The Inquisitor

Chapter 9

Tuesday, July 8, 7:05 a.m.

Thick as a fold of flesh on a pachyderm's ass," Thomas Biggs grumbled, his Tennessee twang cutting the gloom like a buzz saw. He squinted upward as gray tendrils engulfed the upper floors of St. Paul's. A fog bank had bulged off Lake Erie to lean on the downtown core.

Earl shivered in the clammy air. Screening at the hospital entrance progressed more slowly than usual, and chatter among the troops remained muted.

They were an army that had woken to the news their lines had once more been breached. Morning broadcasts reported thirty new cases of possible SARS and three more deaths, all of them identified on a ward in a rehabilitation hospital not three blocks away. The zinger that had this crowd so subdued was that the seminal case involved a woman who'd had hip surgery at St. Paul's, and she must have contracted the virus from an unknown carrier on staff here.

At his urging, Janet had agreed to take the day off, though Earl admitted nothing seemed wrong with her. If anything, her ready acceptance to stay home concerned him. It meant she'd been more shaken by what happened than he realized.

"Any idea who the carrier is yet?" Earl asked when it came his turn to be screened.

"No," the nurse answered, her voice having retreated to the high-pitched, thin tones that are a giveaway of taut vocal cords.

He took a good look at her, at least what remained visible above the mask.

Brown eyes, young and scared, met his, then she looked away, probably embarrassed that he'd seen her fear.

In ER, as usual following a SARS scare implicating St. Paul's, the morning rush of walk-ins hadn't appeared, and the waiting room stood empty.

"A good day to check supplies," Susanne said. She believed the best antidote to anxiety over each new outbreak lay in keeping busy. "How's Janet?"

"She took the day off."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Wow. Is she okay?"

"I think so, at least physically."

Susanne frowned at him. "Why don't you bug out and spend the day with her at home?" She gestured toward the triage desk, where J.S. sat, unoccupied and staring off into space. "There's certainly not much happening here."

She had a point. "I just might do that. Thanks, Susanne." Meantime he had a few things to prepare for next week's death rounds, but that could wait. First he checked with Michael, however.

"Go home," the man said when he learned Janet hadn't come into work. "I can handle things here." He glanced over to where Thomas had gathered the other residents to start morning rounds. "Especially with Dr. Biggs to keep me smart."

The young man from Tennessee looked up. "Thank you, Dr. Popovitch. If you'll put that in writing, I'll apply for a position here next year."

"Anytime," Michael said without hesitation.

"That goes for me too," Earl added, not having heard him express an interest in coming on staff before. "Are you serious?"

"You bet. I like it here. Your department's great. The hospital, the university, and the academic environment for research are perfect for what I see myself doing. The city's not too big and has lots of green spaces, plus being by the lake is terrific. And for a boy from the hills of Tennessee, the mountains an hour's drive south are just like home."

Earl walked over and slapped Thomas on the back. "Well, that helps fix what started as a crappy day." He also noted that every nurse in the room nodded approvingly. "And you evidently got the vote that really counts."

Susanne leaned over and whispered, "Now go home. Tell Janet that you're a gift from all of us."

He grinned. "Hey, take it easy, or I'll think you want to get rid of me."

"Perceptive," Susanne said as she headed into the medication cupboard.

On his way past triage he winked and said, "Kicked out of my own department, J.S. What do you think of that?"

He expected her usual playful response. Instead she started and looked at him as if she hadn't caught what he'd said. In fact, above the mask, she was a little pale. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Dr. G."

"Sure?"

"Of course." She straightened in her chair. "Hey, I'm a triage nurse. Who should know better than me if I'm all right?"

"Of course." He let her be, but on his way to the elevators, he couldn't help but think he should have checked her out more carefully.

Carriers.

The possibility set his stomach churning in high gear.

7:25 a.m.

Intensive care swarmed with its usual rush of morning activities. Patients here were an eclectic enough group with such a variety of multiple problems that they attracted consults from just about every type of specialist in existence. Cardiologists, neurologists, immunologists, oncologists, internists- they all huddled in small groups at the end of one bed after another and took turns pronouncing on the state of the particular system where their expertise lay. Mercifully many recipients of this attention were too sedated to hear or care. But the sentient ones wore puzzled expressions as sage-looking professors introduced themselves, then proceeded to discuss hearts, brains, white cell responses, tumors, and metabolic abnormalities as if these were entities to be considered on their own, objects of interest that happened to be located in the body of whoever occupied the cubicle. True professionals, they at least attempted to mask their glee at each discovery, managing to be no more noisy than excited shoppers at a mall.

