critical judgment [067-011-5.0]

by: michael palmer

Synopsis:

Emergency room physician Abby Dolan has left a major San Francisco
hospital for the well-equipped but isolated regional hospital in
Patience, California, over which looms the huge manufacturing company
Colstar, for which her husband works.  She soon impresses colleagues,
nurses, patients, and families with her knowledge, skill, and caring
but increasingly worries the hospital administration because of her
searching questions about her patients' often unidentifiable
problems.
Eventually, secret government contracts for chemical warfare are
literally unearthed as the cause.  Ex-CIA operative Quinn, chief of
Colstar plant security, becomes Dolan's special nemesis, but
fortunately a grateful patient helps with his archery skills when a
dramatic chase pits Abby against Quinn on the wet cliff face below the
plant.  This yarn may not hearten patients told to have a full-body
MRI, but it will delight and intrigue all fans of medical thrillers.

ALSO BY MICHAEL PALMER From Bantam Books The Sisterhood Side Effects
Flashback Extreme Measures Natural Causes Silent Treatment

CRITICAL JUDGMENT
Michael Palmer .  , BANTAM BOOKS NEW YORK
TORONTO LONDON SYDNEY AUCKLAND
To My Sisters Donna Palmer Prince and
Susan Palmer Terry For always being there for me 0nfi CRITICAL JUDGMENT
A Bantam Book / July 1996

All rights reserved.

Copyright (C) 1996 by Michael Palmer Book design by Caroline Cunningham
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publisher.  For information address: Bantam
Books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Palmer, Michael,
1942Critical judgment: a novel / Michael Palmer.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-553-10074-2

1. Title.

PS3566.  A539C75 1996 s] 4 n 96-11154

CIP Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada Bantam
Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday
Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words
"Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U. S.

Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.  Marca
registration.

Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA And in loving memory of our
mother .  .

/ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In the process of getting a novel written, there is
no substitute for long hours alone and in doubt.  For helping me keep
the isolation and uncertainty in perspective, my deepest thanks go to
my agents, Jane Rotrosen Berkey, Stephanie Tade, and Don Cleary, my
editor, Beverly Lewis, associate editor Katie Hall, my publisher, Irwyn
Applebaum, my publicist, Stuart Applebaum, many friends of Bill W, and,
of course, my family.

In addition, I have imposed on a number of friends to help me as
critical readers or technical consultants.  Steve Shapiro and Ellen
Rosenthal, Dr. Steve Defossez, Dr. Donna Harkness, Kim Kelly, Dolly
Fenton, Bunny Webb, Kelly Corbet, Ethan, Daniel, Matt, and Dad have
each had an imprint on this book.

M. S. P.

It was just after noon when the
flickering lights began againþ countless slivers of rainbow bathing the
inside of his eyes.  Taken by themselves, the lights might have been
fascinating, even beautiful.  But as things were, they brought him only
terror.

Noon.  The last blast had been just six hours ago, waking him from a
pleasant dream and dropping him into the midst of a nightmare.  When
the attacks first began, they came once every few weeks.  . . . Then
every few days.  . . . And now.  . . . The intensity, too, seemed to be
increasing with each episode.  It was living hell.

His palms began to sweat as he thought of what the next hour or so held
in store.  First the flickering lights, next the queasiness and a
slight tic at the corners of his eyes.  For fifteen minutes, twenty,
even thirty, it would be like that.  Then, with volcanic suddenness,
his temples would seem to explode.  He would writhe on the bed and fall
to the floor, screaming.  He would clutch pillows over his ears,
futilely hoping to muffle the shellbursts inside his head.  Then he
would get violently ill, retching until it felt as if his stomach would
tear apart.  Sometimes he would even soil himself.

"Please, no, " he whispered.  "God, please, no more."  But he knew all
the pleading, all the prayers in the world would not touch the pain.

He was going mad.  And nothing would stop the insanity.

Nothing except the total and absolute destruction of the demons who had
started it allþthe vermin who had sent his life spinning out of
control.

Bricker.  . . Golden .  . . Gentry.  . . Forrester.

Only when justice was done, only when the four of them were dead, would
he find peace again.  Only when he had heeded God's mandate would the
flickering lights and the violent headaches end.

But right now there was little he could do except take the pain pills
and get ready.  He shook three Demerol tablets from a plastic vial and
washed them down with some bourbon.  His best hope was that they would
stay down long enough to do him some good.

The muscles beside his eyes began to tighten and twitch.  The lights
intensified.  Within his skull the crescendo began.

Desperately, he snatched up the phone and dialed a long-distance
number.

"Hello, " said the voice he knew so well.  "We are unable to take your
call right now, but it is important to us.  Please wait for the tone
and leave a message.  We'll get back to you as soon as possible.  "
"Please, " he whimpered, his voice a small boy's.  "Please help me.

Make the pain go away.  Please make me stop what I'm going to do.  "
Then he realized that the words had only been in his head.

He set the receiver down and sank back onto the bed, resigned.  No one
was ever going to help him but himself. Let this be the last time) he
begged as the inevitable began.  He tightened his hands on the
headboard of the motel bed.  Let it end today.

When consciousness returned, he was on the floor, his face pressed
against the threadbare carpet, his cheek soaked with saliva.  Pale
sunlight brightened what was at best a dingy, pathe ic little room.

But the motel was close to them, and that was what mattered.  He dried
his face on the polyester bedspread and struggled to his knees.

He pulled the olive rucksack œfrom beneath the bed and set it on the
mattress.  The two MAK-90 semiautomatic rifles were in mint condition,
but he ritually began polishing them nonetheless.

Bricker.  . . Golden .  . . Gentry.  . . Forrester.  . .

One by one the faces flashed through his mindþfaces of the people who
had once been his friends.  Faces he had once trusted.  Now he knew
they had been placed in his life to test him.  He cradled one of the
weapons in his lap and stared up, unblinking, at the ceiling light,
testing his will and his strength.  Two days before, he had bought the
machine guns, gone to a landfill, and fired them for the first time.

He hadn't held a gun since riflery class years ago in summer camp and
was surprised at how comfortable he feltþall-powerful.  But he had only
been shooting rats in a dump.  Next time would be for real.  Next time
the eyes glowing back at him would be eyes he knew well.  Was he
ready?

The last bit of pounding in his brain receded, then vanished.  Some of
the tension left his body.  How long did he have before the next
attack?

He replaced the weapons and slid the canvas bag back under the bed.

Then, totally drained, he allowed his eyes to close.  He had never even
struck a person in violence.  Now, to regain his sanity, to send the
demons back to hell, he was preparing to kill and kill again.

There had to be another way.

When he opened his eyes again, muted sunlight still filtered through
the fake lace curtains.  The clock radio on the bedside stand showed
just two o'clock.  The nap and the pills had blunted his rage some, but
he knew that soon it would be as sharp as ever.  He felt stifled,
smothered.

The room seemed postage-stamp small, the air stagnant and hard to
breathe.  He reached down for the rucksack, but before he touched it,
he grabbed his key and bolted from the room.  Even now, it seemed, he
wasn't completely committed.

He left the motel and hurried down the street to a familiar barþthe
Ghost Ranch Saloon.  Once upon a time they had all gathered there after
work.  He almost laughed at the thought of Steve Bricker, drinking like
a fish there and still beating all comers at darts.  Then, almost
immediately, the notion was preempted by another image of the man,
grinning obscenely at him from behind his massive desk as he brought
the hammer down on his life.

"I'm sorry.  There's nothing I can do.  . . . " Bullshit!

He recalled the horrible, legless feeling of standing there before the
man.  The memory did much to dispel his uncertainty.  He was going to
go through with it .  . . soon.

The Ghost Ranch was a windowless honky-tonk, lit almost exclusively
with black light.  It was decorated with Day-Glo cartoon ghosts of
cowboys and Indians, horses and steer.  From a dozen huge speakers some
country warbler was begging someone for a second chance.

He smiled grimly.  It was not the last time he would be hearing someone
beg for one more chance.  He ordered a bourbon, then another.  The
first one took care of his shakes.  The second one he nursed.  The
place was nearly empty, but at the far end of the bowling-alley bar a
cluster of hookers were plying their trade with three men in business
suits.  One of the women, the blond with Dolly Parton hair and
cleavage, kept glancing over at him.  Finally she decided he was worth
a try.  She took her time making it past the row of empty bar stools,
giving him a good look.  Then she introduced herself as Gloria.  He
nodded and made up a name on the spot.  He wanted her company but had
no intention of doing business with her.  He had been monogamous for
several years and had never done it with a pro even when he wasn't.

"Haven't I seen you in here before?  " Gloria asked.

He shook his head, even though the whore was right.  Bricker had done
it with her on any number of occasions and once went so far as to bring
her over and introduce her to the rest of them.  Goddamn Bricker.

"So whaddaya doing in town?  " He wanted small talk, not the third
degree.  Talk to me about the weather, for chrissakes.  Or the
Giants."

He realized that he was feeling irritable again and wondered if that
was a sign.  It had been only four hours or so since the last attack.

He cursed himself for rushing out and leaving the pain pills in his
room.

Pain pills, grimy motel rooms, hookers.  His life had once held such
promise.  How the hell had it been reduced to this?  He felt his jaws
begin to clench.  The uncontrollable anger was back and building.

Payback time was getting closer.

"So are you interested in a little fun?  " Gloria was saying.  "I can
give you a hell of a good deal."  He shook his head.

"Not today, " he growled.

He wondered briefly what she'd look like without makeup.  For all he
could tell, underneath it all she might not even have a face.

Pouting, she stood.  Then she began staring at him queerly.

"Hey, what's that in your eyes?  " she asked.  "Some weird kind of
contact lenses or something'?  " "What are you talking about?  " "Those
yellow rings around the colored part of your eyes.  Oooee, is that
weird."

"You're weird, do you know that?  Now, get the hell away fromþ" "Hey,
Cindi, come on over here and get a load of this."  The woman was turned
partly away œfrom him when he leaped up, grabbed her breasts, and dug
his fingers into them so tightly that she cried out in pain.  Then he
shoved her backward.  Her spiked heel snapped off and she fell heavily
to the sawdust-covered floor.  Before anyone could make a move in her
defense, he whirled and stormed out of the place.

Yellow rings.  He had examined his face in the bathroom mirror a dozen
times over the last day alone.  Granted, he looked like hell.  But if
there was anything wrong with his eyes, he'd damn well have seen it.

His fury growing with every step, he stalked across the busy road
without checking for cars.  Horns blasted at him, but he didn't
notice.

The sparkling lights had begun again.

He raced back to the motel.  There was still time, he was thinking.

Time to do what God had been telling him to do.  Time to end the pain
once and for all.  The shimmering diamonds of multicolored light
snapped against the inside of his eyes like hailstones.  He fumbled
with the lock, then threw the door open and snatched the rucksack out
from beneath the bed.

"Not this time, " he said out loud.

This time there would be no headaches.  There would be no begging God
to take him.  This time there would be only vengeance.  And then the
headaches would be gone forever.

CHAPTER ONE.

Three hundred joules, please.  . . . Keep pumping.  . . . " Abby Dolan
tightened her grip on the defibrillator paddles as she pressed them
against the front and left side of the man's massive chest.

He was in persistent cardiac arrest despite two electrical shocks and
medication.  His face and upper torso were mottled violet, reflecting
inadequate circulation despite the ongoing CPR.  Clearly, time was
their enemy.

"Ready, " said the nurse handling the defibrillator console.

"Okay everyone, clear!  " Abby pressed her thumb down on the square
plastic button set in the handle of the right-hand paddle.  Instantly,
there was a muffled pop and an audible, visible spark from two spots
where the paddles and skin did not make perfect contact.  The man's
bodyþ250 pounds at leastþstiffened and arched.  His arms snapped upward
like whips.  Then, just as rapidly, he was still.

"Pump, please, " Abby said, checking the monitor screen.

The paramedic, up on a stool for leverage, wiped the contact gel off
the man's chest with a towel, set the heel of his hand over the base of
the sternum, and resumed his rhythmic compressions.  For several
seconds there was a slashing up-and-down movement of the tracing on the
monitor.

But Abby knew from ten years of E.R work and countless code ninety-nines
that the pattern was artifact, not related to any effective electrical
activity of the heart.

She glanced up at the code clock started by the charge nurse at the
moment of the man's arrival in room three.  Nine minutes.  So far,
nothing.  Abby had been working in the Patience Regional Hospital for
over two weeks now, at once dreading and eagerly awaiting her first
code.  She had been busy, at times very busy, over those weeks.  But no
codes.  Now it was happening.  And "The Professor, " as she knew some
of the staff were facetiously calling her, was losing.

The patient, a married insurance salesman with a couple of kids and
some grandchildren, was only fifty-two.  He had collapsed while playing
golf on one of the public courses in the town.  When the paramedics
arrived, he still had enough of a heartbeat to generate a pulse and
measurable blood pressure.  Then, as the ambulance was backing up to
the hospital receiving platform, he arrested.  All Abby had learned was
that his name was Bill Tracy, that he took medicine for high blood
pressure, and that his daughter, who worked in the hospital's record
room, was on her way in with his wife.

Abby noted the low, irregular waves on the monitor.  Persistent coarse
ventricular fibrillationþthe sort of electrical disarray that should
have responded to a high voltage shock.  But it hadn't.  Something had
to be off with the man's chemistryþsomething that had either
contributed to the cardiac arrest or, more likely, was a result of
it.

But what?  Abby fought a mounting sense of panic.  At St. John's,
where she had been an assistant professor of emergency medicine, there
already would have been a cardiologist in the room to assist her.

Maybe two.  But that was a university-affiliated hospital in San
Francisco.  This was Patience, a landlocked mountain town with just two
cardiologists, neither of whom was in the hospital today.

She looked back at the paramedic who was doing the cardiac
compressions.  Too mechanical.  He was well trained, but he was using
the technique he had learned on the CPR mannequin, Resusi-Annie.  This
was a 250-pound bull of a man.  Abby pressed her fingertips into
Tracy's groin, searching for the femoral-artery pulse that the
paramedic should have been generating.  Nothing.

"Harder, Tom, " she said.  "Much harder.  You're not moving enough
blood."

"Butþ" "Please, I know you feel right with what you're doing, but
you've got to do it harder.  A little faster, too.  That's better.

That's it.  Good.

That's it."  The man, like every paramedic Abby had ever known, took a
great deal of pride in his work and his technique.  Correcting him in
front of the staff was hardly going to increase her popularity, but
neither would losing this patient.  The CPR, as he had been performing
it, wasn't helping.  She directed one of the nurses to keep her fingers
on the femoral pulse and to call out if it began to disappear.

In addition to Abby, there were three nurses, a respiratory therapist,
and the paramedic in the room.  At St. John's there would often be
that many physicians at a cardiac arrest.  If the patient didn't make
it, at least they all knew that everything that needed to be thought of
had been.  She wondered if anyone in the room knew how frightened she
was about how this code was goingþhow concerned she was about missing
something.  Under the best of circumstances she was a
worrierþmeticulous in her approach to medicine and to life, always
considering the potential downside of any move before making it.  It
was her best and worst quality, depending on whom you asked.  But here,
with no available backup, no one to bounce things off, and not much
time left, she was very much on her own.  In seconds she subconsciously
but systematically flipped through dozens of possible sources of the
trouble she was having.

"Are those labs back?  " "Three or four minutes, they say."  Abby knew
that three or four minutes often meant five or ten.  Bill Tracy didn't
have that kind of time.  She looked down at the dark, stretch-scar-like
markings over his lower abdomen, and the fullness of his face.  Then
she reached under his shoulder and placed her hand palm up at the base
of his neck.  There was a prominence there, a definite fullness.  Over
her decade as a physician, she had seen only five or six cases of
Cushing's syndrome, but this man certainly seemed like a candidate.

The syndrome was caused by a small, benign brain tumor that chemically
told the body to produce an excess amount of the hormone cortisol.  The
tumor itself wasn't usually fatal, but the high sodium, low potassium,
and other derangements caused by the cortisol often were.

Among the physical signs of the syndrome were obesity, a moon face,
purple stretch scars along the abdomen, and a prominent so-called
buffalo hump between the shoulders.  Bill Tracy had all of those.  Of
course, many thousands of markedly overweight people without Cushing's
had all those findings, too.

PRH had better-than-decent medical-specialist coverage, especially for
a one-hundred-bed facility in a service area of twenty thousand.  But
there was no endocrinologist.  And at the moment there was no
cardiologist either.

She rapidly processed the possibilities.  Without lab results,
especially a potassium level, she was running blindfolded.  If Tracy
had low potassium from Cushing's, none of their resuscitative efforts
would work until the abnormality was corrected.  If he didn't have
Cushing's, if his potassium was normal and she gave him more of the
electrolyte intravenously, he would be as good as dead.

"Get ready for another shock, " Abby said, struggling to keep panic out
of her voice.  "Three hundred joules again.  Tom, keep pumping,
please.

As hard as you can."  She hesitated.  Giving IV potassium without a
serum-potassium level was about the most un-Abby Dolan thing she could
imagine.

Just go ahead and shock him, the voice in her head insisted.  Do it!

"Mary, I want him to get some potassium right now, " she suddenly heard
herself saying.  "Ten milliequivalents IV."

"But I've neverþ" "Please, " Abby ordered sharply.  "I don't have time
to debate this."  The nurse's cheeks flushed.  She quickly filled a
syringe.  For a moment Abby thought the woman was going to tell her to
inject it herself.  But no.

"Your potassium's in, Doctor, " she said coolly.

"Thank you."  First the paramedic, now the nurse.  How many more people
would she offend before this code was over?  She checked the clock.

Almost twelve minutes, plus a few minutes to get Tracy in from the
ambulance.  Too long for him still to be in ventricular fibrillation.

She took the defibrillator paddles, accepted some contact gel from the
nurse, and rubbed the two circular steel heads together to spread it
out.  A negative outcome and controversyþthe last results she would
have wanted from her first code in Patience.  But, then, she would
never have been in Patience in the first place if Josh hadn'tþ "Okay,
stop pumping, please.  Every one clear!  " Forty-five seconds since the
potassium.  Now fifty.  There was no more time.  Abby hit the button.

Again the muted pop, the single spasmodic contraction of every muscle
in Bill Tracy's body, the faint odor of searing skin.

And, again, the tracing showed only artifact.

"Resume pumping, " Abby said, no longer trying to mask her dejection.

"No.  No, wait."  The artifact had largely cleared.  There was a rhythm
on the monitorþslow, but regular.  Abby felt her own heart skip some
beats.

"Check for a pulse, please."

"Go, baby, " someone murmured.  "Go .  .

. " "I've got a pulse, " the nurse called out as she pressed down over
the femoral artery.  Purposely looking away from the monitor screen to
remain as objective as possible, she reported what she was feeling in
her fingertips.  "Now now now .  . . now .  . . now .  . . now."  .

. now .  . .

The pulse she was chanting correlated perfectly with the monitor
pattern.  The heartbeats were speeding up, the electrocardiogram
complexes were becoming narrower, healthier.

"I've got a blood pressure at eighty, Abby, " a second nurse
announced.

"Eighty-five.  Hey, nice going."  A successful code was everyone's
victory.  But more often than not, Abby knew, the failures were left to
the doc.

Bill Tracy's horrible, violet mottling rapidly and markedly improved.

Tissue throughout his body was getting blood for the first time in
fifteen minutes.  No CPR, however well performed, could ever measure up
to the real thing, Abby was thinking.  Now all that mattered was
getting him stabilized and praying that his brain had not been part of
the tissue too deprived of circulation during that fifteen minutes.

A pretty woman in her early twenties rushed in.  She was wearing faded
jeans and a designer T-shirt.  Her face was gray with concern.

"Dr.  Dolan, I'm Donna Tracy, " she said breathlessly.  "I work l?

arttime in the record room downstairs.  That's my dad."  Abby checked
the monitor.  The encouraging pattern was holding, although Bill Tracy
was still unconscious.  She lifted his eyelids.  Midsize pupils, no
wandering eye movementsþboth good signs.

"Can't tell, " she said.  "But things are going in the right
direction.

" At that moment the lab tech arrived, as breathless as Donna Tracy.

"His potassium's only one point eight, " he announced.  "Checked and
rechecked.  One point eight."  For the first time since the
rescue-squad call had-come in from the golf course, Abby Dolan
smiled.

"Not anymore, " she said.

Donna Tracy and her mother were at the bedside and Bill Tracy was
beginning to regain consciousness when his private physician arrived.

Tracy was still on a ventilator, but he was starting to buck against
the tube.  Before too long the decision would have to be made whether
to sedate him or to take it out.  Abby favored continued mechanical
ventilation, but with the primary doc on hand, the decision was no
longer hers.

The physician was a tall, angular, somewhat nervous-looking man in his
fifties named Gordon Clarke.  Abby had cared for a number of his
patients.  His manner was earnest enough, and he was certainly popular
with his flock.  But his diagnostic and therapeutic skills were badly
in need of updating.  If he had been on the staff at St. John's,
assuming he could have ever gotten admitting privileges there in the
first place, he would have been assigned a monitor from the faculty to
oversee his admissions and help him improve clinically.  And, of
course, he would have been exposed to weekly medical grand rounds and
other academic presentations.  But this was the boondocks, not
academia.  And although Patience Regional Hospital was incredibly
modern and well equipped, modernizing a physician was often far more
difficult than updating a building.

Abby could see the relief in Clarke's eyes as he looked down at his
patient.

"The nurse who called my office made it sound as if he didn't have
much of a chance."

"He's still in some trouble, " Abby responded, "but certainly less than
he was."

"I'm very grateful."

"So are we, " Donna chimed in.

"What kind of coronary was it, anterior?  " Abby glanced down at the
EKG she had just had taken and then passed it over.  It showed some
evidence of cardiac strain, but no actual heart attack.  Clarke studied
it.  He looked confused.

"I don't see any damage, " he said.

"His potassium was one point eight."

"Are you sure?  " "Checked and rechecked.  His chloride was down as
well, and his sodium was elevated.

His serum pH was highþseven point six."  Abby hoped that when she
recited the numbers, Clarke would come up with a list of diagnostic
possibilities, including Cushing's and overmedication with diuretics.

Now, she realized, she should have waited for a less public situation
before bringing the whole business up.  He was quite obviously
clueless.

The silence in the room was painful.

Clarke cleared his throat and stared down at the office record he had
brought in.  A slight tic had appeared at the corner of his mouth.

"I .  . . um .  . . I've gotten electrolytes on him twice in the last
eight months, " he said finally.  "It appears his potassium was
somewhat low on both occasions.  I .  . . guess I just didn't think
much of it."  Abby was not surprised.  Her inner voice was warning her
to let the matter drop, to curb her redheaded-Irish temper and take
this up at another time.  But she had never been tolerant of
incompetent physicians.

Making mistakes was one thing.  Every physician made them at one time
or another.  But ignoring abnormal laboratory results because they
weren't that abnormal was quite another.  Bill Tracy's death would have
been her failure.  And the two women standing beside him would have
suffered a horrible loss.  Horrible and quite probably unnecessary.

Once again the small voice went unheeded.

"He has a moonish face, high blood pressure, those purplish streaks on
his belly, and a pretty prominent buffalo hump."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're driving at, " Clarke said, his
cheeks as red as the nurse's had been.

"Dr. Clarke, I'm sorry.  Maybe we should talk about this later.  They
should be here to take Mr. Tracy up to the unit any moment.  "
Dermatology was never her strongest suit, but at St. John's it didn't
have to be.  There was a derm clinic available during business hours,
and derm coverage twenty-four hours a day for anything beyond the
mundane.

The welts looked to her more like vasculitis, an inflammation of the
small blood vessels in the skin, than like hives.  But, in truth, they
really didn't look precisely like either.  At their private doctors'
request Abby put both patients on oral cortisone and antihistamines,
probably the best initial treatment for any inflammatory or allergic
condition.

After Bill Tracy had been taken to the coronary unit, Abby had some
fences to mend.  She began with an apology to Tom Webb, the young
paramedic.  The tension of the moment had caused her to be more brusque
than she had intended, she explained.  He was damn good at what he did,
and his skill in the other emergencies they had shared matched the best
she had known in the city.  The young man claimed he understood, but
his expression made it clear he was still smarting.

Soon after, Abby sought out the nurse she had snapped at, Mary Wilder,
and made amends to her for not explaining the rationale for IV
potassium before ordering her to administer it.  Wilder, ten years or
so older than Abby, had been at PRH since well before the place was
rebuilt a decade ago.  The nurse was genuinely embarrassed by her
hesitation in following Abby's emergency orders and told Abby how much
it meant to her and the other nurses to have a doctor of her caliber
working in Patience.  The two women shook hands warmly, and Abby
returned to her patients with the sense that she had made her first
genuine ally in the E.R.

Gordon Clarke was the lone remaining ego casualty of the code
ninety-nine.  But righting things with him could wait until after her
shift was over, and after her meeting with the chief of medicine.

George Oleander had an office in the Medical Arts Building, connected
to the hospital by a covered passageway over the main driveway.  The
hospital itself, a three-story jewel of plate glass, brick, and cedar,
was set in a meadow at the easternmost tip of the valley, right at the
base of the foothills.  Whether the mountains beyond those rugged hills
were the southern Cascades or the northern Sierras seemed to depend on
whom you asked.  To the west of the hospital sprawled Patience, a boom
town during the gold rush, a mining town for many years after
that, and then, from what Abby had been
told, nearly a ghost town.

Hikers and other outdoors lovers had always used the place as a
jumping-off point and might have kept Patience alive.  But it was the
arrival of Colstar International, twenty-five years before, that had
really turned things around.

As she passed through the glass-enclosed walkway to the Medical Arts
Building, Abby gazed at the huge gray concrete factory, set atop a
plateau a quarter of a mile from the hospital and several hundred feet
up.  The largest producer of portable power sources in the world, the
Colstar brochures proclaimed, they made lithium batteries, lead acid
batteries, alkaline batteries, solar batteries, rechargeables.  Having
been inside the factory once to see Josh's department and office, Abby
saw no reason to dispute the claim.

The Medical Arts Building, clearly designed by the same architects
responsible for the hospital, featured two dozen office suites with
balconies facing the mountains or the town.  George Oleander's
secondfloor office overlooked the flowering meadow, dotted with trees,
that stretched out to the base of the Colstar cliff.  It was a
beautiful, pastoral view as long as one didn't look up.  In addition to
the usual array of diplomas, postgraduate certificates, and
estimonials, there were pictures of Oleander with two governors of
California, and another with longtime California Senator Mark Corman, a
possible Republican nominee for President.

The medical chief greeted her warmly.  He was fifty or so, with graying
temples and the soft, broad-shouldered physique of an out-ofshape
athlete.  The redness in his cheeks and nose suggested to Abby that he
might be a drinker.  He motioned her to the chair across his desk,
where she had sat for two interviews before being hired.

"So, " he said, "that was quite a performance."

"I hope you're talking about the code."

"Of course I am.  Abby, there's absolutely no need to be defensive.

You've been a wonderful addition to this hospital."

"Thank you."  No comment seemed necessary.  Abby knew she hadn't been
summoned to be told what a bang-up job she was doing.

"The nurses have been very pleased with the last three E.R choices we've
madeþLew Alvarez, you, and, of course, poor Dave Brooks.  , This time
Abby nodded her appreciation, not bothering to comment on the
obviousþthat if Dave Brooks hadn't died in a rockclimbing accident, her
own appointment would not have been necessary.  The other four E.R docs
were husband-and-wife Chris and Jill Anderson, Ted Bogarsky, who
commuted in from someplace twenty or thirty miles to the west, and Len
McCabe, an aging GP.  During her orientation week Abby had been
assigned to double-cover with each of them and with Alvarez.  None of
the five was a liability in the E.R, although skittish, insecure Jill
Anderson was close.  But only Lew Alvarez showed a genuine flair for
the work.

"The medical staff likes you, too, " Oleander continued.

"I have my doubts about that."

"They do.  I can tell.  It's just that .  . . Abby, we're small town
here.

Until we know someone, and know them well, the way they say things is
as important as what they have to say.  You're big cityþand big city
university hospital to boot.  That makes you threatening to some people
right from the get-go.  One person told me that you seem tense and
short with people.  He said that a lot of the medical staff were .  .

I don't know .  . . intimidated by you.  I didn't really understand why
anyone would feel that way until this morning."

"Dr.  Clarke."

"Gordon's an extremely nice man, and devoted to his patients.  He's
been here for over twenty years, almost as long as I have."

"And I made him feel like a jerk."

"I don't think there're many physicians who would have plucked
Cushing's syndrome out of the air the way you did."  Abby stopped
herself from pointing out that Clarke really should have paid attention
to the two low potassium levels he'd gotten on Bill Tracy in his
office.  Oleander was right.  She hadn't been relaxed about her job
since the day she had accepted it.  For the umpteenth time since then
she wondered if she had made a mistake.  As far as she knew, no one at
St. John's, not even the good old boys who always had trouble
accepting women docs in positions of authority, had ever felt anything
but pleased at having her around.  Now, just by being herself, she was
a threat.

She tried reminding herself that being with Josh, planning their life
together, was worth the decision she had made.  But even that thought
didn't fit as comfortably as it once had.

"The Cushing's was a lucky shot, " she said.  "Assuming it's even
confirmed by the lab.  A flat-out lucky guess.  George, you're right.

I have been too tense here."

"About what?  " "I don't know.  Maybe just the newness of
everything."

'% understand.  Are things okay at home?  " "What do you mean?  " "You
told me in our first interview that you wanted to move here because
your fiance had relocated to work for Colstar."  Actually, he's not
technically my fiance.  We haven't really set a date.

She could have said it but didn't.  And yes, the tension has everything
to do with how things are at home.

"Things are fine with Josh, " she said.  "Thanks for asking.  It's
me.

You know, you may not believe this, but I've been scared stiff about
coming here since the moment you called to tell me I had the job."

"I understand.  Patience is a far cry from Union Street and Golden Gate
Park."

"Believe it or not, it wasn't the town.  It was the hospital.

I went from med school to training to a staff E.R position at St.
John's.  Except for a little moonlighting I've always had the
protective cocoon of knowing specialty help was never more than a few
floors away.  I have this overwhelming admiration for docs in remote
ERs who have to do the whole thing themselves.  Everything.  The
pediatric trauma and the adult codes.  The stabilizing orthopedics and
resDiratorv failure.  Even the emergency neurosurgery."  w s "We're not
that remote, Abby.  We have a helipad.  San Francisco's just an hour or
so from here by chopper."

"Weather permitting.  Don't misunderstand me, George.  I love the
feeling that no matter what happens, no matter what's thrown at me,
I'll know what to do about it.

It's just that for the last ten years I've always been able to call for
help."

"We've got a hell of a staff for a hospital this size."

"I know.  Hey, I don't mean to sound like a wimp.  And I understand
that the most any of us can ever do is our best.  But I still don't
like making errors."

"None of us does."

"For the four weeks between hearing from you that I got this job and
actually starting it, I spent almost every free moment studying."

"Judging from your resume and letters of recommendation, I would never
have guessed that."

"Well, it's true.  And I think if I've seemed tense to people, that's
the reason.  A community hospital is uncharted waters for me.  I don't
want to make a mistake.  Reputations in hospitals, especially negative
ones, are created very quickly and recast very slowly."

"That's precisely why I called you in today.  I want your reputation
here to reflect the fine physician you are.  Nothing else."  Abby's
page summoned her to the E.R at almost the instant Oleander's
receptionist knocked and peered in around the door.

"That was the E.R, Dr. Dolan, " she said.  "Just three patients
waiting.

Nothing critical."

"Thank you."

"I'm sorry I missed you when you arrived.  I was over at the lab.  I
wanted to thank you for doing such a good job on my nephew Brendan's
cut chin.  He's only five.  I'm sure you don't remember him, butþ" "As
a matter of fact, I remember him very well.  We redheads pay attention
to one another."

