gaze shifted to the face of the body sprawled like a broken doll in the rubble before him, swore with vehement surprise. Dark eyes stared up at him, almond-shaped eyes with a familiar exotic tilt.

“What?” Kenny asked. “You know her?”

Ethan nodded. His stomach clenched, and then his teeth. “She was in the clinic. Just this afternoon. She’s got a kid.”

At that moment, just as if he’d been waiting for his cue, a small boy tore free from the arms that had held him safely away from the circle of tragedy and pushed his way to Ethan’s side.

“Hey, Doc-you gonna fix my momma. She gonna be okay, right?”

Jostled off-balance, Ethan looked up into Michael Parker’s amber eyes. Oh, how he wished he could lie. He desperately wanted to; his mind searched for the comforting words. But instead, he only shook his head.

For one endless moment the boy stared back at him with frightened, angry eyes…bravely lifted chin. Then he pushed at Ethan, struck him hard with both doubled-up fists before he turned. Blindly. Then waiting hands reached for him and pulled him away.

Somewhere, someone was sobbing.

Only when he was sure the boy was safely away did Ethan lift his hand and gently close Louise Parker’s unseeing eyes.