Earl ignored them all and walked directly to the nursing station. He came up behind Stewart Deloram, who sat rummaging through a lost-and-found drawer. "Anybody see my goddamned keys? I seem to have lost them again."

Every nurse within hearing distance rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. Earl heard at least three of them mutter something about the need for idiot strings. The guy could keep track of every molecule in a patient's biochemistry, but personal belongings were another matter.

Stewart turned, caught sight of him, and jumped to his feet. "Earl! I intended to come and see you." He blurted out the words with an urgent sincerity that sounded odd coming from him.

"Pardon?" Earl had half expected a fight.

"I wanted to say I'm sorry for not realizing what Janet must have been thinking and feeling. I can be such a dolt about that sort of thing."

Well, well, Earl thought.

"I'll go to the case room and apologize to her in person, as soon as I get the ward settled-"

"She's at home, Stewart."

The thick black eyebrows arched like warring caterpillars. "What?"

"She decided to take it easy today."

"Oh."

"I think she's okay physically. Luckily, the blood levels for chloroform came back virtually negative, so we doubt the baby had a significant exposure. But the deliberateness of what happened really upset her."

"Shit, I hope I didn't add to that."

"No, no, I'm sure that's forgotten. I'm here to discuss something else with you.

Let's find a quiet corner."

They moved to an area behind a large curved console of monitors. The quantified parameters of life- blood pressures, pulses, the forces of cardiac contractions, oxygen saturations, respiratory rates- squiggled and jiggled in a dance of fluorescent green readouts.

"I went to interview the patients you spoke with on Peter Wyatt's ward, the ones who reported the near-death experiences that you called bogus."

"What?" His eyes widened, the way an animal's would if it were taken by surprise.

"Down, boy. If Wyatt had started a vendetta against you, I wanted to know, so as to put an end to it before anything got out of hand."

Stewart remained unappeased, his expression suspended between incredulity and fury.

"But since you visited with them last Friday, they have all either died or slipped into a coma."

Incredulity won.

"They what?"

"You heard me. Dead, or near dead."

"My God."

"Did they strike you as being that ill when you saw them?"

"Well, I don't know. I wasn't evaluating them medically…"

He seemed genuinely stunned by the news, but also to be fishing around for answers.

"Come on, Stewart, you don't need a full workup to sense people are near the end. It looked to me they were in bad shape on their charts, but of course nothing beats seeing them firsthand. Would you have guessed these people were about to die or go unconscious?"

"You mean you didn't talk to a single one of them?"

Earl felt Stewart hadn't heard the question. "No, I didn't. Now answer what I asked."

"Yes, they were ill," he said decisively, his puzzled expression unwinding to neutral. "None of them was going to survive more than a few days."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really."

An icy cold began to gnaw at the pit of Earl's stomach. "So it doesn't surprise you, three dead, two comatose."

"Not at all." Stewart's expression grew suspicious again. "What are you getting at?"

"You seemed pretty astounded at first."

He sat up straighter, threw his shoulders back, and raised his chin a notch. "Only that you went to question them yourself. But I guess I should thank you for that, considering you appear to be looking out for my interests against Wyatt's."

"St. Paul's interests, actually."

"I don't understand."

"I think you do." Earl turned to leave, in no mood to be stonewalled- he had other ways to find out what he wanted- when inadvertently he glanced toward the isolation chambers at the end of the room. Three were ablaze with light, the nurses busily attending to the patients within. But the one where Teddy Burns had struggled to breathe yesterday loomed dark and empty.

Stewart saw him staring at the glass cubicle. "Yeah, it sucks," he said and gestured helplessly at the heavens with both hands. Whatever else he'd been pretending about, his voice resonated with a blend of anger and remorse that couldn't be faked. "He arrested last night. I couldn't save him."

Earl slumped against the wall of the elevator all the way up to the eighth floor. As VP, medical, he would be the one to arrange a memorial for Teddy. He tried out what he would say.