"My sister said you kept whispering to him while you were getting ready
to sew him up."  Abby smiled.  "I was just reminding him that he was in
charge, and that I would stop anytime he told me to.  When I was a kid,
I used to hate the feeling of losing control of any situation,
especially one in the hospital or dentist's office.  In fact, I still
feel that way.  I always try to make sure kids know they still have
power."

"Well, my sister said you were just great with him.  Do you have
children?  " "No .  . . no, my fiance and I hope to have some before
too much longer, though."

"Well, I hope you do."  The woman smiled, pulled her head back, and
closed the door.

"I rest my case, " Oleander said.  "Every one in Patience is connected
in some way or other with everyone else.  And no one is more important
than the doctors.  You've already made a great impression on the
town.

You just have to practice being a little gentler on the staff.  "
"Consider it done."

"Thank you."  Abby stood and shook Oleander's hand.

"I'm curious, " she said.  "Which doctor was it who said I seemed tense
and short with people?  " --Oleander debated responding.

"To tell you the truth, " he said finally, "I think Dr. Alvarez said
something to me in passing.  Given that it was him, I probably
shouldn't have even bothered mentioning it.  Alvarez is an excellent
physician, but if you'll excuse me for saying so, he's not much of a
team player.  He seems to have an opinion about pretty nearly
everything and everybody.

And he isn't the least bit shy about spreading it around.  Sort of like
fertilizer."  Oleander enjoyed a laugh at his own humor.  Abby smiled
politely.

Lew Alvarez.  She supposed she should have known.  Alvarez was clearly
the top dog in the E.R-at least until her arrival on the scene.  But he
was almost too self-assured.  That and his irrefutable good looks had
been something of a turnoff to her.  It was hard to imagine his
perceiving her as a threat, but she knew that was the sort of thing one
never could tell about a person.

"Thank you for telling me, " she said.  "I'll see what I can do about
changing his opinion of me."

"Suit yourself.  Personally, though, I don't think Lew Alvarez's
opinions matter all that much."  Abby wondered why the medical chief
was so skeptical of Lew Alvarez despite the nurses' high regard for
him.  But this wasn't the time to get into it.  She thanked him for his
candor and left the office.

Heading back to the emergency room, she admitted to herself, perhaps
for the first time, that of all those on the medical or E.R staff, it
was Alvarez she had most wanted to impress.

So far it appeared she hadn't done a very good job of it.

CHAPTER THREE.

Before returning to the E.R Abby stopped by the ICU.  Bill Tracy was
extubated and propped up at a forty-five-degree angle, taking sips of
water through a straw.  His wife hovered over him from one side of the
bed, his daughter, Donna, from the other.  All things considered, Abby
thought, he was looking damn good.

She stayed by the nurses' station long enough to take in the scene,
then left without going into the room.  Mindful of the situation with
Gordon Clarke, she was purposely shying away from contact with Tracy
and his family.  Besides, she realized how easily things could have
gone the other way.  This was a time for reflection and gratitude, not
celebrationþand certainly not smugness.

It was almost five-thirty when she reentered the E.R.  Two and a half
hours until her relief showed up.  Ironically, it would be Lew
Alvarez.

She'd have a chance to practice her new, nonthreatening manner.

There were now four patients to be seenþone in the waiting room, one in
X ray, and two on stretchers.  None of them seemed too complicated at
first glance, but she could recall dozens of examples, secondhand and
personal, of the folly of relying on your first glance.  She rubbed at
the gritty fatigue in her eyes and wished she was home.  She wanted to
call and check in with Josh, but it was doubtful he would be back from
work yet.  The E.R was just a patient or two from becoming backed up,
and the nurses had already begun ordering tests on the two who had been
there longest.  Abby decided to make sure things were going in the
right direction before she called home.

The evening charge nurse, Bud Perlow, met her at the chart rack.  He
was an imposing six foot four, but Abby had seen him use his puttylike
face to put kids at ease.  At five eight she had to step back several
paces to make eye contact with him comfortably.  She encouraged all the
nurses to call her by her first name, but Perlow was one of the few who
insisted on Doctor.

"Dr.  Dolan, rescue is on its way in with Old Man Ives, " he said.

"He's been beaten up.  Primarily facial lacerations."

"I don't know any Old Man Ives."

"Oh, sorry.  I forgot you're new.  Just about everyone in Patience
knows him.  He's a hermit.  Very weirdþretarded, I've heard.  Lives in
the woods.

Someone told me he actually lives in a cave.  He comes into town every
few weeks to sell his carvings and pick up supplies.  Usually people
leave him alone, but apparently this time someone didn't."  Abby took
two charts from the rack.

"I'd better get a move on, then."

"It may not be a problem, " Perlow said.  "Dr. Bartholomew's on backup
for surgery, and he's in-house.  I just saw him."

"Great."  The word came out more sarcastic than she had intended.

Martin Bartholomew, one of four general surgeons on the staff, insisted
on suturing every laceration that came in while he was on backup.

Although Abby had yet to have a run-in with him, she had been warned by
the other E.R docs that it was only a matter of time.

Bartholomew had an ego as bloated as his waistline, and unique
requirements for even the most mundane procedures.  It was sport for
him to chastise a nurse in front of one of his carriage-trade patients
for forgetting his special clamps or for opening a 6-0 instead of a 7-0
packet of suture.

"Shall I call him now?  " "Better let me at least check over Mr. Ives
first."  _z.  .

Through the waiting room Abby could see another patient enter, this one
a middle-aged woman, pale but ambulatory, supported by her husband.

Probably a GI bug, she guessed.  It was definitely time to get m
gear.

The patient in X ray had a straightforward, nondisplaced wrist
fracture.  Plaster splint, a few Tylenol number threes, and an
orthopedic referral.  But the two patients on stretchers were both
enigmas.  Neither was a true emergency, but their insurance probably
didn't charge them a penalty for using the E.R instead of contacting
their primary doctor.  One complained of fatigue and a low-grade cough,
the other, a flamboyant fifty-year-old redhead, of chronic severe
itching with no noticeable skin rash.  Physical exams on both were
negative, as was the chest X ray Perlow had obtained on the cougher.

Abby ordered some additional laboratory studies but suspected that
they, too, would be unrevealing.

Two more in what was beginning to feel like a series of ill-defined or
unusual conditions.

Was it her imagination, or had she been starting more and more of her
discussions with patients by saying something like, "At this point I
don't really know what's wrong with you, but .  . . "?  The challenge
with cases like these, maybe the most difficult in E.R medicine, was to
be certain that no one was discharged feeling that his symptoms were
being taken lightly.  Patients like that were lawsuits waiting to
happen.  Abby was constantly reminding herself that although a
particular problem might not have been the worst thing she had seen
that day, it was certainly the worst thing the patient had had.

While the two remaining patients from the waiting room were being
evaluated by the nurses, Abby closed herself in the small doctor's
office and called home, expecting to get the answering machine.

"Hello?  " Not only was Josh home, but it sounded as if she'd awakened
him.  Lately it had been more and more like that.  For the two years
they had dated, before he'd moved to Patience, sleep had been something
of an enemy to Josh.  Even during his months of unemployment he had
stayed upbeat and energetic.  Maybe those ten months had taken more of
a toll than she'd realized, though.  Or perhaps the expectations and
pressures of his job at Colstar had been more than he had bargained
for.

Over the five weeks they had been together in Patience, and even before
she had moved up to join him, Josh had been irritable, distracted,
easily fatigued, and bothered by headaches.  A checkup with lab tests
at the Colstar employees' clinic, done at Abby's insistence, had turned
up nothing.  But the disturbing changes in him had persisted.

Recently, she had begun to wonder if she had wanted so badly for their
relationship to work that she had never allowed herself to see Josh's
darker side.

"Hi, honey, " she said.  "Are you okay?  " "What's that supposed to
mean?  " "Nothing.  You just sounded tired."

"I'm sorry.  I was on the couch.  I .  .

. I guess I must have fallen .  , , asleep.

On the couch .  . . fallen asleep .  . . The Josh Wyler she had fallen
in love with probably hadn't taken a nap since he was two months old.

"Well, you left for work at five-thirty this morning, " she said.

"Maybe you should start a little later."

"Do you want to do my job, too?  Is that it?  " Abby refused to allow
him to push any of her buttons, although lately he'd become something
of a virtuoso at it.

She wanted to ask him about the headaches he'd been having.  But that
might well have pushed one of his buttons, and she simply had no time
or desire for a battle.

"I'll be home by eight-thirty, " she said instead.  "How about I bring
home some Chinese food and rent a movie?  " "Sure.  That'd be great.  "
There was no enthusiasm in his voice.  The problem had to be his job.

For the first few months after he'd started as director of new product
development at Colstar, the job had been the best thing that had ever
happened to him.  Then, suddenly, there were constant deadlinesþnew
products that always seemed to be at a make-or-break stage.  He had
never been particularly vulnerable to pressure at work.  Now he seemed
overwhelmed, disorganized.

Meanwhile Abby's decision to apply for the sudden opening in the E.R at
Patience Regional Hospital seemed only to have added to Josh's
stress.

Since her move up to Patience, there had been almost constant tension
between them.  Perhaps he had never expected her actually to give up
the job she loved out of deference to their relationship.  Maybe, over
the months they'd been apart, he had simply discovered he liked being
on his own.  Or maybe, she sometimes allowed herself to think, he had
met someone else.

The doors to the ambulance bay glided open, and the rescue squad
wheeled in a stretcher.  The man on it had his face swathe with
bloodsoaked gauze.  Protruding from beneath the gauzet over the
cervical collar, was a full, gnarled gray-black beard, matted with
drying blood.

Old Man Ives.

"Look, Josh, I gotta go, " she said.  "I'll tell you what.  Count on me
to provide dinner and X-rated entertainment.  If you want to watch the
movie afterward, we can do that, too."

"I'll be here."  Abby started to tell him that she loved him.  Instead
what came out was, "Great, see you later."  She set the receiver down
and headed out to evaluate her new patient, thinking that she shouldn't
have called home.  The last thing an E.R physician needed at work was to
be distracted.  The job was hard enough, the traps were everywhere.

From now until her shift ended she would have to be especially
vigilant.

The PRH emergency room had a row of five treatment bays separated by
curtains, and five individually numbered rooms, reserved for minor
surgery and orthopedics, special procedures, major medical, pediatrics,
and codes.  Abby felt some relief at seeing Bud Perlow direct the
rescue squad to wheel Mr. Ives into room one, where most of the
routine suturing was done.  She just wasn't up for anything major.

She paused to check on some of the lab results on the two enigmas.  To
no surprise, they were all normal.

"Ouch!  Hey, easy.  You just took half my hair off on that tape!  "
Perlow met Abby beside the door to room one.  From behind him she could
hear their new patient jawing at the rescue squad.

"Some hikers found him facedown on a trail.  Apparently two men
followed him out of town, started yelling at him to stay away from
Patience, and then beat him unconscious with their fists."

"I guess different isn't one of the best things to be around here."

"Pardon?

" "Oh, nothing.  How does he look?  " "He's awake and alert, in case
you couldn't tell.  Deep lacs on both cheeks, through one brow, and
across his chin."

"Alcohol?  " "I couldn't smell any.  But, then, Ives is a few months
short of a shower."

"I understand."  Abby liked that she heard nothing judgmental in the
nurse's voice.  It was human for any physician or nurse to be offended
by a person's smell, or obesity, or age, or even illness.  Every one
had an upbringing and a history to deal with.  Every one had
sensibilities.  But it was not acceptable to her when medical personnel
withheld a full measure of care because of their prejudices.

She took the chart from Bud Perlow and was reading it as she entered
the room.  Old Man Ives was Samuel Ives.  His address was given simply
as North Hills, Patience.  His age was fifty-one.  She wondered if, in
just sixteen years, the people of Patience would be calling her Old
Lady Dolan.

She put on a paper gown and rubber gloves and began her assessment
before even reaching the bedside.  The man's face had taken a pounding,
but it was not as fearsome as she had imagined.

"Mr. Ives, I'm Dr. Dolan.  How're you doing?  " "They stole my
money.

" Abby glanced over at the paramedic, who shook his head.

"Mr. Ives, " he said, with the overemphatic voice that most healthcare
workers seemed to use toward most patients, "I've got your wallet right
here."  He slipped a plastic bag under Ives's hand.  "There's
twenty-one dollars in it.  Your book and what's left of your carvings
are in the bag beneath your stretcher.  They must have taken your
groceries.  We didn't see them anyplace."  He turned to Abby.  "The
police came up to the trail with us.  They think they know who did
this, but Ives doesn't want to get involved.  Whoever it was stomped on
his carvings.  There's not much left of them."

"Are you hurting anyplace except your face, sir?  " Abby asked.

Ives shook his head.

Abby briefly checked his ribs, heart, and abdomen.  There was no
tenderness.

"Any problem with your vision?  " "Nope."

"Are you seeing double?

Two of anything?  " "I know what double means.  No."

"Mr.  Ives, I think we should get some X rays of your face and neck."

"No.  They're fine.  I've had broken bones.  I know what they feel
like.

I don't have any broken bones and I don't want any radiation.  "
Radiation.  Not the word she would have expected from this man.  She
peered down at him, trying to look beyond the oil-stained clothes and
the gashes and the beard, trying to see through her own prejudices.

Samuel Ives's light-blue eyes were bright and piercing.  So what's your
story?  she wondered.

She checked his eyes and cheekbones to be sure there were no gross
signs of a fracture.  Then she loosened his cervical collar and felt
along his spine.  No tenderness there, either.

"Okay, " she said, "no X rays.  I'll be back to examine you more
thoroughly, then we'll get your face fixed."  Ives looked directly at
her for the first time, as if surprised at the ease with which she had
given in.

"Thanks, Doc, " he said.

"Dr. Dolan, " Bud Perlow called out from the doorway.  "Could I see
you please?  " "Hang in there, Mr.  Ives, " she said.

"Dr. Dolan, a woman just brought in her six-year-old girl with a
nosebleed.  It's a gusher.  I put them in three rather than the pedi
room because the table and the light are better."

"Perfect."

"What do you want to do about him?  " Abby glanced at the three other
patients she had yet to finish.  Samuel Ives's face was going to
require several dozen carefully placed sutures.

A good hour's work.

"Call Dr. Bartholomew and ask him to see Mr. Ives, " she said.  "Is
the ENT tray in with the child?  " "On the counter."  The girl's
nosebleed, like most such episodes, wasn't as bad as it looked.  The
few that were as bad as they looked were absolute nightmares, as often
as not ending up in intensive care, or the operating room, or both.

But though the bleeding point in this child was higher than Abby would
have liked, it was reachable.  She was in the process of cauterizing it
with a touch of silver nitrate when a shouting match began in room
one.

"You know, you shouldn't be marching into town looking like you do, "
Martin Bartholomew was saying.  "You scare the kids half to death.  "
"You probably scare quite a few of them, yourself, " Ives countered.

"People like you feel society owes them, " the surgeon ranted on.

"Feed me, clothe me, educate my children, take care of me when I'm ... .

SICk.

"I don't have any children to educate."

"And you don't have any insurance, either.  Do you think I'm going to
get paid for sewing up these cuts of yours?  Twenty years of school and
training, my family's home waiting dinner, and I'm here suturing this.
. . this person who hasn't taken a bath in months."

"Years, " Ives said.  "Listen, why don't you just stop and go home?

That's what I'm going to do."

"Hey, lie still!  Dammit, lie still before I stick myself!  " "I'm
getting out of here."  Abby apologized to the girl and her mother, set
the silver nitrate stick aside, and hurried to the door.

"Bud, would you please get them to stop this right away?  Call security
if you have to."  She turned back to the child.

"These stitches need to come out in a week, " Bartholomew bellowed.

"Come to the E.R to have it done.  I'm finished with you."  Abby heard
him storm out of the room.  He had been with Ives for only twenty
minutes, yet he was done.  She turned as he reached the doorway of room
three.  His puffed face was crimson, his eyes froglike.

"I'll be home or on my beeper, " he said icily.  "Thank you for the
referral."  He stalked off without waiting for a reply.  Abby was
reasonably sure, however, that he wouldn't be called on the carpet in
George Oleander's office for his brusqueness to a colleague.

She put the finishing touches on a Vaseline pack in the six-year-old's
nose, went over the nosebleed instruction sheet with the mother, and
discharged them to the waiting room for a precautionary half hour.

Then she went into room one.  Samuel Ives was off the litter, his back
to her.

He was gathering his things.

"Mr.  Ives?  " she said softly.

He turned, and instantly Abby felt her temper reach boiling point.

The sutures, probably 3-0 thickness rather than the much finer 6-0 or
even 7-0 used for faces, were carelessly placed and tied in such a way
that Ives's skin was bunched.  Why hadn't the nurses let her know what
was going on?

She took a deep, calming breath.  Not only had Martin Bartholomew done
a sophomoric job of suturing, but it appeared that no one had bothered
undressing Ives to examine him for signs of less apparent injury.

Until we know someone, the way they say things is as important as what
they have to say.  . . . Practice being a little gentler on the staff,
. .

The world according to George Oleander.  Abby forced herself to focus
on the many kind, compassionate, intelligent, and professional things
she had seen the nursing staff do over the weeks she had worked with
them.

It was really Bartholomew's fault.  He had set the tone in room one.

He had invited the staff to bring in their distaste for people like
Samuel Ives.  She closed the door behind her.

"Mr. Ives, could you please lie back down?  " she said.  "I want to
examine you a little bit more, and then I want to suture your face over
again."  For the second time Ives allowed his gaze to meet hers.

"No X rays, " he said.

She peeked out at the treatment bays.  Another patient was being
brought in.  She closed the door again, got Lew Alvarez's number from
her clinic book, and called him.  If he was free, could he possibly come
in an hour early?  She was already behind and was facing a complex
suturing job.  By their eight o'clock changeover, the place could be
bedlam.

"Fifteen minutes, " Alvarez said, no questions asked.

Abby next called Bud Perlow at the nurses' station.  She would be in
room one and did not need any help except for him to hold down the fort
until Dr. Alvarez arrived.  Oh, and one more thing.  She would
appreciate it if he told absolutely no one what she was doing.

Samuel Ives closed his eyes as she widened the narrow, shaved track
Bartholomew had made in his beard.  Then she cut away the sutures,
numbed the edges of the lacerations once again, set a pair of
magnifying glasses low on the bridge of her nose, and began a
meticulous closure.

The repair took forty-five minutes.  During that time not a word was
exchanged between them.  When the last knot had been tied and cut, Abby
stepped back from the table, working the stiffness from her neck.  She
called it being "zoned."  For forty-five minutes her brain had been
free of all extraneous thoughts.  She had probably not moved any muscle
except in her hands and forearms through the entire procedure.

Zoned.

It was a joy to have been there.

She unbuttoned Ives's work shirt, which was heavy with drying blood.  A
more careful exam showed his chest and belly were free of discernible
injury.

"Did they give you a tetanus shot?  " she asked.

"They did."

"These stitches can come out in five days.  Just come in and find me.

No need to check in at the desk.  I'm going to have the nurse give you
a shot of antibiotic and five days' worth of pills.  I'm also going to
see if we can find you a shirt to wear home."

"I've been having a little trouble with my leg, " Ives said.  "Pick out
some pills that will help that, too."  Abby gloved once again, and with
Ives's help, lowered his fetid, bloodied jeans.  The infection,
covering five or six inches of his right shin, was long-standing and
deepþundoubtedly deep enough to include the bone.  Almost certainly
chronic osteomyelitis, one of the most difficult, recalcitrant of all
infections.  She grimaced, not so much from the sight of the thick, raw
inflammatory tissue, as from her knowledge of how difficult it was
going to be to treat.  Then she realized that he was watching her.

"How'd you do this?  " she managed.

"A fall.  I hit a rock."

"When?  " "Two, three years ago."

"And you can get around okay?  " "It hurts some."  She sighed.

"Mr. Ivesþ" "Just Ives.  That's what people I like call me.  Ives.  "
"Ives, this is a pretty deep and serious infection.  I don't know for
sure if it's gotten into the bone, and I have no idea what germ is
causing it.  But if we don't treat it properly, sooner or later you're
going to get very sick from it.  You could even lose your leg."

"It really doesn't bother me that much.  How about just giving me some
medicine now andþ" "It's not that simple!  " she snapped.  She took
another calming breath.

Fatigue from the long, difficult day was catching up with her.  She
knew, especially after the debacle with Bartholomew, there wasn't a
chance in the world that Ives would ever willingly be an inpatient.

"Ives, listen.  Let me at least take a small biopsy to send off for
culture and some slides.  Then I'll give you some intravenous
antibiotics.  Tomorrow I'll talk to the infectious-disease person and
one of the bone specialists.  Okay?  " "I don'tþ" "Ives, please.  "
"Okay, okay."

"Thank you."  She opened the door and, for the first time in an hour,
reconnected with the rest of the E.R.  Lew Alvarez was writing
prescriptions for the last of the patients.  She stood some distance
away and watched him converse with the woman in fluent, animated
Spanish.  His English, she had noticed, was accent free.  She wondered
which was his native language.  He was forty or so, and handsomer than
any man needed to be.  His eyes were dark and lively, and his thick
brows and mustache were offset by rich copper skin.  Of all the
physicians in the E.R, he was the one she found the most interesting.

George Oleander's description of him as excessively opinionated and not
a team player did not easily fit the man she was watchingþthe man who
had responded to her call for assistance without a single quibble.

He noticed her just as he was sending his patient away.

"Ta da!  " he sang, motioning to the now-empty E.R.

He moved toward her with a natural, easy grace.  Regardless of what he
had said about her to George Oleander, she could not imagine this man
being intimidated by anyone.

"Thanks for coming in, " she said.

"No problem.  I understand you've had a day of it.  Diagnosing
Cushing's syndrome in the middle of a code.  Hail to the chief."

"It hasn't been confirmed."

"It will be.  And now, in comes Sam Ives."

"It's just Ives, he says.

He doesn't like being called anything else.

" "He was a college professor at one time.  Or at least so I've been
Abby was instantly intrigued.

"Where?  What'd he teach?  " Alvarez shrugged.

"No idea.  A year or so ago he was looking for odd jobs, so I gave him
some work on my farm.  We never talked much.  I don't think he gets
many offers.  People around here are scared of him."

"Has he ever hurt anyone?

"Hardly.  Just being out of the ordinary is all it takes around here,
and he is certainly that."

"One of the nurses said he lives in a cave."  Alvarez laughed.

"His shack isn't much.  No electricity, no plumbing.  But it's not a
cave."

"He's got chronic osteomyelitis on his anterior leg.  He needs a
surgical debridement and intensive antibiotic therapy.  Maybe even a
graft.  Right now all he'll allow me to do is a biopsy and some IV
antibiotics.  Want to help?  " "Sure, if there's a chance something
will rub off on me and I can diagnose Cushing's during a code."  Abby
started to react to his sarcasm.  But there was only warmth in his
expression.  He was teasing her, true, but not maliciously, he really
was impressed.  They got the biopsy kit and culture tubes ready, and
set up an IV of powerful antibiotics.  Then they brought them into room
one.

Ives was gone.  They checked the nearest bathrooms, but Abby knew he
had skipped.  She had come on too strong and frightened him away.

Muttering curses at herself, she returned to the room.

Beneath the litter was the plastic possessions bag.  Abby dumped the
contents out on the mattress.  All it contained were sanded wood
fragmentsþheads, torsos, and limbs of what might have been beautiful,
delicately carved figuresþand a well-worn copy of Conrad's Lord Jim.

CHAPTER FOUR.

On the way home from Peking Pagoda, Abby ate an egg roll and half a
carton of ribs.  There was a time when she had smoked in response to
stressþup to a pack a day of unfiltered Pall Malls.  Soon after she'd
given up cigarettes, she had found that, more and more, she was dealing
with the people and events that upset her by drinkingþ only wine, and
always top-shelf stuff.  Eventually, she had felt obligated to limit
her drinking to days when she wasn't worried about something or angry
with someone, a move that effectively kept her on the wagon most of the
time.

With little time or inclination for regular exercise or meditation,
food became and remained her pacifier.  And the ten pounds between her
clothes fitting well and feeling tight became a battlefield.

Tonight, with Bill Tracy, George Oleander, Martin Bartholomew, Lew
Alvarez, and Ives competing for headspace with Josh, she felt fortunate
to make it home with any dinner left at all.

The house Josh had rented was a six-room, cedar-shingled ranch on the
north side of town.  The charm of the place came from its setting at
the end of a wooded cul-de-sac at the base of the hills.  Over the
weeks she had been living there, Abby had reconnected with her love of
the outdoors.

The drive from the hospital to the house was about two miles, but she
took a long way around, paralleling the north side of the valley,
hoping she might catch up with Ives.  By the time she pulled into their
driveway, it was almost nine.  The smell of cooking told her that Josh
had decided not to wait for her to arrive home with their dinner.

"Honey, I'm home, " she called out, knowing that their gravel driveway
made the announcement redundant.

His not coming out to the kitchen to meet her probably signaled another
evening of tension.  She paused by the back door for one more rib.

"In here, " he said.

As she passed through the kitchen, she noticed the bottle of pills on
the counter.  They were prescribed for Josh by the employees' clinic at
Colstar.  Fioricetþheadache medication with generic Tylenol, some
caffeine, and a moderately strong sedative.  At least he had gone to
see someone.  If he mentioned having a headache, fine.  But she had
started enough skirmishes by bringing the subject up herself.  Not
tonight.

He was on the couch in the living room, his favorite spot, eating some
vegetable stir fry, watching a baseball game, and doing a crossword
puzzle.  Taken as an isolated freeze-frame, the scene looked incredibly
normal.  She bent over and hugged him from behind.  Then she took off
his glasses and inserted herself between him and the puzzle.

"In case you can't tell, " she said from breath-mint range, "I'm a
little starved for affection."  He blinked as if he had just noticed
she was there.  Then he took her face in his hands and, for a moment,
seemed to be peering at her through a fog.  Even so, his blue-green
eyes drew her in as they always had.

Finally he responded to her closeness with a kiss, lips nearly closed,
eyes open.  It was hardly an invitation to anything more intense, but
for the moment she would take it.

Josh was thirty-eight, an electrical engineer who had been married
briefly in his early twenties and had been a gun-shy bachelor-abouttown
since.  Two and a half years ago a mutual friend had fixed them up,
accurately predicting that neither of them would be intimidated by the
other's intellect and good looks.  Abby adored him from night one.

Josh wasn't as certain about her initially, but the time constraints of
her job at St. John's required him to make something of a commitment
if he wanted to see her at all.  Within six months they were living
togetherþan idyllic relationship, spiced with good friends and a
wonderful merging of styles, humor, temperaments, and interests.

During medical school Abby had had a two-year relationship with a med
student who decided in one tumultuous week that he was neither ready to
be a physician, nor to be romantically involved with anyone.  Over the
years that followed she had dated as much as her demanding schedule
allowed.  But having a man in her life was never an overriding
priority.

She had good friends and a stimulating job in a city that she loved.

If Mr. Right came along to share all that, so much the better.  If
not, she wouldn't be shattered.  It was only after she met Josh that
she was able to admit that, subconsciously, she had been kidding
herself all along, purposely minimizing the importance of finding
someone because she feared it simply wasn't going to happen for her.

From the very beginning the two of them were at ease with one
another.

Josh was more fun to be with than any man she had ever known, and it
seemed as if there wasn't one aspect of her life that wasn't better,
richer, because of him.  Even her E.R work became less stressful knowing
that the end of the day meant sitting in a theater together or trading
puns as they jogged through the park or squeezing into their small tub
together before making love.  She knew without doubt that this was the
man she had held out forþthe man she had somehow had in mind when she
had worked so hard to find fault with the others.  And at almost
thirty-five, she had no desire to begin the process again.

"Sorry I'm late, " she said, setting what remained of the Chinese food
on the table.  "I finished up the day from hell with a really tough
case."

"Tree resin, six letters, begins with m. " "Mastic.  Josh, listen to
this.  There's this hermit.  He lives in the forest someplace north of
town.  A former professor, believe it or not.

He got beat up and I sewed up his face.  But he ran out of the E.R
before I could treat his infected leg.  I think I scared him away.  "
"Hey, he wouldn't be the first guy you've scared away.  How in the hell
could any man not be frightened of a woman who looks like Nicole
Kidman, knows about tree resins, and can put someone back together
who's been run over by a bus?  " Abby smiled and felt some of her
tension easing away.  She brought him the last sparerib, and he ate it
without comment.  A truce had tacitly been declared over her getting
home late with dinner, and his not waiting for it.  Buttons had been
pushed by each of them, but neither had reacted.  The night might yet
be saved.  She sank down beside him on the couch and kicked off her
shoes.  Her feet sighed relief "His name's Ives.  I brought some
medicine and equipment home from work.

Tomorrow I would love it if you could help me find him."

"Tomorrow we have plans, " he said coolly.

It took several seconds before Abby remembered.  Tomorrow was family
day at Colstarþthe first chance Josh would have to introduce her to his
world.  Forgetting his company outing was the sort of thing she had
been doing that was adding to the stress between them.  Thank God she
hadn't innocently switched days at the hospital with anyone.

"Hey, the Colstar picnic, " she said.  "Just a momentary lapse.  I've
got my outfit all laid out and I'm ready to go."

"You don't have to come.  In fact, I have things I need to get done at
the office."  Another button.

Easy, she thought.  Tread easy.  If she simply didn't react, they still
might make it through the night without a blowup.

"Josh, seriously, I've been looking forward to it.  That's the truth.

I just lost track of the days.  I'm sorry."

"Look, I don't want you to come.  Just forget it."  Damn.  It was
happening again.

"Honey, please, Iþ" "You know, you don't see it, but you've been so
damn wrapped up in that hospital, I might as well be on the moon.  What
is it?  Are you upset that I went and got myself a good job again?  Are
you trying to make sure everyone in Patience knows you're still number
one?  " "Josh, that's not fair."

"What's not fair?  When I got laid off, tell me you didn't lord it over
me for all those months.  Tell me you weren't smiling every time you
came home from your big-shot job with all those strokes from all those
patients and students and fellow professors, and all I could say was
that someone had promised they'd keep my resume on file.  Tell me it
didn't feel great to be the only one in the house bringing in the
bucks."  Abby felt her neck get hot.

She was the one who had encouraged him to take the Colstar job, even
though it meant trying to make it as a long-distance couple.  She was
the one who had begun a dialogue with the people at Patience
Regional.

And, ultimately, she was the one who had made the sacrifice of her job
and teaching career in order for them to be together.

And now, once again, she was being treated like the enemy.  He was so
fragile, so volatile, she always ended up on the defensive.  It had to
be that he was disappointed with his jobþthat he was overwhelmed or
unstimulated or having trouble with his bossþand just couldn't admit
it.

No other explanation made sense.

"Josh, honey, I'm sorry.  Work has been tough for me, and today was a
real bear."  She took his hand and was relieved when he didn't pull
away.

"Believe me, I'm really looking forward to meeting the people you work
with.  I just hope they don't think I'm a jerk."  She saw some of the
tightness leave his face.  His fist unclenched.  She touched his lips,
then set her hand on his lap and stroked him in a way she knew he
loved.  He moaned softly, closed his eyes, and leaned back onto the
cushion.

"I told them we'd be there at ten to help set up, " he said without
opening his eyes.  "Maybe we can get up early and I can help you find
your guy."

"That would be great.  You may even like himþhe's sort of a grown-up
version of those kids you used to bring home from the basketball court
for dinner."  She unsnapped his jeans and undid his zipper.  It was no
longer automatic that she could arouse him, but this time there was no
problem.

"Doc, " he said, "for what you're doing, I not only help you find this
guy, I carry your medical bag."  CHAPTER FIVE.

Abby lay facedown, trying to convince herself that she was still
asleep, but knowing that she wasn't.  She reached across the bed, but
Josh wasn't there.  Then she realized why she was awakeþthe repeating
sound of an ax slamming into wood, and the crunch of logs splitting.

She squinted at the pale sunlight filtering through the blinds.  Before
six, she guessed.

She fumbled for the clock radio and groaned.  Twenty after five.  From
the backyard the wood splitting continued at a furious, nonstop pace.

A new Josh, what in the hell is going on with you?

She rolled onto her back and blinked until the ceiling came into
focusþmore specifically, it was the poster of Albert Einstein that Josh
had tacked there the day she'd arrived six weeks ago, telling her it
was the sort of thing that happened when engineers finally felt
comfortable with a mate.  Six weeks.  It seemed more like a year.

She pulled on a T-shirt and scrub pants and squinted at herself in the
dresser mirror.  She was certainly no Nicole Kidman, even with her
contacts in, and five in the morning hardly brought out the best in
her.

But she still had decent looks and a better-than-decent body.  And it
was an almost sure bet that Nicole Kidman wouldn't know thing one about
reducing a dislocated radial head in a screaming three-year-old.  She
ran her brush twenty-five times through her shoulder-length hair and,
in spite of herself, wondered if Lew Alvarez was living with anyone.

She knew he was a widowerþone of the nurses had told her that much.

She went to the kitchen and loaded up Josh's fancy European
coffeemaker.  The bottle of Fioricet had been moved from the counter to
the table.  Sometime between the end of their lovemaking and now he had
taken some.  The label, dated two weeks ago, read fifty tablets.  There
were ten left.  Forty in fourteen days was at the high end of the
prescribed dosage, and the pills did have addictive potential.  Was
that what was behind his volatile, erratic behaviorþdrug dependence?

It was hard for her to believe.  He had always been a health nut,
obsessive about conditioning and diet.  Until now she had never seen
him take a pill other than a vitamin.

She peeked out the window.  Josh, his back to her, stood barefoot on
the dew-covered lawn, stripped to the waist.  His sinewy body glistened
with sweat.  Vapor rose from his shoulders and in his breath.  The ax
blows he was deliveringþvicious, roundhouse, over-the-head swingsþmade
her shudder.

She opened the door and stepped out onto the back stoop.  The air was
cool and utterly clear, with a sweet mountainy smell that blended
wonderfully with the chips of oak and ash.  From just beyond the yard
the dense fir forest extended a hundred yards or so to the base of the
rocky foothills.  There were many things she missed living away from
the city, but there were compensations.

"Hey, Bunyan, " she said, "how about stopping for some coffee?  " One
more swing, two more pieces of log.  Wiping his brow with the back of
his hand, he turned to her.  His expression was peaceful, his broad
smile genuineþpure Josh.

"Sorry if I woke you.  Coffee would be great."  Abby packed her medical
bag into Josh's large backpack, along with the surgical equipment,
culture tubes, and IV antibiotics she had appropriated from the
hospital.  Then she added some of Josh's old clothes, some canned food
and pasta, and an eclectic bunch of paperbacks, ranging from Daphne du
Maurier to Stephen Crane to John Grisham, and loaded the carton into
the back of Josh's Jeep.  The khaki Wrangler Safari, more specifically
the down payment on it, had been a gift from her when he'd landed and
accepted the Colstar position.

"We've got about two hours before I have to be at the park, " Josh
said, hopping behind the wheel.  "Think we can find your hermit in that
time?  " "I think so.  Lew Alvarez, the doctor who knows him, told me
where to park and what to do once we found the trail.  He hadn't been
there in over a year, so his directions were a bit shaky."

"Alvarez.

Dark hair, mustache, looks like Omar Sharif in Doctor Zhivago?  " Abby
was startled.

"A little, I suppose, " she managed to say, "now that you mention it.

You know him?  " She sensed the heightening color in her cheeks and
quickly looked out the window to her right.

"He's the one who sewed up my thigh when I tore it on that nail,
remember?  " "I remember your telling me about the accident, but I
don't think I ever knew who did the suturing.  At that time I didn't
have much interest in PRH.  He did a fine job, though."

"Damn fine.

Seemed like a nice guy, too."  Abby continued staring off to her
right.

What had been going on in her head since the end of her E.R shift was
nothing more than a perfectly innocent little fantasyþand a G-rated
fantasy at that.  But somehow she felt caught out.

Josh was animated and relaxed as they drove east toward the hospital
and the Colstar cliff, then cut north across the valley.  Morning was
in full force now, cloudless and already warm.  Perfect picnic
weather.

Abby wondered if nature had ever dared to frown on a Colstar
function.

They easily found the street Lew had directed them to.  It was paved
and built up for half its length, then reverted to dirt for a quarter
of a mile or so before ending.

"This is it, " Abby said.  "The trail should be right over there.  "
They were about two miles from the hospital.  The hills on the north
side of the valley were steeper than on the south.  She felt sadness at
the notion of Ives, battered and exhausted, making his way down this
road and up into the woods at night with no light.  Then she reminded
herself that, for whatever reason, he had chosen his life of
solitude.

Josh swung the backpack on and buckled it with practiced ease.  Abby
followed as he set off.

The trail was rocky and fairly steep, but quite well defined.  It wound
eastward through awesome, dense forest, made all the more imposing by
the muted sunlight filtering through the branches.

Lew had guessed it would be a mile before they had to leave the trail
and cut straight up.  The markers for the turn would be a large boulder
overseeing the valley, and a narrow brook, spanned by a fallen tree.

Josh climbed with the vigor and confidence of an athlete and
outdoorsman.  Abby worked a bit harder at it, though she was pleased to
realize that she was still in reasonably good shape.  During the first
few weeks after her move to Patience, before she had started at the
hospital, they had hiked the hills and even done some quasi-rock
climbing almost every day or evening.  Lately, not at all.

The cutoff was exactly where Lew had depictedþa scuffed area at the
base of a rise of boulders.  The next hundred feet, almost straight up,
had Abby breathing heavily.  Then, through the trees, they saw itþ a
small clearing hewn into the forest.  At the rear of the clearing,
pressed against the hillside, was a crude hut of scrap lumber,
corrugated aluminum, and roofing shingle.

Beside the hut was a workbench with carving tools and partially
completed projects.  To one side of the clearing, hanging from a tree,
was a thick straw dummy, roughly human in shape, with half a dozen long
hunting arrows protruding from it.  Pinned to the base of the dummy in
a most persuasive spot was a No Trespassing sign.

"I confess I didn't really think we'd find anyone living up here, "
Josh said.  "It's still hard to believe someone does.  But I suppose if
you're a hermit, this is the Ritz."

"Ives, " Abby called, without approaching the hut.  "Ives, it's Dr.
Dolan from the hospital.  Hello .  . . Ives?  " For several seconds
there was only silence.  Then, from somewhere up and to their left,
came the snap of a bowstring.  Almost simultaneously, with a crack
like a bullwhip, an arrow slammed into the dummy chest high.

Reflexivelyy they stumbled back behind a tree.

"Be right down, Doc, " Ives hollered, his voice sounding fairly
distant.

Josh walked cautiously to the dummy and inspected the arrows.

"Just one of these could bring down a jet, " he said.

Ives emerged from the woods carrying a long, richly polished bow.  The
tissue around his eyes was badly swollen, and, in fact, his entire face
was puffed and bruised.  He had changed his bloody clothes for worn
chinos and a frayed work shirt with the name Norm stitched above the
breast pocket.  There were still some flecks of dried blood in his
beard, but Abby felt certain he had tended to that as well.  She also
noted that her suture lines were holding nicely.

"Sorry I took off on you last night, " he said.  "I have this thing
about hospitals and doctors."  Abby said she understood and introduced
him to Josh.

"Nice shot, " Josh said, gesturing to the dummy.  "Especially with your
eyes nearly swelled shut."

"Only fifty yards or so.  I could do that blindfolded."

"You hunt deer?  " "Don't hunt anything.  Don't eat meat.  There're a
few dummies like that one I've got scattered around in various
places.

I shoot at them.  A long time ago I spent some time in Japan and ended
up studying archery.  I still like shootingþespecially since I finished
making this new bow."  Abby could tell that Josh was intrigued.

"Ives, I want to help you with your leg, " she said, "but I'd also like
your promise that if I get in over my head, you'll see a specialist and
at least consider doing whatever he recommends."  Ives didn't
respond.

He was studying Josh's face.

"Olive-drab Jeep Wrangler, California license eight-two-eight, C-J-W, "
he said.

They stared at him, puzzled.  There was no way he could have been at
the bottom of the trail to see them arrive, and then deep in the woods
with a bow and arrow when they reached his camp.  His expression
suggested he was enjoying the game.

"Okay, Ives, " Abby said.  "We give up."  Ives entered the hut and
emerged with a weighty burlap gunnysack.

Without a word he led them onto an ill-defined trail beyond the hanging
tree.  After a hundred yards or so the woods gave way to a rocky
plateau, about thirty feet wide.  Beyond the plateau was a sharp
drop-off revealing a magnificent vista of the valley and the
mountains.

To the west was the town, perfect in miniature, stretching along the
floor of the two-mile-wide valley as far as they could see.  And aimost
directly behind them, slightly to the east, was Colstar, looking from
above like an airfield with smokestacks set on a broad mesa.  Ives
gingerly lowered himself onto his belly and motioned for Josh and Abby
to do the same.

Then he reached into his sack and withdrew an impressive pair of field
glasses.

"One of my hobbies, " he said, adjusting the focus, then passing the
binoculars over to Abby.  "For night viewing I fixed up an old pair of
infrareds that work pretty well, too."

"Josh, these are incredible, " Abby said.  "See that car coming up the
drive?  " "Barely.  Black, Matchbox sedan."

"Volvo.  And it's dark blue, not black."  She passed the glasses
over.

Josh scanned his workplace and whistled softly.

"Amazing.  Big brother Ives is watching you, " he said.

"I recognized your face because that Jeep is sort of distinctive and
you have the top down a lot.  By the way, you drive too fast."

"Do the people at Colstar know you do this?  " Josh asked.

"Nope.  And I hope you won't tell them.  It's just a harmless hobby.

Something to pass the time when there's no wildlife around to watch.  "
"I won't say anything, " Josh said.  "I promise."

"Tell me something, Ives, " Abby said.  "If you have to resort to a
hobby like this to pass the time, why not come down the hill and live
with the rest of us?  " "I already did that, " Ives said.  "Too many
cannibals.  Too many rules.

Too much hypocrisy.  Too many bills.  Too much hatred.  Shall I go
on?

" "No, " Abby said, though she still wanted to know more of what,
specifically, had pushed him up into the hills.  "Now it's my turn.  Do
we have a deal about your leg?  " "No promises, but I will listen to
what you recommend, and I'll do it if it seems right to me.  Believe
me, there's too much I enjoy about life to want to get sick or
crippled.  But you also have to understand that self-satisfied fops
like that surgeon you referred me to do not make me want to have much
to do with your sacred profession."

"I'm sorry about that."

"Don't feel sorry for me, " Ives said, leading them back to his
clearing.

"Feel sorry for him."  He motioned at Josh.

Abby was taken aback.

"What are you talking about?  " "I'm talking about white Mercedes
number MD three-oh-three.  Dr.  Pomposity, himself."

"Dr. Bartholomew?  " "Precisely.  Drives up to Colstar every Tuesday
and Friday at nine A. M.

and leaves at three."  Abby turned to Josh.

"He's talking about Martin Bartholomew.  You know him?  " "He runs the
employee health clinic."

"He's a surgeon.  Is he the one who checked you over for those
headaches?  " "He didn't really check me over.  Just ordered some tests
and then had the nurse call in a prescription."

"Lord.  Josh, I think you should have a neurolþ" She stopped herself in
midword.  The morning was simply going too well for her to spoil it.

"Listen, " she said, "we'll talk about it another time if you want.  "
Josh wandered back toward Ives's observation post while Abby took some
shallow and deeper biopsies of the chronic infection on the hermit's
leg.  Then, with the cultures secure, she administered the IV
antibiotic.

Routine lacerations, and facial lacerations in particular, were usually
no cause for IV antibiotics.  With cut faces and scalps, tissue
circulation was so good that severe infection was rarely a problem.

But Ives's leg was another story.  Treating him this way wasn't
perfect, but it was better than the alternative of doing nothing.  As
she worked, cleaning away the superficial damaged tissue with forceps,
scissors, and scalpel, she glanced around the clearing and smiled at
the notion of what her high-powered university colleagues would say if
they could see her at this moment.

When she was finished, she dressed the leg lightly and promised to
return in a few days to remove the stitches from Ives's face and to
continue work on his leg.  Then she left the books, food, and clothing
she had brought, called Josh back to the clearing, and hiked with him
down the hill.

Once in the Jeep again, they headed for the park where the Colstar
picnic was being held.

"Josh, " she said, "have you ever read a remarkable little book called
Zen and the Art of Archery?  " "No."

"I read it for a philosophy course at Cal, and I can't recall the
author's name.  But remember when Ives joked about being able to hit
the dummy blindfolded from fifty yards?  " "Yes, what of it?  " "Well,
I think that was more than a figure of speech.  I think he does make
that shot blindfolded."  BY the time Josh had reached Colstar Park,
four miles west of the plant, Abby had already noticed a change in
him.

It began with some gestures that outwardly appeared benignþsquinting as
if the glare of the morning sun was uncomfortable, rubbing at his eyes
and temples, wetting his lips, putting his sunglasses on, taking them
off.  His conversation, so animated on the drive across town earlier,
had all but died.

"You okay?  " she ventured.

He glared at her for a moment as if she had intruded on some cosmic
thought.

"Of course I am.  I'm fine."  He didn't snap at her, but almost.  "I
was up at four-thirty, remember?  " If recent experience was an
indicator, over the next hour or so he would become more withdrawn and
irritable.  Sometimes he would admit to having a "little headache, "
sometimes he wouldn't.  Eventually he would take to bed, or fall asleep
on the couch, or pick a fight with her.  Occasionally he might have a
drink of Scotch, often at an inappropriate hour, and in a wayþno ice,
no sippingþthat was hardly typical of him.  And that was only what she
observed at home.  She wondered what might be happening at work.

Colstar Park was a showplaceþlush, perfectly maintained, and grand
enough to encompass several duck ponds, a mile-long jogging track,
playgrounds, large picnic groves, three ball fields, a grandstand, and
a small lake.  If there was another town the size of Patience that had
such an oasis, Abby had yet to see it.

An outstanding park, a phenomenally equipped hospital, an unemployment
rate close to zero, schools reportedly as good as any in the
stateþColstar International and the town of Patience seemed to have
formed a remarkable partnership, a symbiotic relationship as perfect as
any in nature.  As they parked the Jeep, Abby watched the early-bird
families heading for the outing.  Scrubbed kids with their bats and
gloves, fishing poles and Frisbees.  Relaxed parents, a few of whom she
recognized as E.R patients, shouting orders to their offspring as they
tried to keep up.  She had little trouble imagining what it would be
like to raise children in this community.

But with Josh?

"Hey, muchacho, " she called out with less enthusiasm than she had
intended.  "How about waiting for me?  " Josh glanced back and slowed
his pace.

"Sorry, " he muttered.

"I'm looking forward to meeting some of the Colstar people I've heard
about, " she said.

"Well, they'll all be here."  His voice was hollow.

The truth was, Josh had not told her much about his work or his
colleagues.  And she had visited the plant only once, shortly after her
arrival in town.  All she really knew was that he was involved in the
development of sophisticated, state-of-the-art plastic batteries, his
department's research sponsored in part by the company and in part by
grants from the federal government.

Colstar was the only large employer in the valley.  In fact, anyone who
didn't work directly for the company probably had a job or business
that depended upon it.  The picnic would fill several of the park's
groves, Josh had told her.  Maybe all of them.

"Wanna play a little catch?  " she asked.

"Maybe later.  I've got to go help organize the food."  He motioned to
where several men were unloading a large Ryder truck.

Near the truck were a dozen or so oil-drum halves on standsþ the
portable barbecue pit.

"Want help?  " Abby asked.

But he had already walked away.  She stayed where she was, following
him with her eyes.  When he reached the truck, he leaned, almost
slumped, against it for several seconds.  She was moving toward him
when he seemed to gather himself and joined the others unloading the
truck.  She sighed and looked away.  It was going to be a long day.

Abby was casting about for something to do when a man approached her.

"Dr. Dolan?  " "Yes."  He was broad-shouldered, fit, and military
straight.  His thick hair was swan-white, prematurely, she was sure,
and his outfitþblack turtleneck, black sports coat, black slacks, and
spit-polished wing tipsþ seemed absurdly inappropriate for an outing in
the park.

A Johnny Cash impersonator?  she thought.

He reached out his hand and she took it tentatively.  His grip was
firm, his smile revealed pearl-perfect teeth.

"Lyle Quinn, " he said.  "It's a pleasure to meet you.  I've heard a
great deal about you."

"From Josh?  " She hated to acknowledge how unlikely that was.

Yes, from Josh.  From others, too.  Would you like me to show you
around?  " The strange man-in-black had piqued her curiosity.  She
glanced over at where Josh was hoisting large sacks of potatoes and
corn on the cob with the same frantic vigor he had exhibited chopping
wood.

"Sure, " she said.

He guided her away from the barbecue pits and toward the lake.

"I heard about your saving Bill Tracy's life, " he said.

Abby looked at him uncomfortably.

"Are you connected with the hospital?  " Quinn favored her with another
practiced smile.

"In a manner of speaking.  I'm on the board of trustees.  Have been
for, I don't know, six .  . . no, seven years now."  There was a
smugness to the man that had already impressed Abby negatively.

"Exactly what is it you do?  " she asked.

"For Colstar?  " "If that's who you work for."  She was finding Lyle
Quinn more annoying by the moment.  Even worse, she had the strange
sense that he wanted her to.

"It is, " he said.  "I guess you could call me chief security officer,
head of security, something like that."  Abby recalled asking Josh why
the entire plant was surrounded by an eight-foot-high chain-link fence,
topped by three rows of tightly strung barbed wire, slanted outward.

His only response was that they were working on a number of classified
government projects.

"Classified batteries?  " she had asked.

Batteries of the future, was the way he had phrased it.

"So, " she asked now, "is this walk we're on security business?  "
Looking at the strange fellow striding purposefully beside her, all she
could think of was G. Gordon Liddy.

Quinn laughed, but his pale-blue eyes did not.

"Hardly.  I just wanted to meet the woman who has become such a
sensation at the hospital in such a short time."  Obviously you haven't
been speaking with the same people I have, Abby thought.

"Please thank whoever said that about me, " she said.

"You did save Bill Tracy's life.  I have that on the best authority.  "
"How do you know Bill Tracy?  " Abby said, reluctant as always to
acknowledge that she had saved anyone's life.  "Is Colstar involved
with insurance?  " For a moment she thought Quinn was going to say that
Colstar was involved with everything.

"Bill's a friend, " he said.  "He writes the health insurance for a lot
of our folks."

"Well, I'm glad I was there when he came in."

"So are a lot of people."  They reached the tree-lined lake.  Several
brightly colored pedal boats were already out on the water.  The
laughter of children echoed through the sparkling morning.  For a time
neither of them spoke.  Abby sensed that Quinn had more of an agenda
than he had presented so far, but she could wait to find out what it
was.  She just hoped it had nothing to do with Josh.

"Nice place to live, " Quinn said finally.

He motioned that he had seen enough and turned back toward the path.

"Very nice, " Abby replied.  "Do you have children?  " "Two.  Grown and
gone."

"But you like it here?  " "I do.  And I like working for a company that
takes its responsibility to the community seriously."  The agenda, Abby
thought.

"It certainly seems like Patience wouldn't be much without Colstar, "
she said.

"Correction, Doctor.  Without Colstar, Patience wouldn't be.  That's
why we're all very concerned when people with an antibusiness mentality
try to impugn our company in any way."

"And are there such people?  " "A few.  Very few.  They're harmless
because no one takes them very seriously.  But anyone new to Patience
is fair game to them, especially physicians, who often tend to be
swayed by so-called liberal causes.  I don't know your politics, or
anything about you that wasn't in your application for staff
privileges.  But I'm sure that sooner or later they'll be approaching
you to join them."  Abby had to control a knee-jerk flare-up of
outrage.  An application for staff privileges was, in most hospitals,
personal and confidentialþ even from members of the board of
trustees.

She was quite sure Quinn knew that and had brought the matter up on
purpose.  He was displaying his resourcefulness and issuing a tacit
warning at the same time.  No doubt her undergraduate degree from Cal
Berkeley and M. D. from Stanford had labeled her a leftist in his
mind.

"Who are these people?  " she asked.

"I'd rather not say.  What I will say is that they are misguided and
selfish individuals who are willing to put their own interests ahead of
the community's."  They had arrived back at the field, where Josh was
still helping to set up the barbecue.  The crowd had grown
considerably, and several organized games and sports had begun.  Abby
felt an urge to grab her glove and play some softball, and an even
stronger one to get away from Lyle Quinn.

"Well, Mr. Quinn, " she said, leading him to the backpack where she
had stored her medical bag and makeshift first-aid kit, and Josh had
packed their other gear, "thanks for the walk and the information.  "
Another unsettling smile.  His eyes were locked on hers.

"A great many people are very pleased you're here, Dr. Dolan.  Good
doctors are a critical part of this community."

"Just like Colstar.

" Her retort brought a flicker of reaction.  No more.

"Exactly, " he said.  "Just like Colstar.  Well, it's been very
pleasant getting to know you.  My wife and I look forward to
entertaining you and Josh sometime in the near future.  Perhaps you
will allow us to propose you for membership in the Patience Country
Club.  I'm on the board there, too."  He shook her hand and turned to
go.

At that moment, from across the field, a woman began shrieking
hysterically, again and again.

The commotion was coming from the west end of the field, just in front
of a dense pine grove.  At the first shriek Quinn whirled catlike and
sprinted across toward the gathering crowd.  Abby, still clutching her
baseball glove, trotted behind him.  By the time she arrived at the
grove, a hundred or more people were there.  Others, especially those
with children, were trying to move away quickly.

"It's just Angela, " Abby heard someone say.

The terrible wailing continued.

"Get back, " the woman screamed.  "Get back or I'll cut you, too!  I
swear I will!  " "One side, please, " Quinn ordered.  "Step aside.  "
Abby caught sight of Josh to one edge of the crowd and headed toward
him.

"Somebody do something!  " a woman exclaimed.  "Help her."  Chapter
SEVEN.

I t wasn't until Abby was almost at Josh's side that she saw the
problem.  A markedly overweight young woman was backed up against a
tree, brandishing a ten-inch hunting knife and bleeding from a dozen or
more shallow cuts that she had inflicted on her arms and thighs.

Abby's first impression was that none of the wounds was dangerous.  But
the woman's beige shorts and white blouse were rapidly becoming soaked
in crimson.

Quinn, at the front of the crowd, was about thirty feet from her.

"Angela, put the knife down, " he said with the firmness of a parent
confronting a recalcitrant child.

"Stay away from me!  " she screamed.  "Come any closer and I'll kill
myself!  You know I will."  She pulled up her blouse and ran the blade
across flesh that she had already sliced several times.  People
gasped.

Abby could not see through the blood, but she strongly suspected that
the woman's body would be covered with scars from previous episodes
such as this.  A self-mutilatorþthe ultimate form of selfloathing and
masochism.  Angela was hardly the first case Abby had seen.

Such patients tended to be well-known to emergency wards and E.R docs.

The psychopathology was complicated and not always consistent from one
patient to another.  And all too often, despite intensive therapy, the
end result was self-inflicted death.

"Oh, God, " Abby said, moving past Josh.

"Stay back here, " Josh ordered in a harsh whisper.  "That woman worked
on one of the production lines at the company.  She still comes up to
Colstar and does stufflike this all the time.  Quinn and the police
will know how to handle her."  Abby glared at him.

"I can't believe you just said that to me."

"Angela, " Quinn ordered, taking another slight step forward, "you've
got to stop this right now and put the knife down.  We'll take care of
you."

"Stay back!  " she screamed.  "Do you all see now what can happen when
you make fun of people just because they're fat?  Always snickering.

Always pointing.

I can't stand it anymore!  " Moaning piteously, she made a series of
puncture wounds along the underside of her arm.  From one of them Abby
saw the scarlet spray from a small artery.

"Josh, please get the backpack, " Abby said over her shoulder.  "My
medical bag is in there."

"No!  You stay out of this.  Quinn can handle it.  There's no need for
you to rush all over the valley playing hero wherever you go."

"Jesus."  Abby turned to a husky man with tattooed deltoids, standing
to her right.  "Excuse me, " she said.

"I'm Dr. Dolan from the emergency ward.  There's a big gray backpack
over there near the picnic table.  My medical supplies and bandages are
in it.  Could you bring it here for me, please?  " "Sure thing, Doc, "
the man said, sprinting off.

Abby half expected her lover to chase the man down and tackle him.

Josh was entering the irrational, nasty phase of whatever was eating
away at him.  The pressure cooker was boiling and the safety valve was
stuck.

Sometime between now and late afternoon he would blow.  Well, she was
near boiling point herself.

"All right, everyone, " Quinn was saying.  "You all know that Angela

has this problem.  It doesn't help to stand around gawking at her.  Go
on.

Get your kids out of here and get back to the picnic."  Immediately,
the crowd dispersed.  It was as if the onlookers had wanted to go but
had needed someone to break the stranglehold of lurid fascination.  In
seconds there were only fifteen or so remaining, mostly men, who seemed
ready for action.

Pointedly ignoring Josh, Abby moved next to Quinn.

"I have first-aid supplies in my backpack, " she said softly.  "A man's
bringing it over."

"Oh, Angela's okay, " Quinn replied, clearly annoyed with the woman and
frustrated that he could not simply end the matter with a frontal
assault.  "Just nuts.  She's been doing things like this for
monthsþsmashing her head against the wall until she's a bloody mess,
cutting herself.  We're all getting a little sick of it.

I just want to make sure no one but her gets hurt."

"She's cut an artery in her arm.  I think we should be trying to stop
the bleeding soon."

"Someone went to call the police and rescue."  Quinn risked another
step forward.  "She'll be all right.  People get arms and legs cut off
and survive."

"Not always, " Abby said sharply.  Could anyone really be that
callous?

She moved up next to him.  They were now about ten feet away.

"Stop it!  " Angela screamed, slashing the air in their direction,
cutlass style.  "Stop it!  Let me die!  I deserve to die!  " Her eyes
were wild.  Tears washed through the blood smeared across her cheeks.

The ground at her feet was becoming sodden.

"Damn her, " Quinn muttered.

A woman hurried up to Quinn on the side opposite from where Abby
stood.

She had short graying hair, tortoiseshell glasses, and a Save the
Planet T-shirt.

"Lyle, I've called rescue and the police, " she said breathlessly.

"They're at an accident at Five Corners.  It'll be another ten or
fifteen minutes."

"Jesus."

"Poor Angela.  This is worse than I've ever seen her.  After I spoke to
Sergeant Brewster, I called her mother.  She'll be right over, but she
lives in Green Gables."

"Oh, great, Kelly, " Quinn snapped.  "The last thing we need is another
hysterical member of the Cristoforo dan."

"Sorry."

"Look, call Brewster back.  Tell him I want a cruiser and two men here
in five minutes or less."  The woman nodded quickly and left.

Panting, the large man arrived with the backpack and set it beside
Abby.  Without taking her eyes off Angela Cristoforo, Abby withdrew her
medical case and the plastic bag with the bandages and dressings she
had leftover from treating Ives.  There were at least two sets of
rubber gloves inside.  She was relieved that she didn't have to deal
with the healer's dilemma of whether to treat someone in the field if
it meant touching her blood without protection.

"Angela, I'm Dr. Dolan from the hospital, " she said.  "I want to help
you.  I want to stop the bleeding and fix those cuts."  At that moment
Abby caught a flicker of movementþa manþ through the trees behind
Angela.  She could tell that Quinn saw him, too.

"The doctors at the hospital hate me, " Angela sobbed.  "They hate the
sight of me.  The nurses laugh at me."  Abby was careful not to dispute
what the woman believed, and what might very well be true.

"I'll make sure nobody ever does that again, Angela.  I can do that.  I
promise."  Angela began singing a children's song, jabbing the point of
the huge knife in rhythm against her chest.  From somewhere out in the
valley, Abby could hear sirens.  She hoped that the commotion that was
about to descend didn't push Angela Cristoforo the final inch.

Nobody wanted to believe that a woman could bleed to death in plain
sight of dozens of people.  Abby knew better.

The man in the trees was now no more than five feet from Angela.  Abby
tried not to give his presence away with her eyes.  He was tall and
dark, wearing light jeans and a tan work shirt.

"Who is that?  " she whispered, struggling to keep her eyes focused on
the woman.

"A maintenance man from the plant.  Willie Cardoza.  He's kind of a
flake, big practical joker.  I don't know what in the hell he thinks
he's doing."

"Too late to stop him now, " Abby whispered.

She took a pair of rubber gloves and pulled them on.  Then she held up
a roll of gauze bandage.

"What are you trying to pull?  " Angela shrieked.  "Stop right there!

I mean it!  I mean it!  " She raised the hunting knife to her throat.

"Angela, pleaseþdon't!  " Willie Cardoza took one step out from the
cover of the trees.  If Angela whirled now, there was no way he could
escape being slashed.  To Abby the seconds that followed were slow
motion.  Willie made his move at the instant Angela began to turn.  He
was taller than she was by six inches or more, but she was considerably
bulkier.

"Angela!  " Quinn shouted.

The distraction was just enough.  Willie grabbed her right wrist from
behind and brought his left arm around her neck.  She struggled
ineffectually as he braced his legs behind hers and pulled her down
backward on top of him.

"Angie, it's me, Willie, " he said, holding fast to her wrist, his lips
next to her ear.  "It's Willie.  Angie, you've got to stop.  It's
over.

" For one frozen moment, Angela Cristoforo's body went rigid.  Then,
with a final, pathetic wail, she released the knife.  Lyle Quinn
quickly moved forward and kicked it aside.

Willie Cardoza gently rolled her off him and onto her side.

"Angie, you let them take care of you now, " he said.  "You just rest
and let them take care of you."  The sirens approached, then were cut
off as the first police cruiser pulled onto the ball field.

As Abby knelt beside the wounded woman, her gaze met Cardoza's.  His
long, narrow face, weathered and creased, had the look of having seen
hard times.  But his eyes were kind.

"That was a very good thing you just did, " she said.

Cardoza's smile was self-effacing.

"She would have done the same for me, " he replied.  "We company grunts
have to stick together."  He pushed himself to his feet, turned, and
left without a word to Quinn.

Abby assured herself that Angela's pulses were intact and strong, and
that none of her wounds was immediately life threatening.  Then she
began to tend to the individual cuts.  She had two of them bandaged
when the rescue squad arrived.  After a brief report she turned matters
over to them.  When it came to first aid, nobody did it better than an
EMT.

"How long has this been going on?  " she asked Quinn.

"I don't know.  Six months, maybe.  She's spent a lot of time in mental
hospitals over that period."

"And before?  " Quinn shrugged.

"She wasþwhat was the word Cardoza used?  þa grunt."  Abby packed up
the knapsack and watched as the EMTs finished inserting an IV and
prepared Angie for transfer to the hospital.

She put the pack on and buckled the support straps, realizing with
dismay that she had blood on her arms, legs, and clothes.  She would
wash it off as quickly as possible.  With a terse good-bye to Lyle
Quinn, she walked away.

The barbecue was now in full swing, with a dozen aproned chefsþ
according to Josh, the officers in the companyþserving steak and
chicken to their employees.  But Josh was not among them, though he had
told her he would be.  She checked the picnic area and the path to the
lake.  Not there.  Then she walked to the parking lot.  The Jeep was
gone.