/ recall all the times we struggled side by side to restore the breath of life to the already dead…

He couldn't finish. The disgust on the man's face as he'd struggled to breathe when no one could help him overwhelmed such treacle.

Earl stopped by the nursing station in Palliative Care and asked the woman in charge, a tiny person with big Elton John glasses, if Monica Yablonsky had left him a list of all her colleagues who'd reported a patient having a near-death experience.

She hadn't.

"Then would you do it, please?" he asked.

She looked at him curiously, shrugged, and made a note of the request.

It was probably better not to deal with Monica Yablonsky anyway, he thought, pressing the button to summon the elevator back. The less he had to confront her, the better his chance to quietly discover what had transpired up here without setting off alarm bells. However much Hurst had infuriated him, what the manipulative old bastard had said about how distractions could be lethal still made sense. And this morning's headlines underlined that everyone must stay focused on the minutest detail of how to protect against the infection. Worst of all, even that might not be enough. Teddy Burns had never been able to tell the SARS control committee what slip cost him his life.

The elevator arrived.

He didn't get in, wanting a quiet place to clear his head.

The roof garden. It ought to be deserted on a day like this.

Minutes later, stepping out into the fog, he might have been on a mountain ledge. Buffalo itself lay completely obscured, and the sounds of the city came to him as if out of a gray dream. Only the potted trees defined his floating world. As he walked their perimeter, droplets of moisture in the air felt cool on his forehead.

But nothing could soothe his churning gut.

Stewart had seemed relieved those patients couldn't repeat what they'd said about their near-death experiences. And it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that, for a few seconds at least, he'd also acted genuinely surprised to hear they had ended up dead or comatose.

Which meant what?

For one, he probably hadn't really thought they were on the brink of death when he first saw them just last week.

Yet why would he not simply say so, instead of suddenly insisting they'd been at death's door, no doubt about it?

Earl looked back at the hospital. The surrounding murk had reduced it to little more than a smudge in the distance.

A real house of secrets, he thought.

But if he could persuade the nurses in Palliative Care to recount the specifics of their patients' near-death encounters, perhaps he could figure out what Stewart seemed so intent on hiding.

And he would also take a closer look at the broader workings of Palliative Care- surreptitiously, of course- as soon as he could find a way to do it. Because if Yablonsky and her crew had killed Elizabeth Matthews with an accidental overdose, he intended to make damn sure they hadn't covered up clusters of anything else.

As for whoever had pulled that numskull move on Janet last night, he'd go after that piece of work with a vengeance. Serve notice that this VP, medical would track the idiot down. Ask around if any witnesses saw somebody in the stairwell at that time. Check in particular if they noticed an aroma of chloroform off his or her clothes. Let everyone know they had a new sheriff in town. Nothing subtle about it. The person's running out on Janet had been criminal.

A rain, thin as needles, began to fall.

He remained where he stood, reluctant to reenter the oppressive confines of the building.

And let his mind fleetingly dredge up the unthinkable.

What if smashing the chloroform bottle had been deliberate?

Immediately he rebelled.

Of course not. Why the hell even think such nonsense? No one in their right mind would do that, not to Janet, not to anyone. The person would be a maniac. God, Hurst would be right to give him shit for allowing such thoughts into his head.

Definitely time to get out of here. He pulled out his cellular and dialed home.

"Hi," he said when Janet answered. "I'll be there in twenty minutes. My department gave me the day off."

She chuckled, low and throaty. "You mean they threw you out. Susanne already called to tell me so that I'd reel you in should you change your mind and try to hang around the hospital."

He liked low and throaty. "So we have the house to ourselves?"

"We have the house to ourselves."

No birds, he thought as he headed toward the door, realizing he hadn't heard a chirp the whole time he'd been outside. They must have had the sense to ground themselves for the day too.

Jane Simmons appreciated that Susanne kept her busy. Otherwise, with nothing to do, the self-interrogation started up again.

Should she return home?

Tell Thomas?

Have the baby?

Give it up?

Worse?

The questions that rampaged through her head and the choices they offered seemed so alien, she felt they must belong to some other woman, not her.

So she counted catheters, needles, oxygen masks, suturing kits, and IV packs. Then she sorted equipment trays, filled out order forms, and requisitioned what they needed. Anything not to think of herself.

And occasionally she saw patients, the ones scared and desperate enough to overcome their fear of SARS and come in.