She waited for five minutes but knew he was not coming back.  The
debate about approaching Lyle Quinn for a ride home lasted only
moments.  Abby found a pay phone and called a cab.  She was feeling as
frustrated, worried, and angry as she had at any time since moving to
Patience.

Josh would get help or she was moving out.

She glanced back just as the ambulance began its trip to the
hospital.

There was something surreal about the sceneþthe magnificent mountains,
the perfect ball diamonds, the shimmering emerald grass, the smoke
rising from the barbecue pits, the laughter.  And at one edge of the
perfect scene, an ambulance carrying a woman slashed by her own handþa
woman consumed by the most virulent hatred imaginable.  Hatred directed
inwardly .  . . at herself.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Abby parked her three-year-old Mazda in the doctors' lot and entered
the hospital through the ambulance bay.  For seven-thirty in the
evening the E.R was busier than she liked it, but still a notch or two
from utter chaos.  It was just as well, she thought.  A few hectic
hours would help keep her mind focused on work.

Five days had passed since the Colstar family outing.  For Abby they
had been days of tension and turmoil at home, sandwiched around
relatively uneventful shifts at the hospital.  Shortly after returning
by cab from Colstar Park, she had moved her things into the small guest
bedroom.  And there she had stayed despite Josh's daily assurances that
he would never behave so irrationally again.

Getting away from the stress at home wasn't the only reason she was
pleased to be at the hospital tonight.  The day-shift doctor she would
be replacing was Lew Alvarez.  Their paths hadn't crossed since the
evening of Bill Tracy's resuscitation.  But on her shifts Abby had
managed to draw a nurse here or a doctor there into conversation about
him.  She could not, in all honesty, deny that she found Alvarez
intriguing and attractive.  But she refused to admit to herself that
she had anything like a crush on him.  The deteriorating situation with
Josh was simply opening her eyes to other people.  That was all.

What she did learn about the man only intrigued her more.  He had been
at PRH for just over three years and was now a partner in the E.R
group.

Despite George Oleander's curious irritation with him, not one nurse
had anything negative to say, except for the backhanded compliment that
because he spent so much time with each patient, the E.R tended to get
jammed up during his shifts.

He was most definitely single.  And although one nurse was certain he
was involved with a woman, another felt equally certain he was gay.

Abby knew enough of hospitals to be sure there was almost no way an
attractive single physicianþmale or femaleþcould be involved with
anybody for long without some colleague getting wind of it.  So she
labeled him, unofficially and in pencil, heterosexual and
unattached.

In addition to his E.R job he had a small working farm in the hills west
of town, frequently moonlighted as the attending physician at the state
mental hospital in Caledonia, and coached Little League soccer.  His
teams hardly ever lost.  / Abby skirted the patient area and went
directly to the on-call suiteþa good-sized office, sleeping room, and
bathroom.  She changed into a pair of blue scrubs and her clinic coat,
and then, as she routinely did when starting a shift, stopped to get
centered.  She rinsed her face with cold water, headed to the door,
then stopped again and returned to the sink.

Almost in spite of herself she adjusted the band holding back her hair
and put on a dash of lipstick.

Alvarez caught sight of her as soon as she entered the E.R, made a
theatrical display of looking at his watch, and gave her two thumbs
up.

"It's been like this since we had a code at three this afternoon, " he
explained.  "Seventy-five-year-old guy with a massive anterior MI.  "
"Make it?  " Abby sensed the answer to her question even before Lew
shook his head.  "Sorry.  . . . Well, listen.  Why don't I get started
on that chart rack?  Maybe together we can outflank them."

"I'll stay until the place is cleaned out, " he said.

"You don't have to do that."

"You didn't have to come in early."  The first patient Abby dealt with
was another of the I don't know what's wrong with you group.  He was a
thirty-eight-year-old father of three with profound fatigue.  In Abby's
experience fatigue and headaches were two of the most difficult
complaints to evaluate and diagnose.  And she had seen a significant
number of both since starting at PRH.  There was an almost limitless
number of causes for each symptom, with perhaps the most common of
those being stressþpsychosomatic illness.  Abby had never doubted the
power of the human mind to cause or cure disease.  The problem was that
psychosomatic illness was a diagnosis of exclusion, to be made only
when all other reasonable possibilities had been systematically ruled
out.  To assume an emotional etiology for a symptom like fatigue was
asking for trouble.

Abby sent off what she considered to be a reasonable battery of tests
and was launching into her "I don't know .  . . " speech, when the
nurse, Bud Perlow, motioned her over to the minor trauma room and
handed her a chart.  The patient's name was Hazel Cookman.  She was
eighty-four years old and a widow.  Her presenting problem read simply,
"Fell."

"I know you've got about ten things going on at once, " Perlow said,
"but I just needed you to take a quick look at her arm and tell me if
you want films.  I don't think they're necessary.  You'll love her.  If
she wasn't a schoolmarm, she should have been."  The woman, propped up
on the stretcher, wore a navy-blue shortsleeved cotton dress with a
lace collar.  She had on pearls and an extravagant amount of rouge, and
overall looked as if she were dressed for a church social.  The glint
in her eyes and the set of her jaw were defiant.

Abby introduced herself.

"I assume you are well qualified to fix my arm, young lady, " Hazel
said, her voice strong.

"I am.  Could you tell me what happened?  " "Why, I fell.  Doesn't it
say that there?  " "It does.  But how did you fall?  " "I just fell.

Nothing complicated about it.  I was cooking some chicken and I fell.

I think I must have hit the edge of my kitchen table.  I checked my arm
in the mirror and knew that I would need some stitches."  She eyed Abby
sternly.  "Now, Doctor, I would like you to tend to my injury and let
me get home.  I left my house in such a lather that I forgot the
chicken simmering on the stove."  / "How did you get here?  " "Why .

. . why, I drove, of course."

"Of course, " Abby said, smiling toward the nurse.

Hazel Cookman's injury was one common to older people with "tissue
paper" skin.  Just below her elbow a flap of delicate skin had peeled
back.  It would need to be stretched out again and tacked in place with
some fine stitches and Steri-strips.

"Well?  " Hazel asked.  "Can you fix it?  " "I can."

"And?  " Abby was checking the left and right carotid-artery pulses in
the woman's neck as she kept two fingers on the radial artery pulse at
her wrist.

"I'd like to examine your heart and check over your nervous system, "
she said.  "And I think you should have an electrocardiogram and a
blood count."

"My lord, it's just a cut arm.  I simply have no time for all this
rigmarole, young lady."

"Mrs. Cookman, I may be a young lady to you, which is fine.  I'm
pleased you think me one.  But I am also a doctor.  And I worry a lot
about missing things in my patients.

Right now I'm very worried that you don't know precisely why you
fell.

Now, these tests won't take long.  And I promise as soon as they're
done, we'll fix your cut."

"Butþ" "Thank you."  She turned to the nurse.  "We'll need postural
bloodpressure checks, lying, sitting, and standing, but not until I've
seen the EKG."  She waited until they were out of earshot, then added,
"I don't know why, Bud, but something doesn't feel right.  I don't
think she just tripped.  I think she lost consciousness and fell.  In
fact, before you do anything else, hook her up to the monitor."

"She'll bite my head off."  Abby patted him on the arm.

"Charm her with one of those great faces you use to win over the
kids.

" Abby saw one more patient, a straightforward splinter removal, then
met Lew by the chart rack.  There was no question that together they
were getting ahead of the backlog.

"Anything interesting?  " he asked.

"Not really.  A cute LOL with a flap of skin pushed back off her
forearm.  Listen, Lew, why don't you go on home?  " He glanced about at
the beds, which were still almost all filled.

"Another half hour, forty-five minutes.  All I had planned for tonight
was paying bills.  The more tired I am, the easier that job is to
take.

" Not a team player?  Abby wondered what could possibly have gone on
between Lew and George Oleander to put off the medical chief so.

"Dr.  Dolan!  " Bud Perlow shouted from Hazel's room.

Abby charged to the doorway with Lew close behind.  Hazel Cookman was
drifting into unconsciousness.  Her monitor showed a heart rate of
ten.

"She's in complete heart block, " Abby said instantly, her own pulse
pounding.  "Lew, call a code.  Bud get a line in her.  I'll pump.  As
soon as we have another pair of hands, I want five-tenths of atropine
IV."  She kicked a low metal stool in place next to the litter and
stepped up on it to give herself enough leverage for effective CPR.  At
that moment Hazel's complete heart block reverted to a normal rhythm
and rate.  Abby checked both carotid-artery pulses and felt them
easily.  In seconds Hazel moaned.  A few seconds more and she was wide
awake.

"Bud, get cardiology in here stat, " Abby said.  "She needs a
pacemaker.

Do we have an external pacer?  " "Sure thing."

"Set it up just in case."  Abby's suspicions about the woman's fall
were confirmed.

Hardening of the arteries into Hazel's heart was causing a blockage to
the spread of electricity from her body's natural, inborn pacemakerþthe
spot in the right atrium chamber where heartbeats are normally
initiated.  The result of the blockage was a pulse rate too slow to
generate an effective blood pressure, and the pressure drop had caused
her brief faint.  For the moment the blockage kept reverting to
normal.

But that situation could change, quite literally, in a heartbeat.

The cardiologist would insert a guiding needle into the vein located
beneath Hazel's collarbone and then thread a wire through it until the
tip made contact with the inner lining of her right ventricle
chamber.

The other end of the wire would be connected to a temporary pacemaker
box, which would kick in any time the inborn pacemaker rate dropped
below seventy per minute.  Once she was stable, a permanent pacemaker
could be implanted beneath her skin.  But until the temporary wire was
in, she was in the gravest danger.

Hazel blinked twice, still clearly unaware of the commotion beginning
to swirl around her.

"Well, Doctor, " she said, "are you or are you not going to fix my
arm?

" "Not just yet, " Abby said.  "Mrs. Cookman, you and I need to
talk.

" Bud Perlow finished inserting an IV.  Then he wheeled over the
external pacemaker.  Strictly an emergency apparatus, the pacer had
paddles that were placed beneath the spine and beside the breastbone.

The electrical pulse would shoot through the patient's chest,
contracting all the muscles in her body, including her heart.  Not at
all pleasant, but lifesaving.  Abby noted that, unlike almost all the
equipment in the hospital, the rarely, if ever, used machine was quite
an outdated model.

Her gaze never leaving the overhead cardiac monitor, she did her best
to explain the situation to Hazel.

The octogenarian listened with surprising interest and patience.  She
even asked about what the permanent pacemaker would feel like beneath
her skin.

Abby had just started her explanation when the large, regular waves
indicating heartbeats vanished.  Heart block again.  Hazel's eyelids
drifted down.

"Give the atropine!  " Abby ordered, again kicking the footstool into
place.  "Lew, do you know how to use that external pacer?  " "Not
really."

"I do, " Bud said as he injected the cardiac stimulant.  "We had an .

. . . .

m-service on It a year or so ago.

"Start it up.  Clear, everyone!  " Abby called out.  "The external
pacemaker is being turned on."  Abby positioned the heel of her hand
just above Hazel's sternum, ready to set it down and pump, just in case
the pacemaker failed to produce an effective heartbeat.

"I can't get this machine working, Dr. Dolan, " Bud said.  "I think
it's shorted."  Her mind racing, Abby set her hands down to begin
pumping.  Then, as it had before, Hazel's heartbeat reverted to
normal.

And as before, in seconds, the woman was wide-awake and completely
unaware she had passed out.

"Have we reached the cardiologist?  " "It's Dr. Price, " the head
nurse said.  "He's not in-house.  We've paged him, but no answer yet.

" "Doctor, I'm still waiting for you to fix my arm, " Hazel said.

"Soon, " Abby replied.  "You had another one of those spells."

"I didn't feel anything."

"I know."  Abby told the nurse to keep a steady eye on the monitor and
have more atropine and another drug, Isuprel, ready.  Then she motioned
Lew to one corner of the room.

"I don't think we should be relying solely on the atropine or
Isuprel.

" "Agreed."

"How many pacemakers have you inserted?  " "One, a few years ago.

You?

" "Same.  I've always had cardiologists around.

Well, that's two between us, and I don't feel like standing around
waiting for disaster to strike."  Lew glanced up at the monitor.

"I like your style, Doctor, " he said.  "Let's do it.  But let's not
let anyone know we're both scared stiff."  With Hazel Cookman grousing
at them almost continuously, Abby and Lew completed the
temporary-pacemaker insertion without a hitch.  Abby numbed up the area
beneath Hazel's collarbone and disinfected it.  Then, guided by
landmarks she could only feel, she smoothly inserted the large-bore
needle through the skin beside the bone, and into the subclavian
vein.

Lew handled the electrocardiograph machine, calling out directions and
encouragement as Abby slid the fine wire through the needle, along the
subclavian vein and the superior vena cava into the heart, then across
lve, and finally into place, wedged in
the right ventricle.

"Hold it, " he said.  "You're there.  You're there."  He hooked the
wire to the small pacer box.  The capture of Haiel's heartbeat was
instant.

Abby angled her body to shield her hands until they stopped shaking.

If Lew hadn't been there, she doubted she would even have attempted the
insertion, much less completed it.

"Fine job, " he said as she sutured the wire to Hazel's skin to keep it
from dislodging.  "The capture threshold is excellent.  You can put one
of these in me any time."

"Dr. Price just called, " the head nurse announced.  "He was seeing a
consultation at the state hospital in Caledonia.  He'll be here in half
an hour."

"Okay, Mrs.  Cookman, " Abby said, "I'm ready to fix your arm now.

After that Dr. Price, the heart doctor, will admit you to the
hospital.  Even though the pacemaker Dr. Alvarez and I just put in is
working fine, I'm sure he'll want you in the coronary-care unit until
he can put in one of those permanent pacers I told you about.  Do you
understand all that?

" "Oh, yes.  I certainly do, dear.  You've done a wonderful job
explaining everything to me.  And I really would be happy to come into
your coronary unit."

"Great."

"But, unfortunately, I can't."

"Butþ" "At least not until I turn off that chicken I left simmering.

It would be a terrible waste of chicken and an even worse waste of my
house when it burns down."  Abby glanced at Lew but managed not to
react to his amusement.

"Aren't there relatives who could do it?  " she asked.

"None."

"How about a neighbor or the police?  " "I don't think Holly and Alex
would like that very much at all."

"Well, couldn't one of them do it?  " The woman patted Abby's hand.

"My dear, Holly is a one-hundred-pound German shepherd.  I don't know
exactly what Alex is, but he's bigger and meaner than Holly.  Since my
husband died, I've always had big dogs.  These two are wonderful
friends, and I certainly don't have to worry about locking up at
night.

But unless I'm there, no one could get inside the house without being
attacked or having to harm my babies.  I would never allow either thing
to happen."

"I see.  . . . Mrs.  Cookman, I'll be right back."

"Just don't be long, young lady.  I really do have to get home."  Once
again Abby motioned Lew to the far corner of the room.

"This is crazy, " she said.  "Can she do this?  " "Sign out against
medical advice to turn off her chicken?  I believe so.

"Butþ" "Listen, her pacemaker's working fine, and her heart's totally
protected, " he said.  "She lives just a mile or so from here.  I think
you should have her sign out AMA, then just load up on a few cardiac
meds, call the ambulance, and go home with her."

"Actually, since I'm on and you're done, I was thinkingþ" "No, no.

Please.  I'll do my part by staying here.  She's your patient.

I'll call my vet, Hank Tarver.  He tends to my animals.  He'll meet you
at Hazel's house and take the dogs to his kennel."

"I can't believe I'm going home with an eighty-four-year-old in
complete heart block to turn off the gas under a chicken."

"Welcome to Boondocks General, Professor.  Wait until you start getting
paid in chickens."  Abby returned via ambulance from Hazel Cookman's
bungalow prepared to tell someoneþanyoneþthat her mission to turn off
Hazel's chicken had gone like cluckwork.  Actually, she couldn't
remember ever feeling more energized about being a doctor.

Hazel, her stove turned off and her dogs on their way to the kennel,
took Abby's hand as they were hooking her back up to the monitor.

"Thank you, " she said.  "Thank you for being so kind."

"Nonsense, " Abby replied.  "You've fought the good fight for
eighty-four years.

You deserve the best any of us can give you."  Abby wrote admission
orders that would hold until the cardiologist took over in the
critical-care unit.  Then she sought out Lew.  He was in the office,
finishing up a dinner that dietary had sent up.  Even after a tough
fourteen hours in the E.R, he looked fresh.

"You're all caught up, " he said.  "And I am ready to pour a glass of
Chianti, turn my stereo on, put my feet up, and fall asleep to
VillaLobos.  I've decided paying my bills can wait for another day.  I
don't know if you've looked at the schedule or not, but tomorrow
morning I'm your relief."

"I hadn't looked, " she said.  "Come on.

I'll walk you out."  As they passed by the waiting room, a woman was
just registering at the intake desk.  Abby recognized her as one of the
diagnostic problems she had seenþthe redhead who, someone had told
Abby, had once danced with the Rockettes.  The woman caught Abby's eye,
waved sheepishly, embarrassed at being back, and immediately began
scratching her arm.

Abby motioned that she would see her shortly, then walked with Lew
across the ambulance bay and into the parking lot.  The night was the
sort never seen in the cityþa glimmering full moon low in the
northeast, a velvet star-laden sky to the west.  The Milky Way was
easily visible.

"Just beautiful, " Lew said.

A car stopped at the patient drop-off space, and a man pulled himself
up on crutches and hobbled in through the front E.R entrance.  Abby
waited until the car had driven off and it was quiet once again.

"Lew, I really appreciate your helping things go so smoothly tonight, "
she said.

"No problem.  I really enjoyed our pacemaker adventure.  Besides, I
actually feel as if I owe you more than just a little help in the E.R.

I owe you an apology.  When you first got here, I found you a bit
intimidating and standoffish.  You're neither, and I'm sorry for
thinking so."

"You know, that's really funny, because I found you standoffish and
intimidating, too."

"I heard from the nurses that you've been going up to Sam Ives's hut to
tend to his leg.  That's a very kind thing to do."

"He's got a deep fungal infection, maybe osteomyelitis.  The cultures
grew out aspergillus.  I've been going up there because there's not
much chance he'd come back here."

"Not after the way he was treated the other night by Martin
Bartholomew, there isn't."

"Bartholomew's got big problems.  But in general I've been really
impressed with most of the staff.  The town is growing on me, too.

When I first moved here, I had serious doubts.  I only left my job at
St. John's and came to Patience to be with my .  . . " Her voice
trailed off.  My what?  "Fiance" seemed a more remote possibility than
ever.

"Yes, I know.  The man in charge of new-product design at Colstar.  "
"My, this is a small town."  She found herself a bit peeved that
personal information about her would be making the rounds.  But the
truth was, even in the big city everyone was curious about everyone
elseþespecially new docs.

"So how about you?  " she asked.  "Do you like it here?  " "I do.  Most
things, anyhow."

"Most things?  What do you have problems with?  " She could tell
immediately that he was having difficulty answering the question.  He
turned and looked away toward the east.  When he spoke, it was in a
harsh whisper.

"I have problems with them, " he said with unexpected force.

Abby followed his line of sight.  There, silhouetted against the full
moon, was the Colstar cliff.  Perched atop it, illuminated by dozens of
floodlights, looking somewhat like a penitentiary, was the company.

The letters of its name, filling much of the west-facing wall, were
done in red neon.

"But why?  " she asked.

At that moment another car drove up to the entrance.  An older woman
hauled out a wheelchair from the trunk and spread it open.  Lew and
Abby helped her move her husband from the passenger seat.

"It's his chest pain, " the woman explained.  "It's all right now, but
Dr. Robbins is on the way in to check him over."  She hurried through
the sliding doors and into the E.R.

"I'd better get in there just to keep an eye on things, " Abby said to
Lew.  "If it's not too late when I finally get caught up, could I call
you to finish our conversation?  " "No calls about this, " he said, too
quickly.  He realized she was taken aback and added, "Tell you what.

I'll come in an hour early if you'd like, and we can talk."

"If you don't mind getting up that early."

"I work a farm, Abby.  I'm always up that early.  Meet me right out
here at seven.  If you're busy, I'll wait.  And, please, don't say a
word to anyone about all this until we've talked."

"O-okay, " she said, bewildered by the precautions and by his tone.

"Abby, I'm sorry if I seem paranoid, " he said in his near whisper.

"But I have every right to be."  The woman's name was Claire
Buchanan.

She had been born and raised in the Midwest and had gone to New York
City at eighteen to make it in show business.  Her hair was colored
flame-red.

"I was a damn good dancer, " she said, talking almost nonstop as Abby
carefully examined her skin, eyes, and ears.  "At least for Sioux City
I was.  But New York is a different story.  Thankfully, though, I got
lucky.

I met Dennis Buchanan, and he took me the hell out of there.  A few
years later we were living outside of LA and Dennis was selling
carpeting.  He has a gift.  Like they say, he could sell refrigerators
to Eskimos.

Anyhow, one day we were just driving around up here and we found this
town on a map.  Dennis liked the name.  We decided to spend the night,
and we weren't here fifteen minutes when he saw the For Sale sign on
the John Deere tractor place.  Claire, he told me, this is it.  This is
as far as we need to go.  That was almost ten years ago.  Now I'm
beginning to wonder if maybe I've developed an allergy to the damn
place or something.  Or maybe I'm allergic to Dennis.  I'll tell you
this, I can't stand this itching anymore."

"Mrs.  Buchananþ" "It's okay to call me Claire.  Every one does."

"Claire, tell me.  Did your itching get at all better with the
cortisone pills I gave you?  " "Maybe for a little while.  The Benadryl
might have helped a little, too.  Then it just got bad again.

Especially at night.  I went to see Dr. Oleander, but he said he
couldn't find much.  He was very complimentary about you, though.  He
said that you had done a very thorough workup on me.

"Except I can't figure out what's wrong."

"He thinks it's nerves."

"Are you the nervous type?  " "I don't think so, except that I'm very
claustrophobic.  My mother and sister are, too.

Dr. Oleander did one of those MRI tests on me for some stomach trouble
I was having.  If he hadn't given me a tranquilizer and a blindfold, I
would have never made it into that tube."

"What stormach trouble?  When?  " "I don't know.

Six, eight months ago.  The tests were all negative and my indigestion
went away.  But, Dr. Dolan, I can't sit around waiting for this
itching to go away.  You've got to do something to help me before I
just throw myself into one of Dennis's combines."

"I don't know what's going on with you, Claire, but I don't think it's
in your head.

I can sort of feel a fullness in places beneath your skin, a
thickening, but I just can't see anything.  And I can't tell if the
thickness is from your scratching so much.  I think the next step is a
dermatology consult and maybe a biopsy."

"Whatever you say."

"Actually, it's whatever Dr.  Oleander says.

He's your primary-care physician, and we try to defer making any
referrals to him.  But I'm sure he'll be happy to send you to the
dermatologist."

"I don't think so, " Claire said.  "The last time you saw me here, you
suggested I see a dermatologist.  But Dr. O said this itching was
either nerves or hives, and that all I would be doing was traveling
thirty miles each way to have a so-called specialist tell me the same
thing."

"Well, now that you're no better after a course of oral cortisone, I
think Dr. Oleander might be ready to change his mind, " Abby said,
certain that would be the case.

For an area its size Patience had excellent specialty coverage.

Cardiology, pulmonology, neurology, even rheumatology, as well as most
of the surgical specialties like urology, ENT, and orthopedics.  But no
dermatologist.  Actually, Abby did not disagree with Oleander.

Treating many of the common skin problems was a matter of applying
common sense.

The old and useful maxim regarding the specialty was, If it's dry, wet
it, if it's wet, dry it, and when in doubt, use steroids.  But from
what Abby could tell, Claire Buchanan's skin problem went beyond the
bounds of common.

"I'll tell you what, " she said.  "It's only a quarter of ten, and Dr.
Oleander is my medical backup for tonight anyway.  Would you feel
better if I gave him a call?  " "Oh, I would.  Thank you, Doctor.

Thank you very much."  Abby never liked encountering patients who were
overawed by their physicians, although she did acknowledge that some
patients seemed to be genetically bred to be so.  It seemed to her to
be the doctor's responsibility to break down such barriers to
communication.

From all she could tell, George Oleander was a damn fine primary-care
doctor.  As chief of medicine, he unquestionably ran a tight ship.  But
he did have an air of confidence that might inhibit some patients from
questioning his decisions or from asking for a second opinion.

She sent off another series of routine blood studies on Claire, just in
case, and went back to the doctors' office.  Oleander answered before
the second ring.

"George, hi, it's Abby Dolan.  Sorry to call you at this hour,
especially since this isn't about an emergency."

"No problem, Abby.

I was just reading and wondering why the hospital seemed so quiet.  "
"Actually, it hasn't been.  But our one admission was a unit case, and
Brian Price is in with her."  At Oleander's request she reviewed her
odyssey with Hazel Cook man.

When she finished, the medical chief laughed roundly.

"I know those dogs of hers, " he said.  "And they are tough.  But I
think I'd prefer a run-in with them to one with Hazel.  It sounds like
you did a great job, Abby.  And you can bet that within a day or two
everyone in Patience will have heard about itþor at least some version
of it.  It's exactly what this community needs."

"Thank you."  Community.  Abby tried to remember how many times Lyle
Quinn had invoked the word.

"I'm glad to hear this story, too, " Oleander continued, "because I'd
been meaning to speak with you."

"Again?  " "I'm afraid Dr. Bartholomew and just about everyone else
has heard about what you did the other night, replacing the sutures he
put in old Sam Ives."

"Ives isn't that old, " Abby said, feeling her temper begin to build.

"And Dr.  Bartholomew's suture job was unacceptable."

"He didn't think so.  Abby, Marty Bartholomew's been a part of this
community for years.  At times he can be a bit of a horse's behind,
I'll give you that.  But he's been available to folks in snowstorms at
three in .

the morning.  He delivered babies before our obstetricians came on
board.

He's very much loved here."  Abby knew that there was nothing to be
gained by arguing her case in this court.  Still, she had to choose her
words and maintain her composure carefully.

"I did what I thought was best for the patient."

"I understand, Abby.

But as I said last week in my office, sometimes things in a community
hospital work a little differently than in the big city.  Now, what do
you have for me tonight?  " His tone left no room for retort.  The
discussion was over.  The point Abby had scored for her treatment of
Hazel Cookman had offset the one she had lost for her abuse of the ego
of Martin Bartholomew.  It was time to move on.

Picking her way through her presentation so as not to say anything
Oleander might interpret as inflammatory or confrontational, Abby
reviewed Claire Buchanan's case.  Her hope was that Oleander would come
to the conclusion himself that a dermatology referral was in order.

"Sounds like classic neurodermatitis to me, " he said when she had
finished, employing the diagnosis given to any and all skin symptoms
believed to have an underlying emotional cause.

"I was wondering about some unusual kind of vasculitis.  She's quite
uncomfortable."

"I can tell you want me to send her to Dr. O'Brien in Caledonia,
Abby.

And I might.  But I like to be certain we've done all we can for our
people here in Patience before shipping them off to doctors
elsewhere.

" "I understand, " Abby said, though, in truth, she didn't.

"Well, then, why don't you go ahead and put Claire on some mild
tranquilizer like Valium or Xanax and tell her to give me a call in the
office tomorrow?  I'll see her.  If she needs a little punch biopsy,
we can do that here.  If we're absolutely stumped, I'll call O'Brien.

We're trying to get him to open an office here in Patience.  Our case
is weakened if he believes our people can just pull up and drive thirty
miles each way to see him."

"I'll be anxious to know what you think.

" "I'll send you a copy of my office note, Abby.  That Bartholomew 'I
business notwithstanding, you're doing an excellent job.  Keep up the
good work."

"Thank you."

"Oh, and Abby, tell Claire she really ought to be calling me before she
runs to the emergency ward.  You folks have enough to worry about.

I'll be here all night if you need me."  He hung up without waiting for
a reply.  Somehow he had read and deflected Abby's agenda before she
had even presented it.  As a result, Claire Buchanan would be treated
according to the wishes of her regular doctor, not Abby's.  It was the
downside of the medical specialty she had chosen.  Abby returned to her
patient feeling vaguely uneasy that she hadn't battled harder on her
behalf.

CHAPTER NINE.

The flow of patients through the E.R remained steady throughout the
night, though never close to overwhelming.  With a little over an hour
to go before the end of her shift, Abby showered in the on-call room
and took the chance of putting on her street clothes and clinic coat,
rather than scrubs.  She had been awake since treating a threeyear-old
with an earache at five-thirty and had spent most of that time thinking
about Lew and the concerns he had offered to share with her about
Colstar.

She made one quick pass around the deserted E.R, then told the night
nurse where she'd be and headed out into an overcast morning.  To the
east the Colstar cliff was still in shadow, but sprawled above it, the
massive plant glowed in the pale morning haze.  Lew was right where he
had said he would be, standing beside an isolated low bench on the far
side of the tarmac.  Even at a distance she sensed his tension.

"Hi, " she said.

"Morning.  How was your night?  " "Manageable.  Two NIWWs.  But
otherwise not much."

"NIWWs?  " "The abbreviation for no idea what's wrong.  My chief
resident taught it to me.  Lately, it seems, I've been seeing more of
them than I'm used to."

"NIWWs.  I like that.  I really do."  Lew's expression and ironic laugh
suggested he knew something she didn't.

"So, " she said, "what's this all about?  " Lew stopped her with a
finger raised to his lips and glanced about warily.

Thirty yards away two nurses crossed the parking lot, dearlyþto Abby at
leastþout of earshot.  He shook his head, warning her not to continue
the conversation until they had entered the hospital.

"I'd like your promise not to share this discussion with anyone, " he
whispered finally.  The intensity in his eyes was startling.

"Lew, " she replied, just as softly, "nobody can hear us."

"Don't be so sure.  I think my home phone may be tapped.  I don't know
what else they might have done."

"Who?  " Lew turned his gaze toward Colstar.

"The same people who built this placeþthem."

"Lew, I'm sorry, but I don't understand."

"Those patients you've been seeingþthe NIWWs?  " "What about them?  "
"What sorts of symptoms do they have?  Headache?

Rash?  Fatigue?  Chronic cough?  Insomnia?  Mood swings?  Low-grade
fevers?  " She looked at him queerly.  He wasn't asking her, he was
telling.

"Those kinds of things, " she said.  "Yes."

"Well, I've got news for you.  Patients with those kinds of unexplained
symptoms are all over the place here.  Far more than one would
expect."

"Maybe I'm just dense, Lew.  But I still don't get it."  He glanced
around again.

"Look, this isn't a good time or place to talk.  I don't trust anyone
in this hospital.  In fact, I don't even trust the building.  That's
why I want you to be very careful what you say in the doctors' room.

It might be bugged, or worse."  Cameras?

Abby was sickened by the thought.  She was also wondering about Lew.

"Believe it or not, it's possible, " he said, seeing the doubt in her
face.  "I've looked all over for microphones or cameras with no luck,
but I'm no secret agent."

"Maybe you'd better get to the point."

"Abby, listen.  We really shouldn't stay out here like this too much
longer.  They already know I'm the enemy.  Pretty soon, if they see us
together too much, it will be guilt by association for you.  I may
sound paranoid about Colstar, but believe me, I have every right to
be.

You'll understand if you give me the chance to explain."

"Go on."

"Okay.  There's a group of committed people who are trying to do
something about all this.  Trying to do something about your NIWWs.

I'd like you to come to our next meeting."  Abby looked toward the cliff
and then back at Lew.  Were the "committed people" in his group the
ones Lyle Quinn had warned her about?  It certainly seemed that way.

Being asked to choose sides between Quinn and Lew Alvarez would pose no
problem for her.  But she was still very new in town, and she had
enough problems of her own at home.

"Oh, Lew, I don't know, " she said.  "I'm not much of a crusader, and
I've never been a joiner."

"At least come and hear what we have to say, " he said.  "We call
ourselves the Alliance.  We meet every three or four weeks at one
member's house or another.  Tomorrow night it will be at mine."  Lew
handed her an envelope with directions.  "Whether you come or not,
please don't tell anyone about this, especially your friend."

"Well, the truth is, Josh has been very tense lately.

Pressures at work, I think.  So I don't know that there's much to be
gained by telling him I've been approached by people who want to cause
problems for his company."

"No more problems than they're causing for all of us, " Lew
interjected.

"Lew, I just can't tell you yes or no right now.  What I said about not
being a crusader is really true.  I'm not proud of it, but I was on
duty in the E.R during the last election, and I never even made the
effort to vote."  Lew's expression was deadly serious.

"Believe me, Abby, " he said, "your involvement with the Alliance and
what we're determined to do would more than balance that."

"I understand that's how you feel.  I'll just have to see."

"Fine.

Meanwhile, you might start keeping a log of those NIWW patients.

I do."  Before leaving the hospital Abby called Claire Buchanan.  The
tranquilizer had given her a few hours of sleep, but the profound
itching persisted.  She would be calling Dr. Oleander in an hour or
so, she said.

Abby encouraged her to give herself a break for at least one day by
taking the sedation as often as was safe.  She set the receiver down,
still feeling as if she hadn't done all she could have on the woman's
behalf.

With Josh already at work there was no need to rush home.  And as usual
following a night shift, even those when she got no sleep, Abby was
reluctant to go right to bed.  If she did, she would be asleep in
minutes and would have trouble waking up no matter what the time.

Further, she had found that ten or eleven hours of sleep often left her
feeling logier than her usual seven.  It was better to try to put at
least part of the morning to some use before surrendering to
Morpheus.

She drove through the park for a time, then stopped for a brief walk
down to the lake.  It was all so peaceful, so picture perfect.  On the
way back to her car she stopped and gazed across the ball field at the
spot where Angela Cristoforo had stood, her blood cascading onto the
sparkling, manicured grass.  Abby had followed up on Angela and learned
that soon after her lacerations were repaired, she was transferred to a
locked ward at the state hospital in Caledonia.  A long-term,
competent, dependable Colstar employee one minute, then suddenly a
pathe ic self-mutilator.  It did not make a great deal of sense, but
mental illness in its many guises often didn't.

It was after nine when she started up the Mazda and headed home.  There
were some letters she wanted to write.  And if, by some miracle, she
was still awake, there was the book on making the most of the passage
into midlife that she had been reading so slowly, her midlife might be
over by the time she finished it.  She had always loved the eeriness,
the unpredictability, and the strange characters she encountered working the night shift in the E.R.  But she invariably had
trouble reconnecting with life outside the hospital when she did.

The moment she turned into the drive and saw Josh's Jeep, she knew
there was trouble.  He should have been at work hours ago.  She pulled
up behind the Wrangler and became even more convinced something was
wrong.

Josh was in love with his car and was obsessive about caring for it.

Now it was an absolute mess.  There were thick streaks of dried and
still-drying mud all over it, as if he had been offroading in and out
of quagmires.  The tires were caked.  The windshield was splattered as
well.

There were three empty beer bottles and crumpled-up food wrappers on
the floor.  Even the driver's seat was smeared with dry mud, as if he
had fallen someplace and then, sodden, had crawled back behind the
wheel.

The back door to the house was open.  The kitchen had been treated as
rudely as the Jeep.  It smelled of alcohol and stale food.  A wrapper
from a sub shop was crumpled on the table along with two half-eaten
Hostess cupcakes.  Josh was enough of a health-food nut to patronize a
sub shop only as a last resort.  The cupcakes simply didn't compute at
all.  Next to the sink were bottles of Tylenol, Fioricet, and
ibuprofen.  Their caps were off, but none of the bottles was close to
empty.  Beside the pills, on its side, was an empty pint bottle of
tequila.

Fearing the worst, she called out his name once, then again.  The
second time, from the living room, he moaned.  He was on the couch,
passed out, but in no obvious danger.  He had on jeans, a sleeveless T,
and his high-cut hiking boots.  All were filthy.  There were muddy
tracks on the carpet.

Abby checked his pulses, which were strong, and his pupils, which were
somewhat dilated.  Two and a half years together, and she had never
seen him drunk.  In fact, she always teased him about being something
of an alcohol snob, preferring to savor his microbrewed beer from a
tall glass or stein while she drank Bud from a can.  Now he reeked of
alcohol.

Looking down at him, she felt no angerþonly the concern of a physician
and the sadness of a woman watching the love relationship that had
meant so much to her slip away.

Without trying to rouse him she checked the answering machine.  The
only message was from someone at work, calling a half hour ago,
wondering where he was.

Numbly, Abby went to the kitchen and began to clean up, playing the
nightmare scenario over in her mind.

Could it possibly have turned out worse?

When the moaning from the living room became louder and more
purposeful, Abby wet a dish towel and brought it in.  She wiped his
face.

His reddened, rheumy eyes fluttered open.  He struggled to focus on
her.

"They've called from work looking for you, " she said, surprised by her
first words and the coolness in her voice.

He pawed at his eyes and tried to moisten his lips with his sandpaper
tongue.  It took several seconds for his condition to begin to
register.

As it did, there was no mistaking his confusion.

"What time is it, Abby?  " Nine-thirty .  . . A. M.

"I never oversleep."

"You do when you're smashed on tequila and pills and out driving all
night in your Jeep."  He struggled to a sitting position and surveyed
himself again.

"I never went driving off-road."

"I think the Jeep would beg to differ.  Go look at it."

"Jesus."  He rubbed at his eyes.  "All I remember is this headache.

Right here."  He pointed to the middle of his forehead.

"Sounds like you were in a blackout.  The Jeep is filthy.  Mud all over
it."

"I .  . . I don't remember going out at all."  He brushed at the filth
on his boots.  "But I guess, if you say so."  He stumbled to his feet,
nearly falling over the coffee table.

"Josh, you need help.  I've been telling you that for weeks.  I want to
call Dr. Owen right now and have him see you and order an MRI or CT
scan."

"No!  .  . . I mean, I've already scheduled an appointment with him.

I'm okay now.  I just had a little too much to drink.  I'm no big
drinker, and it just got the better of me.  Now, I just need to get
cleaned up and get into the office.  I have a report to do andþ"
"Josh, I will not stand by and watch you destroy yourselfþdestroy
usþlike this."

"Dammit, Abby, why in the hell can't you see what your part is in all
this?  " 'I "My part?  " "Yes, your part."  He was pacing now, as
agitated as she had ever seen him.  His voice was getting louder,
shriller.  For the first time in their life together Abby felt a spark
of fear.

"You work all night, " he ranted on.  "You study when you're not
working.

You sleep when you're not studying.  You have no idea the stress you're
causing around here.  And then, just because I'm having some headaches
and get a little drunk, you come home and demand that I go and see a
goddamn neurologist on top of the shrink you've already told me to
see!

Why can't you understand the stress I'm under?  Why can't you see that
I have needs, too?  " For the briefest moment the attack worked.  Abby
felt herself weaken.

"Josh, I meant what I said."  She forced the words out.

"Well, I meant what I said, too, dammit."  He was screaming now.  "And
no one's going to tell me what to do.  No one!  Especially not you!  "
She glared at him and then turned away.  He grabbed her shoulders and
spun her around to face him.  His eyes were glazed with anger.

Remote.

Almost unseeing.  Reflexively, Abby braced herself to be hit.  Instead,
Josh whirled suddenly and slammed his fist through the living-room
wall.

Then he stumbled out to the backyard and threw up on the lawn.

Shaking from the assault, Abby started out to comfort him.  Then she
stopped by the doorway, held in place by a powerful feeling of distance
and detachment.  Shutting out his retching as best she could, she raced
to the small guest room and threw herself onto her bed.  She had played
her last card in their relationship.  Now it was up to him.

Psychiatrist Graham DeShield cherished his reputation as the therapist
to the stars.  Whether it was a football superhero, a movie star from
Carmel, or any number of San Francisco's elite and powerful, DeShield
would see them at whatever hour and place their notoriety required.  He
was not at all bothered that some in his field disparaged him as a
social climber with minimal academic credentials, while others made
light of his "cheerleader" approach to psychotherapy and even of his
intellect.

His professional plate was full and fascinating, and his successes,
especially in dealing with phobias and narcissism, were well publicized
and substantiated.  The key, he knew, was prescreening.  If a case was
too mundane, too complicated, or held little chance for recovery, he
would simply be too busy to take it.  If the prospective patient was of
sufficient stature or resources, he might agree to institute therapy,
provided the grimness of the prognosis was clear.

Today DeShield had just finished a Bay Club luncheon at which he .

was the featured speaker.  Later in the afternoon he would be having an
initial evaluation appointment with Bebe Washington, the actress.  He
had seen several of her films and had to agree with those who put her
among the most beautiful women in the world.  Her agent, also a
patient, had referred her.

Unfortunately, sandwiched between his luncheon talk and Bebe Washington
was twenty-seven-year-old Ethan Black.  As the son of Ezra Black, one
of the wealthiest men in the country, Ethan was automatically accepted
as a patient.  That he had failed, so far, to respond to treatment was
a source of frustration and even angst for DeShield.  Black Ezra, as
his father was known, had a legendary, hair-trigger temper and a
reputation for utterly destroying people who crossed him in business or
disappointed him in any other way.  Of course, there were others who
were set for life because they had, for whatever reason, ingratiated
themselves with the man.

DeShield heard the door to his waiting room open and close, and knew it
was Ethan.  He took a few final seconds to gaze out at the panorama
from his twenty-third-story officeþviews of Alcatraz, the bay, and the
Golden Gateþand then reviewed his notes.

Ethan Black was working as comptroller for some sort of familyowned
company up in Patience.  His psychiatric history dated back only a year
or so.  Following an automobile accident in which he sustained some
head trauma and multiple minor lacerations, his passive, introspective
personality underwent a radical change.  After a number of fights,
including one in which he'd bludgeoned a man with a baseball bat, he
was referred to DeShield and placed in the Hempstead Institute just
outside the city.

All neurologic tests and scans had been negative, and postconcussion
syndrome seemed the obvious diagnosis.  The prognosis for that
condition was excellent.  Just the way DeShield liked it.

In each of their previous sessions, DeShield had outlined what seemed
to him to be a reasonable therapeutic program for Ethan to use in
dealing with his aggression, hostility, and acting outþa program
calling for the summoning forth of Ethan's inner child.  Each time, it
seemed, there was complete understanding between them.  Each time Ethan
left with the promise that he would employ his mental exercises and
avoidance maneuvers before lashing out at anyone.  Each time, when
Black Ezra phoned to check on his son's progress, DeShield had given
him a hopeful response.  And each time Black's scion had gone right out
and hurt someone.  Money had been able to smooth over the damage so
far.  But Ezra Black dearly hated paying off anyone.  And more and more
DeShield sensed the man was blaming him for the failures.

Referring Ethan to another therapist was, of course, out of the
question.  Black Ezra had hired him because of his reputation as the
best.  How could there be anyone better?

With a sigh DeShield pushed himself back from his desk and opened the
door to the waiting room.  Ethan was there with his driver/ bodyguard,
smiling the same bland smile that the therapist had learned not to
trust at all.

"Ethan, please, come in.  Come in."  Black was five nine, but built
like a wrestler.  He had thick, curly dark hair, and a perpetual five
o'clock shadow.  In truth there was nothing about the man DeShield
liked.  His appearance and demeanor annoyed the doctor to
distraction.

His high-pitched voice sounded like a perpetual whine.

"I had more headaches, " Black said.

"Tell me about it."  DeShield glanced at his desk clock and tried to
will a faster sweep to the second hand.

"Well, you know those dreams?  The ones where I lose an arm, then a
leg, then the other arm and leg, and then my penis and my balls, and
finally my head?  " "Yes, Ethan, I remember."  How could I not when you
tell it to me every session?

"Well, I've been having them every night.  Bloodier and more painful
than ever.  They're horrible.  Really terrifying.  I think what you've
been telling me is true."

"What's that?  " "That the villain in the dreamsþthe one chopping my
parts offþ is me."

"Of course it is.  But you can overcome that sense of low self-esteem
by simply employing the positive-mental-attitude exercises I have
taught you."

"PMA.  I know.

I've tried.  Really, I have.  Well, I think the dreams set me up again,
because yesterday and again this morning the headaches hit."

"Tell me about them."  Tell me about them.  Tell me about them.

DeShield wondered how many more times he would have to say the words
before the hour was over.  He began thinking about Bebe Washington.

"The same as all the other times, only maybe worse.  First there's the
smell I told you about, sort of like rotten eggs.  Sulfury.  As soon as
that hits, I know I'm in trouble.  The smell gets worse and worse,
then, after twenty or thirty minutes, my head explodes."

"Ethan, did you hurt anyone this time?  " "I .  . . um .  . . I got
sick."

"But did you hurt anyone?  " "I think I hit a guard."  DeShield felt
his stomach knot.  Another ten or fifteen thousand in hush money from
Black Ezra.  Another black mark on Graham DeShield's scorecard.

"Ethan, Ethan, " he said, summoning his strength for one more allout
attack.  "Let's try some relaxation exercises."

"Sure."

"Okay.

Now, close your eyes and concentrate on my voice.  You must believe in
me, Ethan.  You must believe that I love you, that I believe in you.  "
"You believe in me, " Ethan murmured.

"That's it.  Okay, now picture yourself on a mountaintop.  A beam of
shimmering golden light is shining down on you from beyond the clouds,
bathing you in its warm glow.  Can you feel it?  " "I can feel it.  I
can feel it."  Ethan stood up.  Arms spread, eyes still closed, he
turned slowly, basking in the golden light.

From behind his desk, feeling vaguely nauseous, DeShield watched him,
thinking about how absolutely ridiculous he lookedþthe pirouetting
hippo in Fantasia.

"That's it, Ethan.  Feel the warmth.  Feel your inner child take
over.

" Ethan continued his slow spin.

"The inner child, Ethan.  Listen to your inner child and do as he
says.

" "Okay, " Ethan said.

He stopped, hands on hips.

"Okay what?  " "I hear my inner child.  I know what he's telling me to
do."

"Wonderful.  That's wonderful."  Ethan's expression seemed more
animated.  His body posture more confident.  Hang in there with me,
Black Ezra, DeShield thought.  Maybe this really was a breakthrough.

"Dr.  DeShield?  " "Yes, Ethan."

"Tell my father you tried."  With two strong steps Ethan hurled his
stocky body upward against the huge picture window.  The glass
shattered almost noiselessly as he hurtled through it.  He fell without
uttering a sound.  In an instant, there was only silenceþsilence and
the rush of warm summer air into the air-conditioned office.

Numbly, Graham DeShield moved to the window.  He had always suffered
from vertigo when looking down from any height, and he had to hang on
to the wall to peer at what remained of his patient.  His phone had
rung several times before he noticed it.

"H-hello?  " he heard himself say.

"Dr. DeShield, Ezra Black here.  I'm sorry to disturb your session,
but I need to speak with my son."  Abby's alarm went off at seven P.

M. Her next shift at work wasn't for two days, but after an
all-nighter, her body needed to be eased back into normal-world time.

Sleeping some during the day, then getting up and staying awake until
midnight, usually did the trick.  Her shades were upþanother trick of
the tradeþso that the early-evening light could help her get
oriented.

She rolled out of bed, aware that the house was very quiet.  Josh was
either passed out in his room, or he had pulled himself together and
gone into work.

For a few minutes she sat on the small chair by her window, gazing at
the mountains as she sorted out her emotions.  She was uncomfortable
with the coldness that had worked its way into her heart.  But, in
truth, there was nothing she could do about it.  The look in Josh's
eyes as he grabbed her shoulders would never be erased from her
memory, regardless of what became of their relationship.  Stretching,
she walked to the living room.  Even before she saw the note on the
dining-room table, she knew that he was gone.  The computer and printer
that were his lifeline were missing as well.

Abbyþ I've made a terrible mess of things.  I never wanted to leave San
Francisco.  I never wanted to come here.  But what could I do?  They
offered me so much money and so much respect.  You were paying for
everything and trying to act like it didn't matter to you.  Well, it
did to me.  Now, I just don'tt know what's going on except that I put my
hands on you in anger and came close to striking you.  Maybe I'm going
crazy.

Maybe there is something wrong with my brain.  Maybe it's just the
pressure at work, and the adjustment I haven't made to living here.  It
isn't my feelings for you, which are as strong as ever.

I've taken some time off from work to do some hiking and some
thinking.

When I return, it won't be to the house.  Until I straighten myself
out, I just don't want to be around you.  I've spoken to a realtor and
rented a place west of the valley.  I'll call soon and arrange to pick
up some more of my stuff.  I'll go to those doctors.  I promise I
will.

Meanwhile, at least I won't be doing any more damage.

Take care, and forgive me for wrecking everything.  I'll be in touch.

I love you, Josh Abby sank down onto the sofa and reread the note.

After so many recent arguments and so much verbal abuse, she knew that
her overriding feeling at that moment was reliefþrelief that there
would be some space between them, relief that Josh had agreed to get
help, and, finally, relief that her conflict about attending the
Alliance meeting had been resolved.

, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

It was seven-thirty in the evening when Abby smoothed out Lew's map on
the passenger seat of the Mazda and headed across the valley.  Dense
clouds made headlights helpful, and a drop in the temperature suggested
rain might be on the way.  Just over twenty-four hours had passed since
she had read Josh's note.  There had been no word from him since.  Nor
had she tried to find out where he had gone.  As isolated as she was
feeling, as apprehensive as she was about the future, she knew that
separating was the best thing they could have done.  There might not be
healing yet, but at least the bleeding had stopped.  She had called
Garrett Owen, the neurologist, and learned that Josh had scheduled an
appointment several weeks away for an evaluation of headaches.

"If he had told my nurse that it was an emergency, " Owen told her,
"she would have spoken to me, and I would have found a spot to squeeze
him in."  Abby was about to ask Owen to do just that but stopped
herself.  It was Josh's game now, and he could call the shots.

The route on Lew's map took her past the cutoffto Ives's trail, then
along the base of the northern hills.  Finally, about a mile west of
town, she found the dirt road labeled on the map "my driveway."  At the
base of the road was a crudely cut and painted arrow that read, The
MeadowsþAlvarez.

The stony dirt drive sloped steeply upward for half a mile.  It was
hard to imagine Lew getting home at all when it snowed.  At the crest
of the hill was his farm, an unpretentious patchwork of wooden-fenced
meadows, stretching out around a rambling whitewashed two-story house,
a large old barn, and two garage-sized outbuildings.  The spectacular
vista, south and east, spanned the entire town and included a
long-distance view of the Colstar cliff and the mountains beyond.

There were several cows grazing nearby.  Farther out, in a field of
wildflowers, a pair of horses moved slowly toward one another.

She had no idea how many members of the Alliance would be there and was
somewhat dismayed to see just two cars, one of which she assumed to be
Lew's.  Alvarez greeted her warmly at the door.  He was wearing worn
jeans, a plaid denim work shirt, and scuffed cowboy boots.  The outfit
looked as natural on him as did blue scrubs and a clinic coat.

"This place is lovely, " she said as he led her through a fireplaced
kitchen that looked as if it had been designed by someone who had a
passion for cooking.

"I knew you'd like it."  They passed through a short paneled hallway to
a spacious den.  The walls of both were covered with framed
photographs.  Most of them seemed to be taken in a foreign country, and
a number of them featured a womanþa slender, dark-haired beauty with a
luminous smile.  Abby asked where the pictures had been taken.

"Paraguay.  That's where I was born, and where I chose to practice
after I finished my training here.  The woman in the pictures is .  .

was .  .

. my wife.  She's dead."

"I'm sorry."  His sadness was palpable.

"Thank you.  So am I, " he said.

The den was set up with a wet bar, some dishes of pretzels and chips,
and a slide projector and screen.  The only other person there was a
stout, middle-aged woman named Barbara Torres, the associate director
of the Patience Valley Region Visiting Nurse Association.

"I'm very pleased you've come, " she said.  "We've been hearing so many
good things about you."  Abby thanked the woman and accepted a Perrier
and lime from "Are you expecting many people tonight?  " she asked.

Lew and Torres exchanged brief glances.

"Gil Brant, who owns the pharmacy in town, should be here shortly, "
Lew said.  He paused, searching for the right words.  "The Alliance
used to number several dozen, but for now, at least, I'm afraid we're
it."  .  . . Very few.  They're harmless because no one takes them very
seriously.

Lyle Quinn certainly seemed to have his facts in order.

Lew motioned her to an easy chair positioned to get a good view of the
screen.

"Perhaps while we're waiting for Gil, " Lew went on, "Barbara and I
could fill you in on our group's history and goals."

"Please."

"I was the last E.R physician to come here before you.  By the time I
arrived, David Brooks, who'd been here for a couple of years, had been
noticing a disturbing number of the sort of cases you refer to as
NIWWs."

"NIWWs?  " Torres asked.

"Abby's abbreviation for no idea what's wrong, " Lew said.  Barbara's
smile suggested that, like him, she appreciated the irony in the
label.

"Well, " Lew continued, "over the months after I started here, David
and I began talking about these casesþthe strange rashes, chronic
fatigue, adult asthma, headaches, and the like.  We became convinced
that some sort of environmental exposure had to be at the root of them
all.  And, of course, the most likely source was up there on the
cliff.

" The doorbell rang.  Lew left and returned with Gil Brant, a tall man
with a cheerful, ruddy face.

"Let me congratulate you on your handwriting and the accuracy of
your prescriptions, " Brant said after their introduction.  "And let me
also thank you for your commitment to see this cause of ours through.

" Abby felt her cheeks redden.  Lew spoke up quickly.

"Gil, Abby has made it clear that she's not committed to any cause.

She's come to hear what we have to say and to see if there's a unifying
explanation for the strange cases she's been seeing in the E.R.  That's
all."

"Yes, yes, I see.  Well, then, why don't we have at it?  " "Barbara,
why don't you show Abby what we have?  " Lew said.

Torres took a computer printout from her briefcase and handed it
over.

"This is a list of one hundred seventy-five patients who have been seen
in the emergency ward by Dr. Alvarez, Dr. Brooks, bless his soul, and
by some of us at the VNA.  The ages and diagnoses are beside each
name.

Some of them may have had definite diagnoses made by their private
doctors by now, but we have no way of knowing."  Abby scanned the
printout.  The patients she had seen during her own brief experience at
PRH were a microcosm of this group.

"I could probably add an additional twenty or so patients myself, " she
said.  "What about enlisting some of the other doctors in town?  "
"When David first confirmed my sense that there was a pattern, " Lew
said, "just as I did when you told me about your strange cases, we
decided to do just that.  Without even suggesting that Colstar was at
fault, we sent out flyers announcing an organizational meeting of a
group we named Alliance for a Healthy Patience and describing the
symptoms we'd seen.  About fifty people attended that meeting,
including at least fifteen doctors from the hospital staff."

"Well, what happened?  " Lew turned to the pharmacist.

"Gil?  " "Well, the people at Colstar got wind of what we were doing
and started a campaign to discredit us almost immediately.  Attendance
at our meetings dropped each time.  Then, when we tried and failed to
prove our theory about what was going on, we began to be looked on as.

. . asþ" "Go ahead, Gil, say it.  As quacks."

"Well, what was your theory?  " Abby asked.

Brant looked to Lew, who nodded that it was fine for him to go on.

"Cadmium, " he said.  "This Colstar plant, in addition to being the
company headquarters and research center, manufactures all of their
rechargeable batteries.  Cadmium is one of the main components.

Colstar has it shipped in by the ton.  Our theory right from the
beginning has been that all of the varied symptoms we've been seeing
have been caused by cadmium poisoning either through the air or the
water."  Abby strained to remember what little she knew of the adverse
effects of the heavy metal.

"Toxicity somewhat like mercury, yes?  " "Exactly, " Brant said.  "It's
in the same column as mercury in the periodic table of elements.  You
know your chemistry."  Lew lowered the lights with a dimmer and flicked
on the slide projector.  The first slide, expertly prepared, was
headed, "Symptoms and Signs of Cadmium Toxicity."  The list was
extensive.

"These slides were put together for presentations to both OSHA and EPA,
" he explained.  "Obviously, they didn't make much of an impression, or
we wouldn't be here tonight."  The list included all of the symptoms and
findings Abby and the others had been seeing, plus a number of
additional ones.  Kidney failure, which Abby had not encountered in the
E.R, was the most serious common manifestation, along with severe
respiratory disease.  But everything from headaches to skin eruptions
to zinzivitis and even sterility was listed as well.

Even So, " Abby said, "don't keep me in suspense.  What were the blood
levels?  " Again, the three Alliance members exchanged glances.

"We managed to get fourteen or fifteen samples sent off on various
patients, " Lew responded.  "They were all negative."

"Done at the hospital or sent out?  " "Mostly here.  The hospital lab
has a contract with employee health at Colstar to monitor nickel,
cadmium, lithium, and the other potential toxins used at the plant.  So
they have all the equipment and expertise."

"We think the hospital lab is under instructions to keep any positive
test under the tightest wraps, " Torres added.

"Another possibility is that someone in the lab replaces all blood sent
in for cadmium levels with blood they know will be negative, " Brant
chimed in.

"But why?  " "The usual reason, " Lew said.  "Money.  It would cost
millions for Colstar to close for any length of time, locate the source
of contamination, and do whatever is necessary to correct it.  In
addition, Colstar competes with a number of other companies for very
lucrative government contracts.  Anything that forces them to retool
would also make them ineligible or unable to stay in the game.  Did you
know that Senator Corman is from Patience?  " "Most definitely.  It was
always the first thing I was told whenever I asked anyone about the
town."

"Corman's tight with Ezra Black.  Colstar's one of the companies in
Black's empire, " Lew went on.  "Plus, Corman has as much support
around here as he does clout in Washington.  He's responsible for
ensuring that huge government contracts keep coming this way.  But if
there's an environmental disaster involving the company, it's doubtful
even he could protect it.  Let's show you some more of these.

" The first ten shots were different views of the plant itself, perched
atop its massive butte.

"These were taken by Dave Brooks about eight years ago.  Note the smoke
coming from those stacks.  The companyþand their story's backed up by
the EPAþtells us that's just steam.  We have doubts.  Now they only
emit whatever it is at night.  You hardly ever see smoke during the
day."

"And what are those?  " Abby pointed to three identical dark,
ill-defined areas in one of the shots, each one tall and narrow.  They
were situated one directly above the other and spaced vertically down
the sheer cliff face beneath the plant.  The angle of the other shots
was such that the rectangles were not apparent in any of them.

"I've never even noticed those before, " Lew said.  "Have you two?  "
"I would have thought they were just shadows, " Barbara said, "or else
some sort of optical illusion.  But now that you call my attention to
them, I can see them clearly."

"They look like slits in the rock, " Brant added.  "Windows of some
sort?

I don't know if they're even there now."

"Curious, " Lew said.

"Well, we'll have to check.  Thanks for noticing them.  I knew we
brought you up here for a reason.  Next, take a look right here in the
corner."

"That stream?  " "Almost a river in the melting season.

Only it's not visible anymore.

Colstar built a huge addition right over it.  I have no idea where the
water goes, except it eventually must end up in the quarry where the
town gets its water."

"Has the quarry water been tested?  " "All tests negative."

"What do the people from EPA and OSHA say?  " "Mostly they don't bother
paying attention to us anymore.  They came on-site two years ago at our
request but reported finding nothing significant.  But, remember, we're
talking about the potential economic death of an entire town here.

That's powerful stuff, especially when it involves an influential
senator.  We think EPA is closing its eyes to whatever is going on.

"The story I'm going to tell you may be hard to believe, but it's
absolutely true.  There's a tire company down south that has about the
same relationship to the town it's in as Colstar does to us.  A few
years ago the workmen's-comp cases reported by the company to OSHA
began piling up.  Many of them involved limbs lost or mangled in
substandard, obviously dangerous machines.  The secretary of labor, who
is the ultimate head of OSHA, rode into town personally and closed the
plant down for innumerable violations.  He expected a bushel of
public-opinion points for the administration.  But surprise!  The
outcry from the town was immediate and the political pressure
intense.

The plant was reopened within a day or two pending more indepth
investigation.  It has never closed since.  And as far as I know, the
manglings just continue."

"Do you think Patience would become a ghost town without Colstar?  "
Gil Brant answered.

"I believe we'd go through some hard times, but I think we'd rebound
especially if some other manufacturer took over, or Colstar retooled.

" "I think we could manage off tourism, " Barbara said.  "And with time
I'm certain something else would come along."

"But you haven't been able to get the community behind you?  " That
word again.  Only this time it was Abby herself who was using it.

"In the beginning, " Lew responded, "we had a pretty staunch core
group, even after our posters got torn down, the Chronicle stopped
covering our meetings, and we started getting intimidating phone
calls.

But then David died."

"What do you mean?  " "David told me he had proofþa tape of a
conversation and some papersþthat Colstar was tampering with the blood
samples sent to the hospital lab.  A few days later he was found dead
at the base of a rock called the Spike.  It was ruled an accidental
fall by the police and the coroner, but we all have our doubts.  David
was an experienced freehand climber, and the Spike wasn't that hard.

He'd climbed it alone many times.  After he died, we decided to make
our meetings less conspicuous.

In fact, we've virtually gone underground."  Not far enough to escape
Lyle Quinn's notice.  Abby felt a chill at the thought of her
predecessor's death not being accidental.

"If he was murdered, who do you think is responsible?  " "I'll show you
in a minute, " Lew said.

"So now there are just the three of you?  " "We would certainly like to
have more, " Barbara said.  "But the truth is, it makes no difference
to the commitment we feel.  We believe the company is making a lot of
people ill, and we can't just stand by and allow it to happen."

"What if it means forcing Colstar to close down?  " Barbara shrugged
helplessly.

"Then Patience has to hitch itself up and move in another direction.

In the twenties, after the Patience mine failed, it looked like the
end.

But some enterprising people attracted Colstar here in its place, and
Patience became a winner.  We can do it again."

"We want to get the government to close Colstar down until it locates
the source of the environmental contamination, " Brant added.  "I think
there are people who care as much as we do and would support us."

"But that support depends on finding proof, " Abby said.

"Exactly."  Lew flicked to the next slide, a newspaper head shot of
Lyle Quinn.

"We believe that this man and the woman I'll show you next are the two
main villains of the piece, " he said.  "Lyle Quinn is ex-CIA.  He's
the head of security at Colstar and is politically well connected,
especially with Corman.  He's also tight with just about everyone who
matters in Patienceþthe mayor, the police chief, our esteemed hospital
president, Joe Henderson, you name it.  You asked who I thought was
responsible for David's death if it wasn't an accident.  This man's
your answer."  Abby considered recounting her run-in with Quinn but
decided not to.

She was there to listen and learn, and, right or notj these people had
a definite bias.

"Who's the woman you spoke about?  " she asked.  "The other villain?  "
Lew advanced the carousel to the slide of an austere-looking woman with
tortoiseshell glasses and short, conservatively styled hair.  She
looked familiar, but it took most of a minute before Abby placed
herþthe woman at the picnic in the Save the Planet T-shirt, the woman
whose sensitivity toward Angela Cristoforo was such a contrast to
Quinn's displeasure and disgust.

"Kelly Franklin, " Lew said.  "Director of environmental health and
safetyþEHS.  Franklin has been at Colstar for about five years.  She
acts as if she would do anything to uncover dangerous practices at the
company, but we're convinced she's a fraudþa puppet of Quinn and the
company officers."