Some of them too late.

A fifty-five-year-old math professor with a stroke arrived an hour past the time when clot-busting drugs could have cleared the blockage and saved his speech.

A forty-five-year-old policeman came in with recurrent chest pain well beyond the limit for rescuing injured cardiac muscle.

A thirty-year-old woman with abdominal pain had ignored her stomachache long enough for it to deteriorate into a perforated appendix that left her septic, in shock, and clinging to life.

Jane even abandoned her professional detachment and allowed herself to sincerely despair over these unfortunates, using the bleakness of their futures to trivialize her own misery.

And it worked. Sort of. For a half hour now and then.

At two thirty in the afternoon, there once more being a lull in the action, she hurried into a utility closet, intent on doing more inventory.

And surprised Father Jimmy going through a cupboard.

"Ah, Jane," he said, "just the person I need. Could you find me a urine cup? I'm due for my annual physical, and the doctor always wants an offering."

Startled to see him in here and not in the mood for company, she quickly found what he wanted.

"And about that other little favor I asked you?" He grabbed his earlobe. "I took the liberty of checking with Susanne. She said fine, and that it might be a good idea if we get the job done today, you having so few customers."

Not now, she thought, wanting only to be alone and lose herself in mindless tasks. "Well actually, Father, I'm supposed to be compiling a list of supplies-"

"That's something I can give you a hand with. And if I can call you Jane, will you drop the 'Father'? The name's Jimmy, Jimmy Fitzpatrick. Now what's first?"

Oh, brother! He could be so disarming, yet she still didn't want company right now. "It's not necessary-"

"Nonsense."

"Listen, why don't I do your ear-"

"Not until I help you with your work. You look as if you could use a bit of a hand today." He leaned forward, arched his brows three times, Groucho Marx style, and widened his eyes in a clown stare. "Peaked, I'd say, definitely peaked, or I'm not the doctor I thought I was. Wait a minute, I'm not a doctor."

She laughed.

His expression reverted to normal. "Seriously, Jane, are you okay?"

Be careful, she told herself. He could be very perceptive. "Of course. Why shouldn't I be?"

"Because you're a little green around the gills, and your eyes haven't their usual spark."

Before she knew it, he'd removed a glove and gently laid his bare palm across her forehead.

"No temperature. That's good."

His hand had a nice warmth to it.

"So what's the matter?" He turned to the counter, where he retrieved another glove from a box and proceeded to pull it on. "You're definitely not your buoyant self."

"Hold on, Fa- I mean Jimmy." She grabbed him by the wrist and led him toward the sink. "You wash first. That's all we need, the hospital chaplain coming down sick, thanks to my forehead. You've no idea how many sick people it's been near."

"Yes, ma'am," he said with a laugh, and began to do exactly as told. "But now you 'fess up. We don't want the pierced angel of ER falling ill either."

She smiled and at the same time felt wary. "Just tired, is all."

He gave her a sideways glance. Pulling on a fresh pair of gloves, he took her hands between his and fixed her with a stare that penetrated every layer of her masquerade. "Jane, I've been spotting troubled people all my life. Now, you need either a doctor or a friend or both, but I'm not leaving until you level with me."

She'd barely slept last night. This morning when she'd overheard Thomas indicate he might stay on at St. Paul's, a surge of elation had swept her hopes high. He must intend us to be together, she'd thought, then wondered, But if that's the case, why didn't he tell me first?

Danger, mood change ahead, she'd warned herself, and sure enough, she'd rocketed to the verge of tears. A few minutes later she managed to slam on the brakes and act calm when Dr. G. asked if she felt okay.

The wild ride had continued the rest of the day, and the more her shift wore on, the lonelier she felt. Still, she'd at least won her battle to appear cheery.

Until now.

Father Jimmy's insistence that she open up to him crumpled something inside her chest. She again refused to cry but balled her hands into fists and pulled them out of his. Then she turned away from him, wanting to disappear, feeling ashamed.

"Hey, J.S., what's happened? Tell me. I can help you through it. Come on now, don't expect to be rid of me until you do."

His voice acquired a new urgency and seemed to come from all around her. She felt oddly safe within it, as if his words created a protective sphere where nothing could hurt her. She stopped listening to the meaning of what he said and let just the sound of his talking soothe her. Then she felt his hands take her by the shoulders and gently bring her around until they stood eye to eye. She could see her face reflected in his pupils, and it came as a shock that his concern for her would be so intense.