"Why do you say that?  " Abby asked.

"Franklin told us on any number of occasions that she'd conduct an
exhaustive investigation of the plant and even send blood off, in our
presence, to an independent lab.  But she never followed up."

"Maybe she's just waiting for some objective proof, " Abby said.  "Or
perhaps weþI mean youþshould be more aggressive about forcing her to
give your concerns more than lip service."

"We intend to be, " Lew said.  He flipped on the lights and gave her
some time to process what she had seen.  "So, then, " he said finally,
"what do you think?  " Abby stared into her glass, her thoughts a
swirling montage of Lyle Quinn, Josh, Colstar medical director Martin
Bartholomew, Kelly Franklin, George Oleander, Lew, Claire Buchanan, and
any number of other NIWWs.  She could feel the silent expectation in
the room.  Should she even bother telling them that there was a very
good chance things wouldn't be working out with her boyfriend, and that
she would soon be looking for a job back in the city?

"I think there's something environmental linking many, if not all, of
these patients, " she said, carefully choosing her words.  "And if
that's true, it's hard to believe Colstar isn't responsible."

"Then you'll join us?  " Brant asked.

"Not in any formal way, not yet anyway.  I just don't feel as strongly
about these issues yet as you do.  Besides, the man I moved up here to
be with works for the company.  I'd have to see a pretty solid case
against them before taking a stand."

"Is there any way your friend would listen to what we have to say?  "
Torres asked.  "If we could get just one person we trust inside the
companyþ" "Barbara, please!  " Lew snapped.  "That's not fair."  The
woman deflated visibly.

"Sorry, " she said.  "We've been at this for a long time, and I'm just
getting a bit frustrated."

"I understand, " Abby said.  "Show me more conclusive proof, and I'll
certainly consider sharing that with Josh.

Meanwhile, I'll tell you what I can do.  I'll begin keeping a log of
the patients I see whose conditions are suspicious.  And if I have
time, I'll bone up on cadmium toxicity.  If it seems appropriate, I'll
send blood on any suspicious patient off to a toxicologist friend of
mine at St. John's in San Francisco.  If Sandra Stuart says the blood
is clean, believe me, it's dean."

"As long as you go at least as far away as Caledonia to mail it to her,
" Brant said.

The four of them walked together to where the cars were parked.  Torres
and Brant expressed their appreciation to Abby for coming and left.

"I'm grateful, too, " Lew said as the others pulled away.  "I honestly
didn't think you'd come.  Will you promise to think over what you've
seen tonight?  " "I will."  Abby sensed that he didn't want her to go
home.  If he asked, she had already decided she would stayþfor a
while.

The craziness with Josh had worn her down, and she craved Lew's
saneness, the warmth of his company.  But, instead, Lew extended his
hand and shook hers in a most businesslike way.

"I'll see you in a couple of days, " he said.  "Abby, if you think it's
appropriate, I'd like to meet your friend Josh sometime."

"Actually, Josh isn't in much shape to be meeting anyone.  He's been
having a bad time lately.  Some pretty striking mood swings.  Plus
headaches.  I've been very worried about him."

"Has he been evaluated?  " "Only by the physician's assistant at the
Colstar clinic.  Today he made an appointment with Garrett Owen.  It's
anyone's guess whether or not he keeps it."

"Tell him he really should."

"I would if I could.  The truth is, we had another blowup and he
left.

I don't even know where he is."

"I'm sorry.  Are you two engaged?  " "Unofficially, I guess.  But all
bets are off until the current situation gets straightened out."

There, she thought.  Now you can ask me to stay.

"Then we must help you do just that, " he said instead, opening the car
door for her.  "Based on what you've told me, and what we've observed
in a number of others, I would suggest part of Garrett Owen's
evaluation of your friend should be a measurement of his serum-cadmium
level."  CHAPTER TWELVE.

Abby drove home in no particular hurry, stopping at a convenience store
for a quart of skim milk and a can of Maxwell House.  On the way out
she yielded to a wave of self-pity and snatched up a package of
Oreos.

The last place she felt like going was back to an empty house at the
end of a dead-end street on the south side of Patience, California.

She flipped on the Mazda's interior light and checked herself in the
rearview mirror.  There was strain around her eyes, all right.  But she
still looked pretty much like the woman who had been pursued by
interesting, attractive men throughout medical school and residency
and, in fact, right up until the time she'd met Josh.  The hints she
had dropped on Lew Alvarez could have broken his toe.  But here she
was, heading home alone.  The man was either a modern Sir Galahad, or
he was simply not interested in her as anything other than a 33 percent
increase in the membership of the Alliance.

As she drove, she mulled over Lew's suggestion that cadmium poisoning
might be at the root of Josh's symptoms.  Emotional lability,
lassitude, and brain atrophy were among the signs and symptoms listed
on Lew's cadmium-toxicity slide.  Still, it was hard to believe.  Josh
was so meticulous about his health.  How could he allow himself to be
exposed at work to a known toxin?  And if it had happened outside of
Colstar, why hadn't she been affected as well?

One thing was certain.  When she and Josh finally did see one another
again, it would not be wise to bring up the subject of Colstar and
cadmium pollutionþnot as long as he felt she was trying to outdo him or
undermine his success.  She would give the neurologist a call and
suggest that he might squeeze in Josh's evaluation sooner if possible,
and also that he might send off some blood for a cadmium level.  If he
seemed approachable on the subject, she might even offer to make a trip
down to her toxicologist friend, Sandy Stuart, with a few tubes of
Josh's blood.

Heavy-metal poisoning was serious, but if diagnosed in time, it was
treatable and curable.

As she pulled into the driveway, Abby was thinking that cadmium
poisoning, as awful as it sounded, might be a better thing for Josh to
have wrong with him than migraine variant or temporal lobe epilepsy,
two of the diagnoses that ranked at the top of her list of
possibilities.

Both conditions had fairly effective treatments, but no cure.

The house was completely dark.  The first lesson in living alone, she
thought.  Leave a light on.  She locked her carþan unnecessary
precaution in Patience, but a vestige of her days in the cityþand was
halfway to the back door when she suddenly sensed someone was watching
her.  She whirled, her pulse hammering.

"Josh?  .  . . Josh, is that you?  " A man was there, by the garage.

She could see his silhouette now.

Desperately, she tried to think of what move to make.  The back door
was locked.  Even though her keys were in her hand, she would never
make it inside before he got to her.  There was a fist-sized rock not
far from her foot.  She could use it as a weapon while she screamed,
hoping that one of her neighbors, none of whom was very near, might
hear.  But before she could act, the man emerged from the shadows.

For a moment she felt her heart stop.  Then she recognized him.

Quinn.

"Sorry if I startled you, Dr. Dolan."  He was dressed in black,
exactly as he had been at the picnic.  But the effect as he emerged
from the shadows at eleven-thirty at night was much more menacing.

Abby had no doubt that was exactly what he intended.  His silver hair
glowed in the dim light.

"What do you want?  " she asked.

"To talk."

"Josh is inside.  Let me go tell him you're here."

"Josh moved into the Sawicki place last night, out beyond Five
Corners.

They're off in San Diego tending to Sally Sawicki's mother, who has
cancer.  Today he called to say he wouldn't be at work.  Wherever he is
tonight, it isn't here."

"I don't think I like you, Mr.  Quinn.

Besides, I'm tired.  And I know I don't like being dealt with by men
who skulk around on my property."

"Ten minutes, " Quinn said.  "If you want me to leave then, I will."

"Maybe some other time."

"I want to talk with you about that little meeting you just attended at
Dr. Alvarez's place, and also about your friend Wyler's place at
Colstar.  . . . Ten minutes."  Abby was too stunned by Quinn's
revelation of Josh's movements to be surprised that he also knew where
she had been.  She felt wary of the man, even a bit frightened of his
power and confidence.  But she was also intrigued.  She reminded
herself that if what Lew and others believed about David Brooks's death
was true, she would be strolling off with a murderer.  But if Quinn was
going to harm her, this didn't feel like the time or place.  Still, she
had no intention of being alone in her house with him.

"Ten minutes, " she said, motioning him down the street where they
would at least be closer to her neighbors.

"I assume that Wyler's moving into the Sawicki place means things
aren't going well here.  I'm sorry."

"Is that what you wanted to speak with me about?  " "Josh Wyler works
in a very sensitive, crucial position for us.  Problems at home could
definitely have a negative effect on his job performance."

"We're working out our differences.

" "Great.  Keep at it.  And let me know if Colstar can help in any
way.

" "We have plenty of help, thank you."

"Just offering."  Quinn walked along beside her in silence.

"I told you they'd be making a move to enlist you, " he said
suddenly.

"Yes, you did."  There didn't seem to be any sense in asking him
whether he had followed her to Lew's, or whether one of the three
Alliance members was a spy.

His answer was not to be trusted, whatever it was.

"Did they come at you with all that cadmium hogwash?  " he asked.

"You tell me."

"I'm sure they did.  That's been their approach with all the others
they've tried to recruit.  They're wrong, Dr.  Dolan.

Way, way off base.

We control every one of our toxic metals as closely as any plant in the
country does."

"Then what are you worried about?  " "I told you at the company picnic
that I'm paid to worry about anything that might be a threat to the
welfare or viability of Colstar.  As I'm sure Wyler has told you, we're
currently the principal agency for a number of important government
research projects involving portable power sources.  Much of our work
is highly classified, including several projects in his department.

Any situation that closes the company or limits its production for long
could result in the loss of those contracts.  I'm certain the few
people left in the Alliance for a Healthy Patience made you aware of
that."

"They did."

"Dr. Dolanþwould you mind if I called you Abby?  " "Dr. Dolan will do
fine.

" "Suit yourself.  Dr. Dolan, I believe that the Alliance means
well.

But they're misguided."

"What about the symptoms we've been seeing?

" "An example of what can happen when overzealous physicians use their
knowledge and status to influence lay opinion about health matters.

It's pure Chicken Little, instituted by Drs.  Brooks and Alvarez.  And
believe me, Dr. Dolan, the sky is not falling.  The unconnected
threads they pulled together impressed people only because two
charismatic physicians said they should.  Stare at even the most
perfect complexion long enough and close enough, and you will think you
see blemishes.  There is no ecological epidemic, and certainly no
ecological epidemic caused by cadmium.  Not one other physician in
Patience has supported their position."  Until me.

They had reached the intersection of Abby's road with the two-lane
state highway, a paved wagon trail that wound its way through the
mountains, connecting southern Idaho and northern Nevada with the
ocean.

They stopped by a streetlight.  For a minute, maybe more, the only
sounds were crickets, some peepers, and the rumble of an approaching
semi.

Finally the truck roared past them, headed west, toward the center of
town.

"So, Mr. Quinn, " Abby said as the sound died away, "you don't seem
any more or less devoted to your position than the Alliance is to
theirs.

Exactly what is it you want me to do?  " "I want you to put any
commitment you've made to them on hold until you know all the facts.

The Alliance has almost ceased to be.  Nearly everyone who started with
the group has seen the truth and dropped out.

New blood especially new physician bloodþis essential if they're to
remain in existence at all.  They don't pose a serious problem to us.

But believe me, Dr. Dolan, I know enough about you not to want to have
you on their side."  I know enough about you.  . . . The implied threat
again.  He had used the same technique at the picnic.  This time,
though, he had lost the element of surprise.

"Mr. Quinn, " she responded deliberately, "what you do or do not know
about me doesn't matter to me a bit.  What's best for my patients
does.

And if you know so much about the Alliance and the meeting tonight, you
should also know that I have made no commitment whatsoever to them at
this point."

"Excellent."

"But the moment I see an elevated cadmium level in one of my patients,
or any other evidence of illness caused by Colstar, I promise I will
become an enthusiastic recruit in their attack on you."

"That's certainly fair.  Meanwhile, I'd like you to consider assisting
us.

"What?  " "I'd like to hire you as a consultant to Colstarþoccupational
medicine and the like.  The stipend would depend on how much you're
called upon to do.  But I promise you that along with what weþI mean
what the hospital, of courseþis paying for your E.R work, you'll be
doing quite nicely, indeed."

"And, of course, part of the deal would be my staying away from the
Alliance."  Quinn glanced at her.

"On the contrary, " he said.  "There's nothing I'd like more than to
have you on a retainer while you're attending the Alliance sessions.

Forewarned is forearmed."

"You want me to spy for you?  " Quinn didn't react to her question
immediately.  Instead, he walked along beside her quietly until they
were nearing her home.

"What I really want is for you to come and tour Colstar.  I'll
introduce you to Kelly Franklin, our environmental health and safety
officer.  She has detailed maps of every inch of the company.  Pick an
area, any area, and she'll take you there and let you inspect it as
long as you like.  If you see any possible way we could be
contaminating any part of the environment, we'll help you call in the
regulatory agency involved, and comply with any mandates.  You have my
word on that."

"When do you want me to do that?  " "Why, right now.

Kelly is waiting for us in her office.  It's the perfect time, because
the third shift is sort of a skeleton crew, and you'll be able to move
about easily."

"Mr. Quinn, I'm not up for this tonight.  And at this hour I can't
believe Kelly Franklin is either."

"Dr. Dolan, I happen to know that you had today off, and you're not on
the schedule again at the hospital until the day after tomorrow.  This
business is very important to us.  That's why Kelly is quite anxious to
meet with you.

And I assure you, as a trustee of the hospital and a vice president of
the company Josh Wyler works for, it's very important to the two of you
as well."  Abby felt almost relieved.  At last Quinn had taken off the
gloves.  His warning was oblique enough, but Abby had no doubt he was
at least holding Josh's job hostage, if not hers as well.  She would
most likely be able to findER work without much difficulty, although
probably not at a place like St. John's.  But Josh was another
story.

If she was responsible for his losing his position at Colstar, what
remained of their shaky relationship would surely crumble.

The nugget of fear inside her grew.  She was hardly a threat to Quinn
or Colstar, but he was setting about methodically to control her.  And,
yet, if Lew was right about Josh's symptoms being due to cadmium, she
was far better off inside Colstar than off somewhere looking for
work.

"No promises, " she said at last.  "Whether I notice anything on this
tour or not.  No promises."

"Of course.  I knew you'd understand."

"And if I decide I don't want this .  . . this consultant's position, I
want Josh and me to be left alone."

"You have my word."

"You'll have to excuse me for not knowing how much that's worth."

Quinn's car, a black Range Rover, was parked in front of a neighbor's
house.

Abby followed him up the serpentine drive to Colstar.  She wondered if
Ives was up on his hillside, watching them through his infrared
glasses.  She also wondered how long he would last up there if Lyle
Quinn knew that one of his hobbies was observing the comings and goings
at the plant.  The uniformed guard waved them through into the massive,
sparsely filled parking lot.  Quinn pulled into a spot reserved for him
and motioned Abby to the next one, which belonged to someone named Mr.
Wang.  A second uniformed guard smartly opened the front door at their
approach.

"Tight ship, " Abby said.

"I'm pleased you appreciate that."  The plush reception area was
deserted.  Quinn paused long enough for Abby to take in the many
community-service citations and performance-award plaques lining the
walls.

Salt of the Earth, Incorporated, she thought.  Except, of course, for a
security chief who lurks in the shadows to frighten women, an
occasional ex-employee who stabs herself in public, and maybe, just
maybe, a carelessly handled, toxic heavy metal.

"Kelly Franklin's office is in the A Concourse, the same as your
friend, Josh's.  Someone told me the two of you were planning on
getting engaged.  I surely do hope things work out between you."

"You seem like a very sentimental person, " Abby said.

The smooth concrete concourses, three of them, were boulevard wide and
brightly lit.  There was a pod of numbered white golf carts parked at
the head of each one.

"During our day and evening shifts, almost all of those carts are in
action, " Quinn said proudly.

"What's your handicap?  " "Excuse me?  " "Nothing.  Nothing."  Quinn
led her down A Concourse, deserted except for an occasional worker in a
knee-length lab coat.  One of the golf carts rolled silently away from
them for what seemed like a mile.  There was another cart parked
against the wall next to an opaque glass door labeled "K.

Franklin, Environmental Health & Safety."  Quinn knocked briskly, the
sounds echoing down the vast corridor like pistol shots.

Kelly Franklin greeted Abby professionally, but with apparent warmth.

She was neither as informal as she had been at the picnic, nor as
severe as in Lew's slide.  Quinn completed the introductions and then
left after reminding Abby that she should take as much time as she
wished to explore the facility, and Kelly that Abby was to have free
rein to inspect anything she wished.

"Dr. Dolan, " he concluded, "we appreciate that you're an emergency
physician and not an expert on occupational health and safety.  But we
also know that you will be able to appreciate the precautions we at
Colstar take to ensure the safety of our workers and the town."  Abby
thanked him icily.

"So, " Franklin said once they were alone, "can I offer you
something?

Some tea?  A soft drink?  " "Nothing, thank you."  Abby scanned the
office, which evidenced a woman who had two teenage daughters, a couple
of environment-related graduate degrees from Cal and Washington State,
a love of the outdoors, and an extensive academic interest in her
field.

"You don't seem too thrilled to be here, Dr. Dolan, " she said.  "I'm
sorry.  Lyle has a single-mindedness about his job and his own way of
doing things.  And he doesn't care too much about who's inconvenienced,
or who thinks he's a horse's behind, as long as he accomplishes what he
sets out to."

"Well, obviously, Quinn's goal tonight was to get me here, " Abby
said.

Kelly Franklin looked genuinely embarrassed.

"I don't think I want to know how he did it, " she said.  "But at least
I have the chance to make this part interesting for you.  I promise
you, giving someoneþanyoneþfree rein to look around Colstar is not
Lyle's way.  Your opinion of us must mean a great deal to him."

"I'm not sure why."

"Perhaps it has something to do with Josh, " Kelly said.  "Lyle told me
you two live together.  Josh is a great guy.

Highly intelligent, nice, and extremely funny.  He's been a very
positive addition here."

"I'm glad."  So much for her concerns about whether Josh's erratic
behavior had carried over to work.  Clearly, to this point at least,
she was the primary casualty.

Kelly seemed to expect Abby to say more.

"Well, then, " she said finally, "why don't we get started?  " She took
a large sheath of cardboard-bound computer-typed pages from the floor
beside her desk.  "Lyle told me that your chief concern regarding
Colstar is cadmium.  This is an extensive annotated bibliography on the
toxicity of cadmium.  I got it from the NIH library in Bethesda.  At
some point I'd like it back, but there's absolutely no rush."

"Thank you."

"And here's a list of the hospital patients who have had cadmium levels
performed at their physician's request.  Their inpatient-discharge or
emergency-room diagnoses are included.  As you can see, every single
one was negative.  This next list is of the almost five hundred tests
for cadmium, nickel, and other metals that we've done randomly on our
employees.  That program is ongoing and I oversee it."

"Are the tests run at Patience Regional?  " "Yes, as a matter of fact,
they are.  Why do you ask?  " "Just wondered."

"Any other questions so far?  .  . . Fine.  I have a floor plan of the
entire plant on my cart.  If we try to see everything, we'll be here
until tomorrow afternoon.  But if that's what you'd like, I'm perfectly
willing to do it."  With Kelly Franklin driving they rolled off down A
Concourse as Abby studied the floor plan.  The plant was built on two
massive stories, one at ground level and one below.  In the
manufacturing wing, located on C Concourse, the basement level extended
upward in part for two stories, and there was no ground floor.  Most of
the remainder of the basement was devoted to production.  Abby chose to
start with the research wing off A Concourse.  Then they would tour
rechargeable-battery manufacturing, the heart of cadmium use in the
plant.

Bit by bit, as she learned about Colstar, Abby also learned about her
guide.  Kelly Franklin was divorced, and had been when she had taken
the Colstar job five years before.  Her two daughters, at their
father's insistence, went to private school just outside of San
Francisco.

Although there wasn't much of a social life in Patience for an educated
single woman, Kelly managed to meet people through the Sierra Club and
shipboard-based scuba trips, which she took twice a year.  She was
sustained in Patience by the natural beauty of the area, the excellent
money she made, and the fact that she loved her job.

As she listened to Kelly describe her life, Abby thought about herself
and her own situation.  If the separation with Josh became permanent,
it was doubtful she'd last long in Patience alone.

The research wing was deserted save for a security guard and one
scientist.  It was a huge rectangle with a central glass-enclosed
atrium, which Kelly explained was for work with any toxic or
potentially toxic substance.  It was superventilated into a complex
series of filters.  The air emerging from those filters was perfectly
safe to breathe.

"We're very much aware of the toxicity of some of the substances we
work with, " Kelly said.  "With cadmium, for instance, which is one of
the more toxic, we exceed OSHA and EPA standards for air quality by a
good margin."

"That's reassuring, " Abby responded with no enthusiasm.

"Perhaps it would be really reassuring if I told you what those
standards are.  Essentially, the maximal acceptable ambient-air content
for cadmium would be equivalent to pulverizing two aspirin tablets and
blowing the dust into the air in the Astrodome."

"That is impressive.

" Surrounding the atrium were a dozen or more individual laboratories,
each featuring the sort of organized clutter Abby had come to expect in
any busy research space.

"This is Josh's unit, " Kelly said.  "It's the most demanding area of
the business, because the competition from other manufacturers is so
fierce.

From what I've seen, he's standing up to the pressure pretty well.  "
Look again, Abby thought as she inspected the equipment and quarters.

Every inch of the vast space looked spotless and carefully
maintained.

C Concourse featured a fifteen-foot billboard that proclaimed, COLSTAR
INT'L, PATIENCE, CA.  PLANT.

EMPLOYEE SAFETY IS OUR HIGHEST PRIORITY 101 DAYS WITHOUT AN ON-THE-JOB
ACCIDENT.

The manufacturing wing was as carefully maintained as research and
development.  All cadmium, nickel, and other toxic metals were handled
by robot arms controlled by workers in mask, gloves, and jumpsuit.  The
huge vats in which the metals were mixed and prepared for injection
into the battery casings were covered and sealed.  Ventilation and air
filtration were high priority.

In spite of herself, Abby was impressed.  Colstar seemed to have safety
precautions built upon safety precautions.

"I do have a couple of questions, " Abby said as they glided back up
the concourse.  "First, do you know anything about a stream that once
ran beside the plant?  " "Of course."

"What happened to it?  " Kelly smiled.

"I don't know if anyone outside the company has ever even seen this, "
she said.  "But Lyle has given you the run of the place, so here we
go.

" She drove Abby to the very rear of B Concourse and then used a key to
open a large metal door.  Inside was a spacious natural-rock swimming
pool, complete with a corkscrew water slide and waterfall.  An
extravagantly created jungle paradise.  The vaulted ceiling was a
massive opaque skylight.  One wall was clear glass, behind which was a
glittering health dub.

"This space is reserved for Mr. Ezra Black and the rest of the
officers.  I'm part of the club, though I don't use it.  They tolerate
women in management here as long as we don't get in the way or try to
act like men.  The truth is, I'm a little embarrassed that we have such
a thing at Colstar.  If Josh isn't a key holder yet, he will be.  "
"The pool is fed by the stream?  " "Yes, but the water's heated to
eighty-three.  The excess from the stream and outflow from the pool
drop down nearly fifty feet into a filtration plant located outside on
the south wall of the mesa.  From there it flows into the Oxbow River,
which runs along the north side of the valley and empties into the
quarry.  The outflow water is monitored frequently for coliform
bacteria and other toxins, and I test it personally every two weeks.  "
An executive swimming pool!  Lew and the others were going to be
sharply disappointed by the solution to the case of the vanishing
stream.

"I've seen enough, " Abby said, glancing at her watch.  It was
twothirty.

"And you must be exhausted.  I appreciate the tour."  Kelly drove them
back to her office.

"It was a pleasure to meet you, " she said.  "Perhaps we could go out
for dinner sometime."

"Perhaps, " Abby said.  Then she realized that her response was
unreasonably cool.  Not once during the hours they had just spent
together had she felt Kelly Franklin was hiding something from her.

"Listen, " she added suddenly.  "I'd like very much to get together.

I'll call you here in the next day or so and we'll set something up.  "
"Terrific."  Kelly paged Quinn, then stacked all the computer printouts
together and passed them over.

"Thanks, " Abby said.  "I'll cadmium myself to sleep the next few
nights."

"Have fun.  Is there anything else?  " Abby tried to think of what Lew
might want her to ask.  Then she remembered the shadows on the cliff
face below the plant.

"One last question, " she said.  "Are there any other floors beneath
the basement?  " "None at all.  The basement level rests on solid
rock.

The filter house is the only thing below it, and as I said, that's
built outside."

"There are no openings cut into the face of the cliff on the northeast
side?  " "No.  Why?  Do you have reason to think there are?  " For a
few moments Abby studied the woman's expression, searching
unsuccessfully for any hint of evasion.

"No.  I was just wondering, " she said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Abby set aside the reading she had been doing on cadmium toxicity and
packed her things for another trip up to Samuel Ives's hillside home.

She recognized her anticipation at seeing the eccentric again and
realized that he was one of the bright lights in the loneliness and
isolation that had been engulfing her since moving up from the city.

The early morning was cool and already bright.  In an hour and a half
she would be starting the day shift in the E.R.  With any luck the
twelve hours there would be interesting and hectic enough to be totally
engrossing.  Her mind certainly needed a break from the outside
world.

It had been a week since Josh had moved out.  He had come back three
days ago for some things, but she'd been working at the time.  All she
found on the dining-room table when she returned home was a ragged
bouquet of wildflowers, and a letter.

I believe I know who is responsible for my problems, the rambling note
read, in part.  Once I am CERTAIN, I will act.  Then, and only then,
will I be FREE.  I PRAY that you are not one of them.

The bizarre note brought a heavy dose of reality.  Over the days she
and Josh had been apart, memories of the way things had been between
them over their first eighteen months together had begun bidding for
space in her head.  Now, she realized, Josh Wyler was no longer someone
she could count on for anything.  Worse, he might actually have become
someone to fear.

With time to fill, Abby had started taking an aerobics class and had
even begun jogging.  As a result, the hike up to Ives's place was
getting easier.  She made it this morning without even breathing
hard.

As she suspected, the germ causing Ives's chronic leg infection had
been identified as a slow-growing fungus called aspergillus.  The
treatment was amphotericin B, a potent intravenous antibiotic.  To
accommodate the hermit's adamant refusal to return to Patience Regional
Hospital for any reason, Abby had reluctantly inserted a short,
indwelling catheter in a vein in his forearm.  On the days when she
could not get up to see him, he administered the medication himself.

And she had to admit that in spite of her doubts about the treatment
approach, day by day the deep-seated infection was improving.

"Ives, don't shoot, it's me!  " she shouted as she reached the
clearing.

He looked up at her from his workbench.

"No shooting today, Doc.  Just polishing my bow."

"It's so beautiful.

" The hermit admired his handiwork.

"It's getting there, " he said.  "Another year, maybe."

"Then what?

" "Then I'll make another one, I guess."  Abby motioned toward the
straw-dummy target.

"So, tell meþblindfolded or not?  " She had asked the question before
several times and still had not gotten a straight answer.

"If I can see, " Ives said this time, "what does a rag tied across my
eyes mean?  " The lacerations on his face were healing nicely, and the
bruising was all but gone.

"You've got great healing powers, " Abby said.

Ives reached down beside his bench and held up a can of Chef Boyardee
spaghetti.

"It's all in the diet."

"Ives, tell me something, " she said as she re-dressed his leg.  "How
long have you been up here?  " "I don't really know.  Nine, maybe ten
years."

"I have a question about Colstar."

"Try me."

"I saw a slide of the plant taken about eight years ago.  It was shot
from a distance, and the quality really isn't that good, but on the
face of the cliff it looks as if there are three long slits in the
rock."

"But they're not there now."  Ives finished the thought for her.

"Exactly."

"They were windows of some sort, eighteen inches, maybe two feet
across, and five or six feet high.  Almost looked like the ports in
medieval castles that were used to shoot arrows through without getting
shot yourself."

"What happened to them?  " Ives shrugged.

"One day they were just goneþfilled in, I guess."

"Can we see where they were from here?  " "We can try, but I think they
did a pretty thorough job of sealing them up."  Ives retrieved his
burlap sack and an army blanket and led her to his observation point.

She hadn't been out there since the first day she had climbed up to the
camp with Josh.

Looking out across the valley now, she wondered where he was, what he
was doing, and whether or not he had kept the appointment with Garrett
Owen.  She had called the neurologist and gotten him to move it up two
weeks.

The sun was beginning its ascent, and the Colstar cliff glowed amber in
the light.  Ives spread out the blanket and lay prone next to Abby.

"I can never get over how huge the place is, " she said.

"It's a fortress all right."  Ives focused his field glasses and passed
them over.  Having been inside the plant, Abby found it easy to get
oriented.  First she scanned down to the roof of the hospital, and then
the adjacent professional building.

Next came the narrow field of wildflowers, and then the high
barbed-wire-topped fence that essentially separated the valley from the
plant.  Beyond the fence was a broad, undulating rocky meadow, and then
the almost-sheer cliff.  Abby located the filter house Kelly Franklin
had told her about.  Next she panned across the face of the cliff.

Nothimg.

'Exactly where were those slits?  " she asked.

Ives checked through the glasses and then handed them back.

"Look at the name Colstar on the side of the building.  Believe it or
not, those letters are each eight feet high.  Now go to the S and head
straight down the rock.  I think that should be about it."  The
resolution of the binoculars was magnificent.  Abby studied the cliff
carefully from top to bottom.  Then again.

"Hey, Ives, " she said excitedly, "I think I can see where they were.

If you stare hard enough, you can tell that the shapes are still there,
only it looks like they were sealed with cement or painted wood.  "
Ives examined the wall himselœ "Some sort of plywood with small stones
glued on, I'd guess, " he said.

"What's behind them?  That's the question."  And why doesn't the health
and safety officer know the answer?  That was an even bigger
question.

Ives set the binoculars aside.

"Well, doesn't that just beat all, " he said.  "Here I've been lookin'
at the place all these years, top to bottom, side to side, and you come
along and show me something I've never noticed."  He grinned over at
her.

"So am I blindfolded, or not?  " This one was going to be a bitch.  He
took a drink of water, then spit it out.  There was no sense swallowing
it.  Before long he would be throw Chapter FOURTEEN.

The headache began, as all the others had, with the strange chemical
taste at the back of his tongue.  His anger had been building, even
between the attacks, but now he felt as if a fuse had been lit
somewhere deep inside him, and he was powerless to stop the
explosion.

He didn't deserve this.  All his life he had tried to do what was
right.  He didn't deserve to be going insane.  Three years in the
Corps.  Two rows of ribbons.  He should have stayed in a few more
years.  Hell, he should have stayed in forever.  If he had known what
lay in store for him, he would have.  First the failure with the diner,
the goddamn bankers who wouldn't wait, then job after job.  Then two
jobs at once just to stay even, three when he could find the work.  And
now he had been let go at the plant.

And for what?  For taking too many sick days.  But who in the hell
could work thirty feet up on a ladder with cannons exploding in his
head?

He felt the throbbing begin behind his eyesþthe horrible, pulsating
pain.  The taste in his mouth grew sharper, more unpleasant.

comimg up anyway.

He raced into his bedroom and tore the dry cleaner's plastic off his
dress uniform.  The Marines might not approve of his wearing it for
this, but what the hell.  They had spent all those years teaching him
to kill.

Now he would find out how much he'd learned.

His hands were shaking so badly, he could barely fasten the buttons on
his jacket.  But even after nearly fifteen years, it still fit damn
well.

It had been wrong to blow up at his boss for suggesting that he was
faking the headaches, and wronger still to have sucker punched him.

But he was only underlining what everybody already knewþthe man was an
asshole.  Mr.  Country Club Snob.

The throbbing became an electric drill, boring holes into his brain.