"I'm sorry, Jimmy," she said, also puzzled by the impact his presence had on her. For a second she'd seen a man, not a priest.

As if sensing her discomfort, he immediately released his hold on her. The guy must be used to women reacting to him that way, she thought, embarrassed at herself.

"What in God's name has made you so miserable?" he asked, his voice soft. "Or should I say who? I'm frankly surprised you'd let anything or anyone best you like this."

Despite the quiet of his words, they stung her. He must have guessed about Thomas. And he'd probably seen enough stupid small-town girls who'd gotten into trouble to pick up on her new problem. Except she damn well wasn't going to admit to him what she'd done, become another victim he had to take care of.

Victim!

The word had a sting to it as well. For the first time since that accursed blue dot had changed her life, she felt angry. What a weepy, dreary idiot she'd let herself become. For as long as she could remember, it had been her style not to cry, to tough out better than the boys whatever hurt her. Never play the helpless girl- she had carried that motto into her teenage years with a cocky pride that gave substance to her hard exterior. It had gotten her out of Grand Forks, through nursing school, and into St. Paul's ER, so it shouldn't fail her now.

Well, if nothing else, he'd created a resolve in her to handle her own predicament. "Nothing I care to discuss right now," she said, firmly putting a distance between him and whatever had happened just now.

His eyes regained their usual playfulness. "Now that sounds a little more like the spunky J.S. I know." He tactfully handed her a box of tissues and, as if nothing substantial had happened, suggested he wait for her in one of the procedure rooms. "To get my nerve up for the operation," he added, and left her alone.

He'd also known she needed time to compose herself, and had managed to withdraw without embarrassing either of them. That took style.

A sense of calm settled through her. It felt like the return of an old friend who'd been away. She liked the feeling. It made her comfortable with herself and filled her again with a quiet confidence that had faded away recently, almost without her realizing it. Yes, she loved Thomas. And yes, she carried his baby. And yes, he could be a clueless asshole about whether they would be together even beyond this year.

The serenity with which she could admit that jolted her. She also realized any decision about the baby would be hers. Just knew this. Couldn't say how or why, but knew, the way she knew her heart beat and her lungs breathed. In that instance the child became a life, not just part of her body. And for a moment she felt liberated from all the worry or regrets that had poured through her in the last twenty hours, freed even from the burden of trying to second-guess how to please Thomas. She'd choose what would be best for her and her progeny, period.

Yet she still felt whipsawed by everything, all in the wake of Father Jimmy's question. Or had it been a challenge? What he'd said had certainly put her through a sea change.

Using a mirror over the sink, she fixed her eyes and worried that if Dr. G. and now Father Jimmy could notice something was wrong through them, then Susanne and the others in ER wouldn't be far behind. But the stare that gazed back at her seemed steady enough. Suitable for public consumption, at least, she decided, and took an ice cube from the medication refrigerator, chose a large enough bore needle, and grabbed a test tube with a rubber cap to use as a backstop. Picking up the paper on which she'd kept a tally of the supplies they'd counted, she headed for the treatment room.

As she worked on Father Jimmy, he chatted about growing up in Chicago with an Irish cop for a dad. "I was the youngest of four boys, and my mother, second-generation Greek, ruled us all, including Dad, with an iron hand…"

She found herself relaxing as he talked solely of himself, since it took the focus off her. She suspected he intended it that way. "Why did you become a priest?" she asked at one point.

"Good question. My brothers all became doctors, and Dad wanted none of us to have anything to do with being a cop. Since he dealt with the realm of right and wrong, and my brothers had the physical side of human nature sewn up, the soul seemed ideal terrain for me to occupy."

She laughed and did the jab.

He never so much as flinched. "But I'm not actually a priest yet, despite everyone around here thinking of me as one and calling me 'Father.' Did my seminary studies in Rome, two years philosophy, three theology, then a master's in hospital administration, and am currently doing my Ph.D. in pastoral services. While I'm a full-fledged chaplain, the actual vows are a few years off yet."

"Sounds as long as med school," she said, compressing the site of the puncture to stop the blood.

"I'll say it is, except I find philosophy and human thought more intriguing than learning how all the nerves and muscles work."