He sank to the floor, squeezing his temples, then stumbled to his feet
and out of the house.  Straightening his dress uniform hat, he lurched
to the car.

The country dub, he thought.  That was it.  That was the fucking
problem.

All the country dubs set up all over the country to remind folks like
him they were poor, worthless failures, not good enough now, not good
enough ever.  But, hey, don't forget that the good folks at the country
club had let him in the elegant clubhouse once for three whole weeks .

. until he had finished painting it!

He gunned the engine of his Chrysler, a beast with 170, 000 miles on
the odometer and its second rebuilt engine under the hood.  His vision
was blurred, his brain on fire.  What a rotten existenceþwhat had he
ever done to deserve this?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  He sped off
in a shower of gravel, then screeched to a stop, opened the door, and
heaved up the contents of his stomach.  That was the end, he vowed,
coughing and sputtering.  He had thrown up for the last time.  They
could step all over him, they could take away his job for no good
reason, but they couldn't break him.  He was a goddamn Marine, for
chrissake, and if Marines knew nothing else, they knew how to fight
back.

The beautiful people had the money and the power and the Jags and the
houses and the diamonds and the country clubs.  He had a
twelve-year-old tank of a car and the spirit of a Marine.  No contestt
Fifty-five .  . . sixty .  . . sixty-five .  . .

l The Chrysler began to shudder.  He gripped the wheel tightly and
pressed his foot to the floor.  The headache was as horrible as ever,
but this time, at least, he didn't care.  The country-club people had
done this to him.  Now it was his turn.

Seventy .  . . seventy-five .  . .

The cross streets flew by.  The trees and telephone poles were blurs.

The car was shaking mercilessly.  An acrid smoke began billowing in
around him.  He was off the seat now, his right leg rigid, his foot
jammed on the accelerator.  Mission, enemy destruction.  Target in
sight, sir.

"From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli .  . . " He
barreled off the road, across a stretch of grass, and up a small
hill.

The fence, shielded in green vinyl windbreaker, was just ahead.  No
problem, sir.

Eighty .  . . eighty-five .  . .

"We will fight our country's battles in the air, on land, and sea.  .

. " At last the pain in his head was gone.  At last the hideous taste
had left his mouth.  At last he had stopped taking the punishment lying
down.

The screeching of the engine .  . . the crunch of metal on metal .  .

the screams .  . . more screams .  . . the crash .  . . the pain .  .

the blackness .  . .

Mission accomplished, sir.  . . .

Chapter FIFTEEN.

STANOON.  CARL.  þTOXIC METAL SCREENING .  CAOMIUM, NICKELþNONE
OETECTED.

ANLIERSON.  JAYE.  þTOXIC METAL SCREENINg.  CAOMIUM, NICKELþNONE
OETECTEO.

MCELROY, THOS.  . þTOXIC METAL SCREENING.  CAllMIUM, NICKELþNONE
NETECTEO.  þORGANOPHOSPHATESþTRACE FOUNO, LEVELS PENDING.

Seated at her desk in the on-call room, Abby studied the results from
the first three NIWWs on whom she had ordered cadmium levels.  All were
negative.  One of the three, a farmer named Thomas McElroy, had come to
see her.  His complaints were a lack of energy and a chronic cough that
had not responded to two courses of antibiotics.  His physician was
George Oleander.  Abby had ordered the cadmium level, then, on a hunch,
she ordered a test for organophosphates as well.  Organophosphate was a
neurotoxin, commonly used in gaseous form as a chemical weapon during
World War II.  But it was also a component in many fertilizers.

Apparently, Thomas McElroy had somehow gotten exposed to it.

Trace positive.  She had no clear idea what, if anything, that meant.

The tongue-in-cheek law taught to medical students was never to order a
test unless you were ready to have it come back abnormal.  The
corollary to that law was that the best response to any abnormal blood
test was to repeat it.

Abby decided that a better approach would be to set the whole matter in
George Oleander's lap.  If, in fact, Thomas McElroy's symptoms were due
to organophosphate poisoning, the first definitive diagnosis for one of
her NIWWs had been found.  And it would not be cadmium.  She peeked out
to be sure that the E.R was still quiet.  Sundays often started
peacefully, with families in church or beginning their days slowly.

But with none of the medical offices open, and minimal coverage for
each practice, the afternoons and evenings were predictably busy.  At
the moment things were very quiet.  She was heading back to the phone
when the wall-mounted intercom sounded.

"Dr. Dolan, " the receptionist said, "Dr. Oleander's on line two.  "
"This is one efficient hospital, " Abby muttered, punching the line
open.  "George, hi.  I was just about to call you."

"To explain yourself, I hope."

"What?  " "I just got copies of some laboratory tests you sent off on
two of my patients, Carl Standon and Tom McElroy.

" "Yes."

"Abby, what on earth are you doing ordering cadmium levels on these
people?  And how many more patients have you ordered them on?

" "Just one other.  I don't understand what the problem is."

"Well, it's time you did.  Just what were your indications for ordering
these studies?  " l "The symptoms were different for each patient.

I've been reading a lot about cadmium toxicity andþ" "I am telling you
here and now that I don't want extraneous tests ordered on my patients
without consulting me.  And I can tell you also that most of the other
doctors on the staff here feel exactly the way I do."  Abby felt her
self-control begin to unravel.  She glanced about the small office and
wondered if what Lew had told her about bugs and cameras could possibly
be true.

"I don't feel they were extraneous, " she said stonily.  "I also
ordered an organophosphate level on Mr. McElroy, and that was
positive."

"McElroy's a farmer.  Every summer he uses that damn stuff, and every
summer he gets exposed, and every summer I treat him if his levels are
high enough to warrant it.  It's not that test I'm upset about, and you
know it.  If you've set about trying to cause trouble for Colstar and
this town, you may find yourself looking for a job."

"Don't threaten me, George.  And please don't speak to me in that tone
of voice.  I did what I felt was best for those patients."

"You did what you did because a certain other emergency-room doctor has
been putting pressure on you."

"That's not true."

"Now, just listen to me.  I thought when we spoke in my office last
week that we had an understanding about what it means to work in this
town."  You had an understanding, Abby thought.

"We're here to do what's best for this community, " Oleander went on.

"And trying to undermine the company that keeps us all afloat is not
being a team player.  Besides, I promise you, Colstar is not
responsible for any illnesses.  I would have thought you were convinced
of that by now."  So, she thought, the Lyle Quinn dot was connected to
the George Oleander dot.  But, of course, Quinn had already gone out of
his way to tell her he was on the board of trustees at the hospital.

"George, " she said, "I'm doing the best I can to be a good doctor to
the people of this town.  If that's not being a team player, I'm
sorry.

" "Abby, the bottom line is this, I don't want any more cadmium levels
being sent off on my patients without speaking to me first.  What
happens when these people get their bills or insurance statements, and
they learn that a doctor on the hospital staff thinks they've been
poisoned by Colstar?  " "Might have been.  Iþ" "Please, Abby.  I mean
it.  Back off."

"Whatever you say, George.  They're your patients."

"Good.  Now, I'm on backup for medicine today."

"I know."

"Well, I'm calling from the car on my way to my wife's cousin's.  I'll
be twenty minutes away from the hospital.  Twenty-five at the most.  My
service has the number.  Treat anything that's not life-and-death.

Write holding orders on anyone you want to admit.  This is an
anniversary party.  I'm going to try to stick it out here until five or
six.  Thank you."  He hung up without waiting for a reply.

"Mr.  Team Player, " Abby muttered.

She washed her face to cool down.  Josh or no Josh, if life at PRH was
going to be like this, she would take her chances somewhere else.  It
was hard to believe that two months ago she had been sitting with
friends at a cafe by the water in Sausalito, talking about what sort of
wedding she and Josh might have.

She was drying off when the charge nurse, Mary Wilder, pounded on her
door and opened it a crack.

"Abby, come quickly, " she called out.  "We've got big trouble."  Abby
grabbed her clinic coat from the chair and raced out.

"There's been a bad accident at Patience Country Club, " Mary said,
clearly anxious, but doing a decent job of remaining composed.  "Some
guy crashed his car through a fence onto a tennis court.  He hit three
women and then hit a pole or something.  Apparently the injuries are
bad.  One ambulance is already on the way in, two more are on the
scene.  That's it for the town's ambulances.  Tom Webb, the paramedic,
will be calling back in just a moment."  Abby felt her heart respond to
a jet of adrenaline.  Instinctively, she checked her clinic coat
pockets for her instruments and the two thick loose-leaf handbooks she
had put together over the years crammed with treatment protocols,
medication interactions, and other pearls of experience.  Multiple
trauma on a Sunday morning with a reduced crew and limited backup.  Her
fears about leaving the shelter of St. John's for a remote E.R were
about to become reality.

They hurried across to the communications area where the radio and
telephones were clustered, along with a telemetry ECG unit.

"Do you want me to start the disaster drill?  " Mary asked.

The drill, which each shift practiced once a year, was a telephone
pyramid that would mobilize almost the entire hospital staffþmedical,
nursing, technical, and administrationþwithin ten or fifteen minutes.

Over a hundred people.  Disruption, confusion, expense.  The protocol
was an on-off switch.  Go or no go.  There was no such thing as partial
disaster drill.  Abby knew the choice was the first of dozens, maybe
hundreds, of critical decisions she would have to make over the minutes
ahead.

"Not until we have a little more information, " she said.  "Find out
who's in-house and get them down here, please.  Also, get whatever
nursing help you need forþhow many did you say?  " "I think four.  "
"For four patients.  Notify X ray and lab and have them cali in their
backups now."  Mary used the phone on the counter to begin making
calls.  At that moment the radio crackled on.

"This is Fire Rescue Three, paramedic Tom Webb reporting."  Behind the
man's voice Abby could hear the wail of the siren.

"Go ahead, Rescue Three, " she said.  "This is Dr.  Dolan."

"Dr. Dolan, we are on route to your facility, four minutes out, with
twoþrepeat, twoþpriority-two patients, both female in their thirties.

Both were struck by an automobile while playing tennis.  One has an
obvious compound fracture of the lower leg.  The other has multiple
lacerations and abrasions.  Both are conscious and alert.  Vital signs
in both are stable at present."

"Received, Rescue Three.  How many other victims?  " "Two.  Another
woman and the man who was driving the car.  They're in bad shape.  Both
are going to be priority one.  Two squads are on the scene."

"Received.  We'll be waiting for you."  She turned to Mary Wilder, who
had just finished a call.  The , .  .

nurse s expression was gnm.

"There are only two doctors in the house.  Dr. Levin is doing a
C-section, Dr. Mehta is doing the anesthesia."  Abby threw the
switch.

"Start the disaster drill, " she said.  "Set up the two patients coming
in now out here in the bays.  Save the trauma room and major medical
for the other two."  Almost instantly the E.R began to fill with nurses
and technicians.  But no physicians.  Two crash carts were already in
place.  A third was brought down from one of the floors.  Mary Wilder
and the nursing supervisor for the hospital quickly formed teams to
work on each of the victims.  Admitting clerks readied their
clipboards.

The blood-bank technician checked her stock and notified regional
blood-supply centers to stand by.  The X-ray tech moved the portable
unit into position.  The phlebotomist prepared his blood-drawing
equipment and moved to a spot out of the way.  Suddenly, eerily, for
one frozen moment, the E.R was completely silent, waiting.  Then, from
some distance, wailing sirens could be heard.

"Okay, everyone, " Abby said, sipping water to dampen the desert in her
mouth, "let's all keep cool and do what we know how to do."  She gloved
and hurried out to the ambulance bay just as a police cruiser and the
ambulance sped in.  The first victim, moaning piteously, had her right
leg bundled in a bulky splint.  Blood had already begun soaking through
the gauze.  Abby scanned her quicklyþIV in and running wide, cervical
collar on.  Her face and tennis dress were blood-smeared and dirty with
the red clay from the court.  There was a nasty abrasion on her left
shoulder.  Abby glanced at the second woman and decided to follow this
one in.  One of the nurses was already cutting away her clothes.

"Rebecca Mason, " the EMT said.  "Thirty-four.  The only things we
found are what you can see."  He lowered his voice and added, "Her
leg's pretty bad."  Abby stopped the litter, checked to ensure that the
dorsalis pedis arterial pulse on the top of the woman's foot and the
posterior tibial pulse behind her ankle were palpable.  Then she marked
the location of each with a pen and motioned the team into bay three.

Her first job was a primary assessmentþairway, breathing,
circulation.

The ABCs of trauma.  Speaking softly to the woman, Abby reassured her
as best she could while she systematically checked vital functions,
critical pulses, then skull, chest, and abdomen.  She heard her own
voice, calm and firm, but felt oddly detached, as if it were someone
else issuing the orders.

"Keep the saline running at five hundred.  Routine labs and clotting
studies.  Type and cross-match for five units.  Have X ray do a
shootthrough and lateral of her neck.  Clear those films with me before
you do anything else.  Then we'll do portables of her chest and leg
before we send her over for real films.  Cathe erize her bladder.  Be
sure ortho is on the way in, and be sure to check those foot pulses
every minute."

"Yes, Doctor."

"Anything else anyone can think of?

Good.  Keep me posted."  One down.  Abby changed gloves and hurried
over to the second woman, Katherine McNamara, who had already had her
clothes cut away, and was covered with a sheet.  Her head was swathe in
gauze, which was becoming bloody over her right eye.  Like Rebecca
Mason, her neck was in a hard cervical collar, and her head was secured
to the body-length fracture board.  The nurse, whom Abby recognized
from the floor, gave a quick report.  Lacerations on her back that no
one had gotten a good look at because of the need to protect her neck,
and a deep gash on her forehead.  Otherwise nothing obvious.

Abby knew that from here on she had to prioritize the treatment of each
case relative to the others.  This was triage, the ongoing process of
evaluating multiple patients with illness or injuries to ensure that
sicker patients would be seen first.  The idea was to get the maximum
benefit from the personnel and facilities available.  But in disasters
such as this one, another wrinkle was added.  Treatment had to be given
first to those who needed it to survive, and not to those who had no
chance regardless of the efforts of the caregivers.  If that situation
did arise, the call would be hers.

Abby's assessment of Katherine McNamara put her on a lower priority
level than the first.  No triage problems so far.  Of the two Rebecca
Mason would go to X ray first and would be cross-matched for blood
first.  Mary Wilder hurried over just as Abby was finishing issuing
orders.

"They're four minutes out with the next one, a forty-one-year-old
male.

Priority one.  Barely conscious, hypotensive, multiple trauma.  "
"Another tennis player?  " Mary shook her head.

"No, this one's the driver.  The one responsible for all this."

"Put him in the trauma room, " Abby said.  "And, Mary?  " "Yes."

Let's all do our best to stay as objective and professional as possible.

The older woman's glare quickly softened.

"I'll try, " she said.  "But I know both of these women, and I know the
one who's still out there, too."

"What have they reported about her?

" "Her name's Peggy Wheaton.  Multiple trauma.  She's unconscious.  Her
husband, Gary, is the president of the Patience Savings Bank.  They
have three kids."  Despite Abby's plea the nurse failed to mask the
judgment in her voice.

"Get together the team assigned to this man.  Then have another one
ready when Peggy Wheaton arrives."  She stood on her tiptoes and
scanned the E.R, which was in barely controlled chaos.  Several police
officers were there now, along with the paramedics, technicians,
nurses, and even two people from housekeepingþone of the downsides of
calling a disaster drill.  Abby motioned one of the policemen over and
asked him to be sure that anyone not essential to the care of the
patients be sent to the waiting room.  Then, across the E.R, she spotted
the first doctor to arrive, a competent young pediatrician named Susan
Torrance.

"Tell me what to do, " Torrance said.

"Become an orthopedist."

"I wish."

"Any problem suturing?  " "None.

" Sirens again.  The first priority one.  Abby directed Susan Torrance
to do a detailed examination of Katherine McNamara but to be sure neck
films had been cleared by Abby or a radiologist before moving the
woman.

Abby gloved again and headed out to the ambulance bay.

"Where are all the doctors?  " she asked Mary Wilder.

Every one, whether on call or not, was part of the telephone pyramid
and was expected to drop whatever he or she was doing and get into the
hospital.

I "I think a lot of them are away on vacation or at meetings.  The
telephone system breaks down some when too many people aren't home.

They'll be in, though.  I promise.  Meanwhile, you're doing just
fine.

" Abby managed a tense smile.

"Thanks, " she said.

"Here they come."  With another police cruiser whooping along ahead of
it, the ambulance swung onto the long drive up to the E.R.  Abby
moistened her lips and rhythmically tightened, then loosened, her
fists.  Priority-one trauma.

At St. John's, since her residency, she had always been a relatively
small part of the team evaluating and treating such patients.  During
her residency she had trained in all aspects of trauma technique,
usually working on anesthe ired sheep.  And at one time or another she
had performed many of the techniques on patients.  But after she had
joined the faculty, there had always been residents about, anxious to
hone their skills, and staff surgeons available to oversee and teach
them.

Now it was just Abby.

The police officers, two of them, hurried in first.

"He's under arrest for attempted murder, Doc, " one of them said.

"Just keep us posted with what's going on."

"Exactly what happened?

" "He hauled himself off the road at a high rate of speed, drove up a
little hill, and crashed through a fence onto the tennis court.

Slammed through these poor girls like a bowling ball, then slammed into
the steel light stanchion.  Crazy idiot was wearing a Marine uniform.

He's no more a Marine than I am."

"Was he conscious?  I mean, did he pass out at the wheel with his foot
jammed on the accelerator?  " "Hell, no.  Two people heard him yellin'
and singin' before he hit the fence."

"Okay.  Thank you.  Mary, here we go."  The litter was raced out of the
ambulance, right past Abby and into the E.R.  She hurried in behind
it.

All she had seen was a man, covered with blood and glass fragments.  He
was moaning and struggling against the restraints that held him to the
fracture board.  His neck was in a soft cervical collar, not the sort
of rigid collar that had been secured on the first two victims.  Had
the rescue squad run out of rigid collars?  Or had someone already
placed a value on the man's survival?

The fracture board was lifted onto the hospital gurney.  Abby stood
back for a few seconds as the nurses cut away what clothes they could.

Then she took a towel to brush away glass and moved to the bedside.

"Pressure's seventy, " a nurse said.

"Wet a towel and hand it to me, please, " Abby said.  She swept aside
some of the glass stuck to the blood on the man's.  face and caught in
the corners of his eyelids.  When time permitted, they would use
inverted loops of tape to remove the fragments.  Right now there was
more important business at hand.  "Open that IV wide and get me set up
to put in an internal jugular line."

"Right away."

"My eye, " the man moaned.  "There's something in my eye."

"We'll get to it, sir.

Just try to hold still."  Abby began her primary assessment.  His
respirations were shallow and grunting.  There was a gauze pad taped to
his chest, beneath his right nipple.  Abby removed it, revealing a
jagged gash.  There was no air movement in his right lung.

"Get me a chest tube setup, please, " Abby said, pressing the gauze
back over the wound.

The lung had been punctured and had collapsed.  Each time the man
breathe , air was going straight through the bronchial tubes and into
the right chest cavity.  The increasing pressure from that side was
making it impossible for the left lung to get enough air.  That
mounting pressure had to be released, and the right lung had to be
reexpanded.

Abby wiped off the blood from the man's face to assess his color.

There were a number of scrapes and shallow cuts, but nothing that would
compromise his upper airway.

"Help me, " he moaned.  "Please help me."  Abby stared down at him.

"Mary, I know this man, " she said suddenly.  "I saw him at the Colstar
picnic.  His name is Willie Cardoza."  CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

They're two minutes out with Peggy, " Mary Wilder said as she wheeled
in a cart with the equipment to insert a chest tube into Willie
Cardoza.

"Still no change.  Vital signs are stable.  She's breathing on her own,
but she's not conscious."

"Okay.  Get everyone ready.  Right now I've got to get this line in,
then the chest tube.  I'm very concerned about this man."  Mary's
expression left no doubt which patient she was concerned about.

Cardoza's condition was deteriorating.  In addition to the collapsed
lung, he almost certainly was bleeding internally.  His blood pressure
was barely discernible, and his consciousness was fading.  Abby found
no fracture in a lateral X ray of his neck, and removed the soft
collar.

Several other views in addition to the lateral would have been more
reassuring, but there simply wasn't time.  She numbed up a spot just to
one side of his larynx.  In trauma victims large-bore IV lines were
critical for the rapid infusion of fluid and blood.  Like most E.R physicians, Abby was highly skilled at getting them in, either by way of the
"blind" subclavian stick she had used to insert the pacemaker in Hazel
Cookman, or by a "blind" stick into the internal jugular vein, which
she was preparing to do now.

"Any more doctors?  " she asked.

"Dr. Cohen just got here, " Mary said.  "The two in the OR will be
done in ten minutes."  Les Cohen, an older GP, would be better than
nothing, but just barely.

Abby felt for landmarks in Cardoza's neck and found the spots she
wanted.  She then inserted the large needle, keeping suction on the
attached syringe so she would know the instant she was in the vein and
could avoid pushing through it.  The path was inward and slightly
downward, toward the hollow just above his breastbone.  After three
quarters of an inch, blood shot up into the syringe.  Bull's-eye!  She
detached the syringe, threaded a polystyrene cathe er through the
needle, and quickly sutured it in place.  Central line in.  One less
thing to worry about.

"What about the other E.R docs?  " she asked.

"Dr. Bogarsky's your E.R backup.  He's on the way in, but he lives in
Millerton.  I don't think they've been able to reach the Andersons or
Dr. McCabe.  Dr. Alvarez is working until eight tonight at the state
hospital in Caledonia."

"How about a surgeon?  " "Dr. Bartholomew's on.  He'll be here in ten
minutes."

"Tell Dr. Cohen to take over on the lady with the fracture.  Have him
give her some IV antibiotic.

Make it a gram of Unisyn.  She'll be pre-op as soon as orthopedics gets
here, but this guy's almost certainly going to have to go to the OR
first."

"And we don't know about Peggy yet, " the nurse reminded her.

"Dr.  Dolan, " another nurse called from the doorway, "they're here.

They're wheeling Mrs.  Wheaton into the trauma room now."

"Damn, " Abby muttered.  "Pressure, please?  " "Still seventy."

Cardoza was no longer conscious.  His color was poor and his
respirations labored.  In addition to the chest tube, he needed to have
a line placed in the artery at his wrist to monitor his blood pressure
continuously, and an irrigation tube inserted into his abdomen to check
for internal bleeding.  A blood return from that abdominal lavage tube,
and he would need to be taken quickly to the OR for exploration.

For Cardoza alone she desperately needed at least one other pair of
surgically skilled hands.  What she had instead was another priority
one patient to evaluate.

"I've got to get this chest tube in before I can leave him, " she
said.

"Dr. Dolan, " Mary Wilder said, "it's Peggy Wheaton.  Go ahead in
there.

We'll keep an eye on things here."  Abby felt a spark of irritation.

This is hard enough!  she wanted to scream.  For God's sake, don't make
it worse!

Quickly, she composed herself.

"Mary, " Abby said evenly, "I'll be in there as soon as this tube is
in.

Meanwhile, please send Dr.  Torrance in to evaluate her."

"But she's a pediatrician."

"She's also a doctor, " Abby said, no longer able to cull the
impatience from her voice.  "Now, I've got to get this tube in."  The
nurse glared at her and then stormed off.  Abby was aware of an
immediate coolness from the staff remaining in the room.  But there was
nothing she could do.  Without the emergency procedure Willie Cardoza
would be dead within a few minutes.  She was his doctor, not his
judge.

Working now in total, icy silence, she made a slit with a scalpel in a
spot between two of Cardoza's ribs.  Then she snapped the flexible
rubber chest tube tightly into the tip of a heavy hemostat.  With all
her strength she jammed the tube and hemostat tip through the slit,
worked it beneath a rib, and then popped it through the chest-wall
muscle into the empty space where the lung had been.  There was a hiss
of escaping air as the dangerous pressure was released.

"Hook this up to the suction/drainage system, please, " she said to the
two nurses as she sutured the tube in place.  "Pressure, please.  "
"Eighty, Doctor."  Almost reluctantly, the nurse added, "It's a little
easier to hear."  Cardoza's color improved instantly, although it was
far from satisfactory.  The circulation to his head improved as well.

He began moaning once again and making purposeful movements.

"I'll be needing a setup for an arterial line, and also one for an
abdominal lavage.  I'm going to check on things in the next room.  Then
I'll be back."

"How's it going in there, Doc?  " asked the policeman standing guard
outside the door.

"I don't think he's going to escape, " she replied, rushing past him.

The moment she entered the trauma room, she did not like what she
saw.

Peggy Wheaton lay motionless on the gurney, her eyes closed, her
breathing somewhat labored.  A solid cervical collar was in place.  Her
tennis dress had been cut away, revealing an athlete's body with no
hint of having carried and delivered three babies.  There was a gauze
bandage around her head, with blood soaking through the back left
side.

Her feet and hands were turned slightly inward.  Their variation from
normal position was minimal and might have no significance.  But Abby
sensed it meant serious head injury.

"What have you done so far?  " she asked Susan Torrance, the pediatrician

"I just checked her airway, heart, and lungs.  They all seem okay.  "
"Blood pressure?  " "A hundred ten."

"Pupils?  " "I haven't looked yet.  I did order a lateral neck film."

"Thanks, you did great.  Is your other lady stable?  " "Perfectly."

"Excellent.  Could you stay here, then, please?  I may need another
pair of hands."  The pediatrician stepped back from the bedside.  Abby
moved into the spot, took her ophthalmoscope in one hand, and gently
lifted Peggy Wheaton's eyelids with the other.  But even before she
checked the woman's pupils, she noticed something more disturbing than
anything she had seen so far.  Above the collar, blood was oozing from
her left earþblood diluted by the clear fluid that surrounded the
spinal cord and brain.  The fluid leak meant that beneath the bandage,
behind the woman's ear, her skull was fractured.  Abby would have a
sense of just how bad the fracture was when she felt back there.  But
first she shined her ophthalmoscope light into both eyes.  The pupils
were large and absolutely unreactive.  She then ran the pointed end of
her reflex hammer up the soles of Peggy's feet.  On both the right and
the left, the great toe reacted to the stroke by pointing upward rather
than curling downward.  The findingsþboth in the eyes and feetþwere
grave.

Around the room three nurses and the pediatrician waited expectantly
for her orders.  Abby knew that at that moment none of them appreciated
the situation the way she did.  Peggy Wheaton, though breathing and
maintaining a blood pressure, was quite possibly braindead.

Dreading what she was going to feel, she cut the gauze bandage away
and, from both sides, carefully slid her fingers behind the woman's
skull.  The damage was massiveþa broad, deeply depressed fracture
beneath a large laceration.  Abby withdrew her gloved hands slowly and
glanced down at her bloodied fingertips.  On several of them were
strands of what she was certain was brain tissue.  Breathing or not,
blood pressure or not, it was already over.  No medical miracle would
save Peggy Wheaton.

"Get MedFlight up here, " she said.  "Give her Decadron, ten IV.  Get
set to intubate her.  She needs a neurosurgeon."  Or, more likely, a
priest.

"Please, let me in.  Excuse me."  A graying, extremely handsome man in
his forties rushed to the bedside.  His tanned face was pale.  "I'm
Gary Wheaton, " he said.

"Abby Dolan."  Abby stripped off her rubber gloves and pulled the sheet
up to Peggy Wheaton's shoulders.

"Dr. Dolan, I've heard many good things about you.  I'm glad you're on
duty today.  How is she doing?  " Abby glanced down at the woman,
searching for the right words, the right tone, but knowing that what
she had to say could never be done right.

"She's not doing well, Mr. Wheaton."  Abby looked around the room and
realized that the staff, too, were hanging on her words.  "She has a
fractured skull, and my initial exam suggests that there may be
extensive damage beneath the fracture."

"Oh, my God.  Is she .  . . I mean, she's going to make it, isn't
she?

" Abby shrugged.

"I've sent for MedFlight.  She needs a neurosurgical evaluation.  "
Just then the nurse in charge of Willie Cardoza hurried in.

"Dr.  Dolan, his pressure's fifty."

"Is that the man who did this to my wife?  " Gary Wheaton demanded to
know.

"Dr. Torrance, " Abby said, pointedly ignoring the husband's question,
"please keep an eye on things here.  I'll be back as soon as I can.

Once they're set to intubate her, go ahead if her breathing
deteriorates."

"I, um, I think I'd best call you if that happens, " the pediatrician
said.

"Fine.  Mr. Wheaton, you can wait in the family room if you want.  "
"I'm staying right here.  Dr. Dolan, I don't want you leaving my
wife.

" "I know, " she said, moving to the door.  Nobody does.

Before reentering Cardoza's room, Abby glanced about the E.R.  The
orthopedist was in, examining Rebecca Mason's fractured leg.  But Abby
knew he was less equipped to perform an emergency abdominal exploration
than she was.

Cardoza was slipping away.

Desperately, Abby tried to remain calm, to sort through the
possibilities.  If he was bleeding that badly into his belly, there was
probably nothing she could do.  The answer was to start from the
beginningþthe ABCs.  His airway was fine, as was his monitor pattern.

But while examining his chest, she hit pay dirt.  The tube she had
inserted was kinked, and Cardoza's original problem had recurred.  She
straightened the tube without much difficulty and tacked it down.

Once again Cardoza's pressure came up and his color improved.

"Please get some blood up now, " she ordered.  "Un-cross-matched if
they have his blood type.  O negative if they don't.  I'll take
responsibility."  She was in the middle of inserting the gastric lavage
tube when Mary Wilder called from the door.

"Peggy's having difficulty breathing.  She's stopped completely
twice.

Dr. Torrance is trying to get a tube in, but she's having trouble.  "
"Tell her to stop trying to intubate and just use a bag and mask.  I'll
be there in a minute."

"Butþ" "Please!  " Abby completed the insertion of the abdominal tube
and watched as the saline she put in, then drained out of the cavity,
came back bloody.

"Hang two units as soon as possible, " she ordered.

She was racing back into the trauma room when both George Oleander and
Martin Bartholomew entered the E.R.  They followed her into the room.

Abby was not the least surprised that both were on a first-name basis
with Gary Wheaton.

"Thank God you're here, " Wheaton said to the two men.  "This woman
left my wife to go in there with the man who hit her.  Now Peggy's not
breathing."

"I just can't ventilate her by mask with that collar on, " Susan
Torrance explained.

Then take it off!  Abby wanted to scream.  Breathingfirst.  Everything
else next!

"Abby, what's going on here?  " Oleander demanded.

Abby didn't bother responding.  She loosened Peggy Wheaton's collar and
gave her several good, ventilating breaths through the bag and mask.

The woman's heart rate, which had dropped dangerously, sped up.  Still,
Abby knew, it was an exercise in futility.  She prepared to insert a
breathing tube through Peggy's nose and into her lungs.  But at that
instant Dr.  Mehta, the anesthesiologist, arrived.

"Abby, let Dr. Mehta take over, " Oleander ordered with far too much
bluster.  "Sandon, Mrs. Wheaton needs a nasotracheal tube.  Would you
insert it, please?  " "Right away, George."  Abby backed away.  She was
expert at putting in breathing tubes.  But this was not the time for
debate or ego.  The anesthesiologist inserted the tube with ease.

"MedFlight's been sent for, Dr. Oleander, " Abby said with exaggerated
evenness.  "The problem's in her left occipital region.  You should
glove and check it out yourself, as I did.  Dr. Bartholomew, I need
you for the man in major medical.  He's got a positive abdominal
lavage.  We're getting blood running, but I'm certain you're going to
have to explore him soon."

"Is he the one who did this?  " Bartholomew asked.

Abby tried ignoring the question.

"He had a tension pneumothorax, " she said, "but a chest tube seems to
have stabilized that.  We're having trouble keeping his pressure up,
though."