Minutes later Jimmy Fitzpatrick walked away wearing a shiny but small gold ring in his right ear.

As Jane cleaned up, Susanne stuck her head through the door. "I must say, you're looking better."

"Me? I didn't know I'd been looking worse."

"You know what I mean. You didn't seem to be yourself."

"So I'm told."

"Father Jimmy have something to do with cheering you up? He's out in the nursing station, showing off your handiwork. Like a kid, he is, telling everyone who'll listen, 'J.S. is a marvel. Didn't feel a thing.'"

Jane smiled. "He's something, all right. And yeah, he really knows-" She almost said "how to treat women" but thought it not proper.

"Knows what?" Susanne asked, tidying up the counter.

"Really knows people and the right things to say to them."

Susanne stopped midway through tossing the used gauze into a biohazard container. "You like him?"

Jane continued to wash her hands. "Sure. Doesn't everybody?"

Susanne watched her a few seconds more. "You know what's interesting about Father Jimmy? His mother."

"He told me about her. Sounds like quite a lady."

"Did he mention her father was a priest?"

Jane stopped in midscrub. "What?"

Susanne scanned the counter for anything they'd missed and picked up the piece of paper that listed the totals for the supplies. "Yeah. He served in what's called the Eastern Orthodox Church, at least the Greek Archdiocese of it. There the priests can marry, as long as it's before they're ordained. Jimmy explained it to us once, at one of the ER parties."

"I didn't know."

"Same goes for Father Jimmy. Because of his mother's connection, he's received permission to be ordained in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. He doesn't make a big deal about it, so as to avoid confusing the patients. 'Being a hospital chaplain,' he once told me, 'is about spiritual comfort, not religion or what church I belong to.' I guess understanding that is what makes him so good with all sorts of people."

"Yes, I see."

To anyone listening, Susanne's easy chatter would sound no different than the usual running conversations coworkers often engage in during down times. Except Jane knew that her boss detested gossip, and that for her to say anything about anybody's personal life, there had to be a good reason.

Susanne held out the paper she'd picked up. "What room is this inventory list for?"

Jane refocused on matters at hand. "Oh, that's from the supply room beside re-sus. I did it to keep busy."

Susanne shook her head. "I hate to tell you, but I did the place this morning. And you must have miscounted the syringes." She handed over the list, tapping where Jane had totaled the ten-cc size.

"What's wrong with it? That's the count I got."

Susanne frowned. "Do you mind checking with me again?"

"Not at all."

Five minutes later they'd confirmed Jane's numbers were correct.

Susanne's frown deepened. "Shit!"

Jane couldn't remember her ever using the word. "What's the matter?"

"This morning I got fifty more than you did."

"Maybe you lost track? It's easy enough to do. Besides, how can you remember so exactly what you got?"

Susanne sighed. "Keep this under your hat, but I've been keeping a close watch on syringes that size."

"Why?"

"Because I think someone's stealing them."

"What?"

Jane spent the next fifteen minutes quietly verifying that none of the other nurses had grabbed a handful of needles from the storeroom to replenish one of the many bins they kept them in, ready to grab on the fly. As she worked, her mind wandered back to Susanne's unusually candid remarks about Father Jimmy and why she felt Jane should know that he could marry.

A crude attempt at matchmaking? No, that would go totally against Susanne's own fastidious insistence on privacy. Besides, she already knew about Thomas and seemed to approve. So what then?

"Because I didn't want you to feel uncomfortable about finding him attractive," Susanne explained when Jane asked her.

"But I didn't find him attractive."

Susanne laughed. "Then that would make you the only woman in the department who hasn't."

"But-"

"Relax. He's never indicated a willingness to date anyone he works with. But let's just say men and women give out subliminal signals about their sexuality in spite of themselves. On that front he's liable to seem as available as the next man. This is why I think he let the rest of us know he can have a woman in his life, so none of us would feel guilty about normal chemistry and an innocent, unspiritual 'what-if* or two. In anyone else, I'd call that kind of thinking the height of conceit. But with him, I figure it's just his way of keeping unnecessary tensions out of an already charged work space."

"Well, he needn't worry about me," Jane insisted, still not willing to admit she'd had her own moment of attraction to him. But finding out that he hadn't been sworn to celibacy somehow helped her feel a little less weird about what happened.

"Now how about my needle count?"

Jane shook her head. "No sign of the missing fifty."

Minutes before the end of her shift at three, a half dozen ambulances arrived within minutes of each other.

"Figures," she muttered, running into the supply room to find more IV bags. Grabbing them, she noticed that Father Jimmy had forgotten his specimen cup on the counter. Odd, it being what he'd come for in the first place.

That night, 11:45 p.m.

I let myself in the basement door and closed it softly behind me.

A piercing squeak in a hinge sounded inches from my ear, and I froze, listening for any response upstairs.

Standing in pitch darkness, I heard the soft purr of a freezer somewhere nearby, but otherwise the muffled silence of being belowground remained intact.

Then a slight creak came from the floorboards above my head.

The dog?

I held my breath not daring to move.

Nothing else stirred.

I strained to hear the telltale click of her claws on wood or linoleum.

Still nothing.

The freezer clicked off.

Now absolute quiet reigned.

I exhaled through my mouth, careful to make no noise at all, still alert for a hint of anything stirring, man or beast.

The house seemed reassuringly dead.

I snapped on a penlight and tiptoed to the foot of the stairs leading up to the kitchen, then paused.

The steady dry click of an electric clock ticking off the minutes came somewhere on the ground floor. Otherwise, the rest of the house remained as hushed as the basement.

I'd have to be extra careful if I didn't want to wake the dog.

I sat down on the cement floor and played my light around the room, looking for what I'd need, checking the diameter of the pipes overhead, and fine-tuning my plan.

Yes, this would work well.

Very well indeed.

Wednesday, July 9, 1:30 a.m.

Janet rose, unable to sleep, and pulled on her housecoat. She heard Muffy stir in the dark at the foot of the bed, then the soft sound of her paws hitting the carpet. The dog would routinely accompany her to the door when she left on a delivery, and be waiting there on her return. Earl, having trained himself to sleep through such nocturnal excursions a lifetime ago, didn't so much as vary his breathing.

Their bedroom remained pitch-black, the usual glow from the street lamps unable to penetrate a fog thick as silt.

She went down to the kitchen, made herself a mug of hot chocolate, and curled up on the living room couch. Despite the murk outside, she cranked open a window and let the sweet scent of her nicotinia bed waft through the darkness.

Muffy came up and gave her a puzzled look. After receiving a reassuring kitzle behind the ear, she plopped on top of Janet's feet and emitted a little groan.

"You getting stiff, old girl?" Janet said, working her toes into the dog's woolly coat.

A long canine sigh greeted her effort.

She'd decided. Not only would she stop work, but her leave would begin as soon as she could farm out her patients.

She tried to tell herself what had happened at the hospital last night didn't affect her, that her body had been telling her for weeks to slow down, that this pregnancy would be different, demand she rest more. And now she finally found the common sense to listen.

But something had changed. Her nothing-stops-me bravado wore a little thin in the face of what could have been if Susanne hadn't set the rescue in motion.

Remembering the iciness of the morgue, she shivered and clasped her cup with both hands so its warmth would flow into her.

A chill completely separate from the night air remained.

Hunching up inside her robe, she adjusted some throw cushions at her back in a vain attempt to get comfortable, and received a kick from within for her trouble.

"Sorry, little man," she murmured. Knowing her voice would sound like talking underwater to him, she started to hum. The random notes evolved into the tune for "Puff the Magic Dragon." His movements settled, and she giggled. "In another five weeks you'll hear your momma's real singing voice. That'll be a shocker."

He gave her another little nudge.

"Let you sleep, right?" she whispered, and quietly resumed the song, this time with words.

He settled again and stayed quiet.

Her thoughts drifted.

To Brendan, whose young eyes had ignited with delight when he found Mommy and Daddy at home after school. She would give him more of those days with her. Many, many more.

She stretched and rested the nape of her neck against the top of the sofa, savoring images of all the fun they'd have- setting up his old crib, preparing the tiny bedding, digging out all the stuffed animals that he still loved but carefully hid away so his six-year-old friends wouldn't see them when they came to play.

Smiling, she also experienced a hint of relief. For once he could be her little boy, she'd be his mom, and there wouldn't be the demands of an obstetrical practice competing for her attention. Maybe, she thought, just maybe, she'd be able to create a magic interlude for him, an oasis where he could store up on all he'd missed from not having her around. "Yeah, right," she said aloud, having counseled enough mothers through the demands of career and kids to recognize a guilt fantasy when she conjured one up for herself. Still, she liked the idea. A couple of months stretched like a lifetime for a six-year-old. Not that he didn't already feel safe, confident, and loved. But you can't ever have too much of that stuff, she thought, then laughed out loud.

Muffy raised her head and looked up at her.

"I've become exactly like my own mother," Janet told her. "Now, she was a woman who knew how to make you feel loved. Drove me and my two brothers crazy, never missing an opportunity to give us a big smooch."

Muffy put her head back down, not at all interested.

Of course Brendan could react the same way as her brothers, Janet thought, and find that Mommy turned into a big, embarrassing bore when she hung around him all the time. Wouldn't that be a kick in the head.

She took another sip.

As for Earl, he'd be relieved to get her out of the hospital. He was so fastidious about tiptoeing around the question, never intruding on her right to make the decision, but his studied neutrality practically shrieked, "Get the hell out of there, woman!" What's more, the lovable goof would actually believe he'd been the epitome of a noninterfering husband.

But she damn well intended to interfere with him. She'd known when he became VP, medical that the combination of his instinct to sniff out crap and a complete inability to let shit slide would suck him into a ton of trouble sooner or later. Yet she'd encouraged him to take the job. Not just because he'd be miserable under the kind of hotshot MBAs that ran hospitals these days, but because the work would take him out of ER now and then. She knew he needed the rush of extreme medicine, the exhilaration of "raising the dead," as some of them called it, but as magnificent as he'd become at it, that addictive allure sometimes frightened her. What of the day he couldn't do it anymore, once he flamed out like a lot of his colleagues? They'd been equally exhilarated by the job, but past triumphs didn't save them when they ultimately stayed on one year too many. That's why people in the business calling emergency "the pit" seemed so apt. It eventually consumed all who worked there.

She'd decided the best to be hoped for with Earl would be to slow the process down a bit, maybe buy time to wean him off what had become like oxygen to him. A new challenge with fresh demands seemed just the ticket. But the expanded responsibilities appeared to be engaging him quicker and more than she ever predicted. Between their lovely romantic interlude earlier in the day and Brendan coming home from school, she'd listened with unease as he explained why recent clusters of deaths in palliative care troubled him. Since his suspicions ranged from a nurse playing an angel of death to Stewart Deloram covering up stories of near-death experiences, and the five patients who might have shed some light on the matter were conveniently dead or in a coma, this problem meant exactly the sort of trouble that would eat at her husband. She'd lived with his doggedness long enough to know he wouldn't back off until he either proved or disproved his worst imaginings. She also knew to never attempt to divert him head-on. And most sobering of all, she'd learned to trust his damned uncanny instinct to read patterns where others saw only a maze of unrelated events. Because more often than not, whenever he sensed rot and dug after it, he found exactly that.

But he hadn't a clue of what he needed most now- a sidekick. Someone to carry out all that rooting around he felt so compelled to do himself, but who could fly below the radar of Hurst or Wyatt. Those two, if they guessed what he'd be stirring up, would make his life a living hell, and by extension, hers and Brendan's.

Earl in battle mode meant having Hamlet in the house, he became so preoccupied. Worse, if he had stumbled onto foul play, a backlash from an angel of death who felt threatened could be bloody dangerous.

Yes, she'd make a good sidekick, one with time to spare during her son's school hours and who also had her own authority to quietly snoop through nursing work schedules and death records. She would be just the perfect answer to keep him out of trouble. And if the focus of her inquiry should stray a little outside her usual realm of obstetrics, who the hell would know? Best of all, if by some slim chance she found he'd been on a wild-goose chase, they could all relax.

But first she'd have to convince her Lone Ranger to accept his new Tonto. Being brighter than most people around him, he had an infuriating yet deeply ingrained propensity to solve a problem, even in ER, by barging ahead on his own. Well, maybe she could make him want to barge after his wife for help.

She drained her mug and stared outside.

The fog had lifted slightly, thinning into tendrils that reached out of the darkness and curled through the light of the street lamps, tentatively exploring the muted glow with a cautious touch. Then a breeze caught the swirls, and they languidly drifted away, joining more of their kind to swim through the night like bad dreams.