"I asked if he's the man."

"Yes."

"I'll be in there when I'm sure of the situation with Mrs.  Wheaton.

Not before."  Abby didn't respond for fear of what she might say.

"I'm truly sorry about your wife, " she muttered to Gary Wheaton as she
left the room.

Willie Cardoza had responded well to the repositioning of the chest
tube and to an infusion of blood.  He was now fully awake, though
dazed.

"Willie, " Abby said, "I'm Dr. Dolan.  You're doing better, but you've
got some problems in your belly.  Maybe a tear in your spleen.  Do you
understand me?  " Cardoza nodded.  He tried to look at her, but
flinched.

"There's something in my right eye, " he rasped.

Abby noted tiny shards of glass remaining throughout the man's brows
and in his hair.  Carefully, she lifted his lid, but the discomfort
made it impossible for him to keep the eye open.  She inserted a drop
of anesthe ic, and seconds later his eyes opened.  Abby slipped on a
pair of magnifying glasses.

"There's a tiny piece of glass stuck in your cornea, Mr.  Cardoza.

Just stare at a spot on the ceiling and I'll get it out.  Whatever spot
you choose, stay right on it.  Don't move."  Despite his distress,
Cardoza was the perfect patient.  Abby took a fine needle, slipped it
under the edge of the embedded glass, and popped it free.  The cornea,
a clear dome over the front of the eye, looked okay.

But to be certain it hadn't been damaged in a way she couldn't see,
Abby put in a drop of fluorescent dye.  Any cuts in the cornea would
fill with the dye and would light up brightly under a black light.

She ordered the overheads cut.  The cornea looked fine, but a golden
ring glowed around the base.  She had never seen anything quite like
it.

Some sort of irritant, she thoughtþa roughened area that was picking up
the dye.  Then she noticed that under the black light, the other eye
had a glowing ring of equal brightness in exactly the same place.  And
that eye had gotten no dye at all.

She was trying to connect with something to explain the fascinating
finding when, from the doorway, a throat was cleared.  Abby looked up.

Framed by the light behind him was George Oleander.

"Peggy Wheaton's dead, " he said.  "Why in the hell did you leave her
like that?  " Chapter SEVENTEEN.

Ted Bogarsky, Abby's E.R backup, arrived soon after Peggy Wheaton
died.

Together the two doctors worked their way through the huge backlog of
patients that had developed during the hours following the nightmare at
the country club.  Still, it was after six in the evening before the
waiting room was empty.

Willie Cardoza had made it into and out of the operating room and was
now stable in the ICU under round-the-clock police guard.  Martin
Bartholomew reluctantly performed the surgery on him and, as Abby had
suspected, found a tear in Cardoza's spleen.  Aside from that and the
chest trauma, he had no other critical injuries.  Barring an unforeseen
complication, there was no reason he wouldn't make it, unless, of
course, the unmitigated hatred seething through the hospital and the
town led someone to proclaim himself Cardoza's executioner.

Abby did her best to focus one by one on each patient she saw, but it
was hardly easy.  The staff was extremely distant and uncooperative.

Finally she gave up asking for assistance and got her own suture setups
and discharge sheets.  Shortly after she had left Peggy Wheaton in the
care of Drs.  Oleander, Bartholomew, and Mehta, the woman had lost her
blood pressure and her heart rate had dropped into the teens.  Massive
doses of medication held her for a short time, but the MedFlight
chopper had not even arrived when she suffered an irreversible cardiac
standstill.

Abby had little doubt that the coroner would document the lethal nature
of Wheaton's head injury.  But she also had little doubt that the
finding would not matter to many people in Patience.

She had just finished suturing a child's knee when Ted Bogarsky came
over.  He was a jovial family man and a steady E.R doc.  He lived some
distance from the hospital and had always seemed removed from the
politics and personalities of the place.  If, like the others, he
condemned Abby for deserting an all-American mother of three to care
for the lowlife who destroyed her, Bogarsky hid it well.

"Why don't you go on home?  " he said now.  "I'm on tonight, anyhow.

Besides, we just found out our ten-year-old's going to need braces, so
I can use the overtime."

"Ted, you're already getting the overtime.

I don't think I should leave early.  I'm just not sure what it would
say to people if I did."

"I understand.  It's been a hell of a day.

For what it's worth, I think you handled everything brilliantlyþas well
as anyone possibly could have.  If I'd been in your place, I know I'd
have come completely unglued."

"Nonsense, but thank you.  I need to know that at least someone
understands what went on here."

"Every one will with time.  People are just a little raw right now."

"I hope so.

Ted, let me ask you something.  Have you ever seen or heard of any
condition that causes a ring around the base of the cornea, bilateral,
that can't be seen normally, but glows under a strong W light?  " "Like
the rings in copper poisoning?  What are they called?  "
"Kayser-Fleischer rings.  They don't fluoresce.  But, yes, that's the
idea.  Same exact place in the eye."  Bogarsky shook his head.

"Why do you ask?  " "Just something I read.  I can't remember the
details, though.  Look, why don't I stick around for a while longer?

If it stays slow, maybe I will leave a little early."

"Fine."

"I'll be in the on-call room for a few minutes.  I just want to wash
up."  Abby wanted to explain that she had seen the curious rings in the
eyes of Willie Cardoza.  But there was nothing to be gained by doing
that until she understood more.  As far as she could remember, none of
the articles she had read on cadmium toxicity spoke of eye findings.

But there was something in one of themþsomething that seemed to be just
eluding her.  The articles were in her briefcase in the on-call room,
although she hadn't had time to read any of them today before the E.R
had gone crazy.

She set them on the desk, wondering if someone was sitting at a
monitoring console someplace watching her.  Skimming the articles
quickly, she stopped at one entitled "Medical Findings in NickelCadmium
Battery Workers."  Thirty-eight workers were studied.  Thirty-four of
them had headache, twenty-six had weakness, fatigue, and lassitude,
sixteen had dizziness, one died from a syndrome like Lou Gehrig's
disease, and CT scans on six of the workers revealed brain atrophy.

She set the article aside.  It was impressive for the number of
central-nervous toxic effects of the metal.  But it wasn't the
information that was nagging at her.  Ten minutes later she was about
to give up and rejoin Bogarsky when she found it.  It was an article in
a chemistry journal.

Cadmium in the liver and in the kidney, the abstract read, can be
measured in the lab by the technique of X-ray fluorescence.

The science was simply too technical for her to understand.  But at
least the hint was there.  Under certain circumstances cadmium in
tissues did glow.  She would have to try to get the original article
and then maybe ask a biochemist to explain it.

She massaged her aching neck and shoulders.  Tension, strain, and
nearly ten hours of nonstop work had taken a toll on her body.  It felt
as if she had gone ten rounds with a heavyweight.  Enough, she
decided.

She had had enough of this day.  If it wasn't busy out there, she would
leave.

She opened the door and nearly collided with Joe Henderson, the
president of the hospital.  Henderson was a well-built, balding
outdoorsman who had lacquered trophy fish on his office wall along
with an NRA poster extolling the constitutional right to bear arms.  No
matter how grim or intense the subject he was discussing, Henderson
always seemed to be grinning.  Not today, though.

"Abby, " he said, "they told me I'd find you here.  Got a minute to
speak with me and a couple of others?  " "Well, I don't know how things
are going out there."

"They're fine.  I just checked with Ted Bogarsky."

"Then I guess I've got a minute."

"Terrible thing that happened to Peggy Wheaton.  Just terrible, " he
said as he led her to the small conference room just off the E.R.

Len McCabe, the elder statesman of her E.R group, was there along with
George Oleander and a third man, who introduced himself as Terry Cox.

Cox looked like a person whose passions included good food, fine wine,
and money.

"I work for the hospital, " he said.  "I'm an attorney.  But I'm also
an old friend of Gary and Peggy Wheaton."  An attorney.  What a
surprise.

"Should I be getting a lawyer of my own?  " Abby asked, far too weary
to be civil.

"Abby, " McCabe said, "there's no need to get angry.  We'd just like to
know what went on out there today."

"With a lawyer present?  " "A concerned friend, " Cox corrected.  "And
a hospital representative.

Needless to say, Gary and his family are distraught.  I thought I could
help explain things to them."  Abby calmed herself with a deep
breath.

"Okay, " she said.  "What happened out there was that for almost twenty
minutes our disaster-alert system failed to bring in another physician
except for one pediatrician.  I examined Mrs. Wheaton and determined
that she would not benefit from my time and effort as much as Mr.
Cardoza would.  I felt that his life was on the line, while hers was
already lost."  Cox grimaced.

"You mean, " he said, "that after less than a minute with Peggy
Wheatonþa young woman with a pulse and blood pressure, breathing on her
ownþyou could tell that she wasn't worth trying to save, while the man
who murdered her was?  " "Mr. Cox, this isn't a courtroom, " Abby
said, "and I don't like the sense that you're cross-examining me.  "
She paused while the lawyer mumbled an apology.  "I'm horribly saddened
by Mrs. Wheaton's death, " she went on.  "But I'm trained to evaluate
patients quickly and to make decisions.  That's what E.R doctors do
every moment they're on duty.  Most of those decisions are quite minor
and routine, some are life-and-death.

The decision to concentrate on Mr. Cardoza was an extremely painful
and difficult one for me to make, but it was the right one.  I felt so
at the time.  I feel it even more strongly now."  At that moment,
inexplicably, she flashed on Willie Cardoza on his back on the Colstar
Park grass, holding Angela Cristoforo tiqhtlv, vet tenderly, as he kept
her from hurting herself any more.

v , -, She would have done the same for me, he had said to Abby.  We
company grunts have to stick together.

"Would you have done things differently if you had had more time?  "
Cox was asking.

Abby didn't answer him.  Instead, she turned to Oleander.

"George, did you examine Mrs. Wheaton's skull?  Did you see the extent
of the damage?  " The medical chief flushed.

"I .  . . no.  No, I didn't, " he admitted.  "There was too much
happening too fast.  Abby, please understand, we're not accusing you of
doing anything wrong.  I've been trying to explain to you some of the
differences between a city like San Francisco and a place like
Patience.

By now everyone in town has heard some version of what went on here
today.  We just want to make sure that when we tell the hospital's side
of it, we're all on the same page."

"And are we?  " "What?  " "On the same page."  Abby had no intention of
making excuses for anything she had done.  For years she had feared
being faced with a day like this.

Now it had happened.  And whether this impromptu men's club wanted to
accept it or not, she had performed damn well.  Whether they were
pleased about it or not, a man's life had been saved.  And whether they
truly believed it or not, Peggy Wheaton was doomed before she had ever
entered the E.R.

"I .  . . yes, I suppose we are, " Oleander said.  "Joe, Terry, Len?  "
The men exchanged glances.  None of them looked pleased, although none
of them looked as if he had anything further to say.  Abby thought she
could read their eyes, though, and the set of their jaws.  Our
community has its way of dealing with people who turn their backs on
us, Dr. Dolan.  You've had a number of chances to demonstrate you
really want to fit in here.  Don't count on being around much longer.

She shook hands with each of the men and asked Cox to extend her
condolences to Gary Wheaton.  Then she gathered her things from the
on-call room, signed out to Ted Bogarsky, and left the hospital,
surprised that it was still light out.  As she headed across the E.R
parking lot toward the doctors' parking lot, she didn't notice a thin
young woman who stepped from the lengthening shadows and followed
her.

Abby was nearing the far end of the lot when the woman called to her.

Abby turned as she approached.  The stranger looked to be in her
thirties.  Her hair was dark and tied back in a ponytail that reached
her midback.  Her narrow face was plain, although her dark eyes were
large and childlike.  She wore jeans and a tie-dyed blouse.

"Dr. Dolan, " she said, stammering nervously, "I'm sorry to run after
you like this.  I tried speaking to you inside, but there were always
too many people around."

"What can I do for you?  " "My name is Colette Simmons.  Willie Cardoza
is my boyfriend.  We've been together for almost five years now."

"Why didn't you come up to me earlier?  " "I waitress at a restaurant
twenty miles away.  I didn't even know about the accident until I got
home a little while ago.  My girlfriend is a nurse on the second
floor.

She called me and told me what happened.  She said you saved Willie's
life."

"I'm glad he made it.

" "Dr. Dolan, I'm so upset.  Willie would never hurt anyone unless
they hurt him first.  The policeman told me he's been arrested for
murder.

They're going to take him to a prison hospital as soon as they can.

But I think he was real sick before this ever happened."

"Would you like to sit down and talk?  " "Please."  Abby motioned her
to the low, secluded bench where Lew had first told her about the
Alliance.

"What do you mean, Willie was sick?  " "Doctor, Willie n' me have been
together for almost five years.  We live in a trailer east of town.  We
don't bother folks and they don't bother us.  But Willie has always
tried to do what little things he could for people who were old or
sickþfix their fence, pick up their groceries, things like that.  He
even helped that girl at the company picnic who was cutting herselœ I
don't know if you heard about that."

"Actually, I was there, Colette.

I saw what he did."

"Then you know he's a good man."

"What's been happening to him?  " "For about four months he's been
acting real strange.  He's been, I don't know, moody.  Everything gets
on his nerves.  And that's just not like him."  Abby felt the tension
building inside her with every word of the woman's story.

"Please, go on, " she said.

"Well, on top of everything else, he's been having these terrible
headaches.  He gets this bad taste in his mouth, then he gets a
headache.

We think it has something to do with a fall he took off a ladder last
March.  He smashed his head on a rock and was knocked out for a few
seconds.  The cut took twenty-five stitches.  After that he began to
have trouble."

"Sounds like a concussion.  Did he have a CT scan?

You know what that is?  " "Yes, I know.  He had one several months
ago.

The doctor at the Colstar clinic said it didn't show anything."

"What did they say was wrong with him?  " "Migraine headaches.  They
gave him some medicine, but he kept getting worse and worse.  Finally,
a couple of days ago, he had a fight with his boss about missing so
much work, and Willie punched him.  Dr. Dolan, that's not like Willie
Cardoza.

None of this is."

"I understand, " Abby said.  "Do you have any idea what happened
today?

" Colette shook her head.

"I left for work before he got up.  He was bad yesterday, I can tell
you that much.  Real bad.  Ranting and raving, and full of hate.  Rich
people.  That's all he kept talkin' about, how much rich people were
ruining his life.  My friend told me the police were talking about how
much everyone hates him now for what he did.  I'm so frightened for
him.

Is there anything you can do to help him?  " "I don't know, Colette.  "
Abby started to say something about Josh but thought better of it.

Colette Simmons might be a loose cannon in this situation.  Instead,
she wrote down her phone number.

"Here, " Abby said.  "If you need to call me anytime, day or night,
just do it.  I'll either be at this number or at the hospital.  "
"Please try to help him."

"I'll do what I can."

"Dr. Dolan, is there any chance that it wasn't Willie who did this?  "
"No, " Abby said sadly.  "That's about the only thing I'm certain of
right now."

"Thank you."  The woman shook her hand gratefully and then hurried back
into the hospital.  Driven by a surge of nervous energy, Abby stayed on
the bench, trying to figure out what her next move should be.

Cardoza and Joshþboth Colstar employees, both with bizarre headaches
and deteriorating behavior, both with violent, paranoid outbursts.

Were there others?  Did some of those on the Alliance's list fit the
pattern?  And what about the strange eye findingsþdid Josh have them?

It was time to put some data together.  And soon, maybe later tonight,
it would be time to share what she had learned with Lew.

She collected her things.  A shower at home, then maybe some Italian
food at the Tower of Pizza.  After that, she would return to the
hospital to check on Willie Cardoza, reexamine his eyes, and review the
information in his hospital record.  Finally, she would take the list
of names Barbara Torres had given her and get to work in the record
room.

A picture was emerging.  Now it was time to color it in.

Ahead of her, above the trees, eight-foot-high illuminated letters
watched over the valley.

Colstar International, Patience, CA.  Employee Safety Is Our Highest
Priority.

Abby laughed bitterly at the memory of the sign as she headed for her
car.  She was actually unlocking the driver's-side door when she
noticed the broken glass covering most of her backseat.  A small
boulder rested in the center.  Above the seat the rear windowþwhat
remained of itþwas shattered.

Dismayed, Abby looked about.  No one.

She checked her tires.  The window seemed to be the only casualtyþthis
time.

"Idiots, " she muttered.

She took her briefcase down from where she had set it on the roof and
relocked the Mazda.  There was nothing she wanted less right now than
to report the incident to hospital security or the police.  But, almost
certainly, her insurance carrier would not cover the replacement unless
she did.  And the last thing she needed at the moment was to pile up
any unnecessary expenses.  Soon, possibly very soon, she might be out
of a job.

Chapter EIGHTEEN.

The intensive care unit on the second floor of PRH was, like almost
everything else in the hospital, state of the art.  It handled cardiac
and major trauma cases as well as post-ops who were too shaky to go
directly to a med-surg floor from the recovery room.  Abby went up to
the unit frequently to check on patients she had admitted there.  Never
had she seen it as busy as on this night.  There were ten
glass-enclosed cubicles arranged around the central nursing/monitoring
station.  The beds in all of them were filled.

Abby's first stop was the nurses' station, where she reviewed Willie
Cardoza's chart.  Although some 50 percent of PRH's records were still
kept in manila binders, the hospital's record keeping was in the
process of being upgraded to a system nicknamed KarMenþthe
KarstenMendenhall voice-activated data-encodement system.  Compared to
it, the record keeping at St.  John's was chisel-and-stone tablet.

KarMen, a recent product of a Silicon Valley company, was built upon
the instantaneous computer transcription of dictated notes.  The
dictation was then immediately printed out for inpatient use and also
stored electronically for future reference.  The hard copy and records
yet to be switched to KarMen were kept in a fireproof vault as
backup.

KarMen was so sophisticated that physicians and nurses with foreign
accents or speech impediments could "register" them by reading a series
of prescribed words and phrases into the dictation phone.  The system
adjusted itself so that their variations in speech would not affect the
transcription.  Record retrieval was carefully guarded through a series
of passwords unique to each physician and nurse, and not to be shared
under any circumstances.

Abby reviewed the operative notes from Martin Bartholomew and had to
admit that the bombastic surgeon had done a professional job.  Cardoza
had remained stable throughout his surgery, with no significant blood
loss once the circulation to his spleen was tied off.

Bartholomew's admission note cited an arthroscopic knee operation three
years before, and a four-day hospitalization for pneumonia four years
before that.  There was no mention of the head injury that Colette
Simmons believed was responsible for Cardoza's deteriorating
condition.

Abby wanted to check with KarMen for those records, but the
nurses'-station terminals were all in use.  She made a mental note to
check Cardoza's record after she had finished examining him, then
headed for his cubicle.  Wedged in her clinic-coat pocket was the
combination black light and magnifier she had borrowed from the E.R.

And folded alongside it was a copy of the report she had filed with
hospital security.

After discovering the shattered window in her car, Abby had reluctantly
sought out the guard on duty, a huge, porcine-faced man who chewed
nonstop on a toothpick while he took down her complaint.  His blatant
lack of outrage at the damage to her car made it clear that he had been
exposed to some version of the Cardoza-Wheaton story.

"We'll look into it, Doc, " he said, scuffing at a few shards of glass
on the tarmac by her car.  "Looks like whoever did it had some muscles,
though.  That rock must weigh twenty pounds at least."  Abby left,
having little difficulty imagining the guard himself heaving the
boulder through the rear window of her Mazda.

It was on her way up to the ICU that she had stopped by the E.R for the
ophthalmologic ultraviolet light.  Before pursuing the strange eye
findings on Willie Cardoza, she had wanted to verify them.  Entering
and leaving the ENT room, she passed several nurses and aides.  Not one
of them spoke to her except Bud Perlow, who seemed genuinely concerned
for what she was going through.  Rarely in her medical career had she
clashed with physicians or nurses.  In fact, during tough times she had
drawn strength from the respect they had for her skill, her attitude,
and even her worrywart approach to solving problems.  Now she had
performed almost flawlessly in the most challenging situation.  And, as
a result, she had placed her job and even her career in jeopardy.

Welcome to Patience, CA.

The police officer seated on a folding chair just outside Willie
Cardoza's cubicle, looked ridiculously out of place in the bustling
unit.  If he knew who she was, he hid it well.  He glanced at the
plastic ID on her clinic coat but could not possibly have read her name
as she walked straight past him and into the room.

Willie, eyes closed, was breathing comfortably on his own.  Overhead,
the monitoring equipment continuously traced out his EKG, blood
pressure, central-venous pressure, pulmonary-artery pressure, and
blood-oxygen concentration.  State of the art.  The lights were dim.

The whirring, hissing, and gurgling of Willie's oxygen-delivery system
and chest-tube suction apparatus droned white noise in concert with the
sounds from the other nine rooms.  But within the cacophony Abby also
heard the alarm on one of Cardoza's IV infusion pumps beeping that the
line was obstructed.  The nurses were occupied with other patients and
might not have heard it.  But she wondered if the policeman was unaware
of the significance of the sound, or was simply ignoring it.

She followed the IV tubing from the plastic bottle through the pump and
down to Willie's hand.  No kinks.  Next she gently straightened his arm
out at the elbow.  The alarm stopped almost immediately, and the red
warning light went out.  At the base of the plastic bottle she could
see the droplets begin to flow once again.  Instead of confronting the
nurses with the information that the IV was easily occluded by Cardoza
bending his elbow, she wrote it on a note and taped it to the infusion
unit.  It would be interesting to see if anyone bothered to splint his
arm to keep it from bending.

"Everything okay?  " Willie was peering up at her through half-open
eyes.  He had on an oxygen mask, and there was a tube in his nose that
kept his stomach from overfilling with acid.  His lips were dry and
cracked.  There were faint bruises on his forehead.  His voice had the
raspiness of a patient who had been on artificial ventilation through a
breathing tube.  Abby moved to the side of the bed where the dim
fluorescent light could best shine on her face.

"So far, so good, " she said.  "How're you doing?  " "Who are you?  "
"My name's Dr. Abby Dolan.  I'm the emergency doctor who took care of
you when you first came in."

"Did I really kill someone like they say?  " "Don't you remember what
happened?  " "I remember I was angry and .  . . and sick.  And my head
wouldn't stop hurting."

"That's all you remember?  " "Did I really kill someone?  " Abby could
feel his confusion and anguish.  She took his hand in .

hers.

"You hit some people with your car, Mr. Cardoza.  Three women.  I'm
very sorry, but one of them did die."  Cardoza's eyes closed.

"Oh, God, " he moaned softly.

There were many questions Abby wanted to ask him about the headaches
and the months that preceded the violence at the country club.  But
there would be time later on or in the morning.  She plugged the black
light into one of the wall sockets over the bed.

"Mr. Cardoza, " she said, "I know you're tired, and I know I just gave
you some awful news.  But if you can help me, I'd like to examine your
eyes with this special light.  I took a piece of glass out of your eye
earlier today, and I'd like to check and see if everything's okay.  "
For several seconds Cardoza remained as he was, eyes closed.  Then,
slowly, he opened them.  As he did, a tear broke free from the corner
of his right eye and glided down along the edge of the oxygen mask.

'Thank you, " Abby whispered.  "I want to help you, Willie.  I really
do."  She shined the light in Cardoza's eyes.  The glowing golden ring
was there in each eyeþthin as a pencil lead, but definite.

She examined Cardoza's eyes for half a minute and then allowed them to
close.  Except in textbooks she had never seen the goldenbrown
Kayser-Fleischer rings that were diagnostic of copper toxicity.  But
from what she remembered, the thickness and location were almost
identical to these.  And didn't poisoning with silver and gold do
something to the cornea as well?  An hour or two in the library would
fill the gaps in her memory.  The rings didn't mean anything yet in
terms of signifying an underlying problem, but she strongly sensed they
were going to.  Later tonight or tomorrow she would discuss the bizarre
finding with Lew.  In the meantime, as long as her nervous energy was
keeping her awake and keen, she would see what the record room had to
offer.

She pulled up the sheet and adjusted the pillow beneath Willie's
head.

"Hang in there, " she said.

The record room at PRH, as in many hospitals, was located in the
basement.  Abby walked down from the ICU, aware of the toll that the
stressful day was beginning to take on her mind and body.  But there
were too many unanswered questions for her to stop now.  And, besides,
she had little desire to hurry home for yet another night in an empty
house.

The record-room door was locked, although light shone through the
opaque glass panel.  Abby knocked once, then again.

"Just a minute, " a woman called out.

Through the glass Abby saw her approaching.  The door opened, and
before Abby could place the woman, she identified herself.

"Dr.  Dolan, hiþI'm Donna Tracy, Bill's daughter.  Come in."

"How's your dad?  " "He's home and doing very well, thanks to you.  You
know that the test for Cushing's disease did come back positive."

"I did know that, yes."

"He's gone to see a specialist at University Hospital in San
Francisco.

Dr.  Fitzgerald.  Do you know him?  " "He's the best around."

"That's great to hear."  Bill Tracy, Willie Cardozaþtwo lives she had
been directly responsible for saving.  But for one she was criticized
for embarrassing another physician, and for the other she was an
instant pariah just for succeeding.  Tough gig, this place.

"I heard about that woman who got killed today."

"It was pretty bad.

" "I don't know how you do it."

"Sometimes I don't know either."

"How can I help you?  " "I'm doing a little research about allergic
reactions seen in the E.R.

Since I'm still a little wound up from all that's happened today, I
thought I'd begin to put together some of the data.  I don't know how
many of the cases I want to review are on KarMen, and how many are
still in regular files."  Donna Tracy bit at her lower lip.

"Dr.  Dolan, I'm not sure you can do that, " she said.

"Why?  I have a password to get into the retrieval side of KarMen.  I
just need to know where to find things.  I won't be in your way, I
promise."

"I may have to clear this with my boss."  Abby glanced at the clock.

"It won't take me long.  Maybe an hour or two at the most.  I really am
glad your dad's doing so well."

"Thank you.  Oh, well, I suppose while I'm trying to get in touch with
Joanne Ricci, you can get started.  I'm sure she'll say it's okay.  I
do need to check, though.

" "Thank you, Donna."

"Do you have the names and hospital numbers?  .

. . Good.  Just give them to me, and I'll check off which ones are in
the new system and which ones are still in files.  The E.R and the OR
are the only parts of the hospital completely on KarMen, but they have
two people working every day to load in the rest of the medical
records.  We still have everything on hard copy, and I suspect we will
for a long time to come.  But KarMen is much easier to use and
certainly takes up a lot less space."

"Let's do it.  One thing?  " "Yes?  " "Do you have a street map of
Patience and the rest of the valley?  " I "No, but I imagine security
does.  Harvey's around someplace.  Do you want me to call and check
with him?  " "No, no, that's all right."  Harvey.  Abby handed over the
first half of the Alliance's list, then took the other half and settled
in at the nearest dictation carrel.

Patient name, age, sex, address, marital status, date, time, presenting
complaint, discharge diagnosis, private physician, treating physician,
blood work, X rays.  Meticulously, Abby set up her database.  As E.R
residents, she and each of the others in her program had been required
to spend three months writing a literature-review article or conducting
a retrospective record review.  Abby's research, involving the
correlation of internal damage with the entry location of gunshot
wounds that had no exit holes, had actually been published.  At the
time, she and the others had groused about the impracticality of
forcing action-oriented E.R trainees to develop techniques of setting up
databases and to relearn the various statistical tests for data
analysis.  Now she was grateful.

By the time Abby had completed setting up the data grid she would be
filling in, Donna Tracy returned with half of her list, along with a
stack of records.

"Some of these people have never been inpatients here, " Donna said.

"The ones on the list marked K are in KarMen.  You can access them
right there with your password.  Most are E.R records of people who have
never been admitted."  It was well after nine by the time Abby began
reviewing the charts.  The process was more difficult than she had
anticipated for several reasons, the first of which was that she was
absolutely exhausted.  Her concentration was compromised, and she was
reduced to logging in the data on each patient without trying to reach
any conclusions.  Another problem was the lack of a clearly defined
hypothesisþthe postulate that she intended to prove or disprove through
her research.  Instead, she was taking the scattershot approach of
amassing as much information as possible in hopes that some
similarities or, better still, a pattern, would emerge.

By ten she had completed the review on eight cases.  Half were Colstar
employees, three of whom had George Oleander as their primary doctor.

One from the non-Colstar group had also been a patient of Oleander.

None of the eight had a final diagnosis that was confirmed by a
positive laboratory test, although all of them had been put through
impressively detailed workups.

Abby checked the time.  Something about what she was seeing was
bothering her, but she was too tired to put her finger on what it might
be.  Instead, she pulled out one last record.  If she didn't quit for
the night very soon, she was sure to start missing things.  It was then
that she noticed that she still had the ultraviolet light in her
pocket.  The way things were going, Harvey would be waiting outside the
hospital to arrest her for grand larceny.  The black light drew her
thoughts back to the unfinished business of reviewing the record of
Willie Cardoza's head injury.

She entered the KarMen retrieval system and typed in JOSHWY, the first
of her two passwords.  After responding to a series of questions about
who she was and why she wanted the record, she logged in her other
password, KILKENNY, the county in Ireland where her father had been
born.  Willie's KarMen record quickly appeared on the screen.  It
showed precisely what Bartholomew had noted in his workup, an
outpatient knee operation and a four-day stay for pneumococcal
pneumonia.  No head injury.

"Donna, " she called out, "sorry to bother you, but do you happen to
have the actual chart for Willie Cardoza?  " "The patient who's in the
unit?  " "Yes."

"It may have gone up, but I'll check."  She disappeared into the record
vault for only a minute.  "I can't find it.

It must beþ" The door to the record room slammed open, and a
middle-aged woman strode in, followed closely by Harvey, the guard.

She clearly had come directly from some sort of dress-up affair and was
wearing an evening pants suit and a great deal of makeup and jewelry.

"Mrs. Ricci!  " Donna exclaimed, clearly startled and concerned by the
woman's arrival.

"Donna, instead of leaving a message on my machine, you should have had
me paged.  This situation is an emergency that requires my immediate
attention."  Harvey's pig face looked down at Abby.  He shook his
massive head reprovingly.

"I .  . . I'm sorry, " Donna stammered.  "I didn't thinkþ" "This was
not the time for thinking, " Ricci snapped.  "It was the time for
knowing our policy."  By now Abby had regained her composure.

Ignoring the guard, she stood to confront the woman.

"Excuse me, but what is this all about?  " she asked.

Joanne Ricci met her gaze with the ease of someone used to being in
charge.

"Donna left a message that you were here.  Obviously, she saw nothing
wrong with allowing you to examine the charts of our patients, but I
do.

And so does the medical records committee of your medical staff.  It
was just fortunate that I called into my answering machine from the
dinner party I was attending."

"All I was doing was checking for patients who might have been having
allergic reactions, " Abby said.

"Frankly, Dr. Dolan, I have no interest in what you were looking for,
only in the rule you"þshe shot a withering look at Donnaþ"and you, were
breaking.  Now, if you'd please set those records on the counter, I'd
like you to leave."  Abby wasn't certain, but it seemed to her that the
woman's bravado was forced and unnatural, and her response, including
bringing along Harvey, was well out of proportion to the offense.  Was
she as angry and dismayed as she seemed, or was she frightened of
something?

"Mrs. Ricci, " Abby said, "I still don't understand.  Exactly what
rule is it that I'm violating?  " "There is an expressed hospital
policy against any sort of chart review without written permission from
the medical-records committee.  It's in the hospital bylaws, which you
were supposed to have read when you accepted a position on the staff.

" Abby had never heard of a hospital law prohibiting physicians from
conducting a chart review without someone's written permission.  But,
clearly, the records librarian was in no mood for a discussion.

"Well, could you at least tell me who the chairman of the records
committee is?  " "Dr. Martin Bartholomew has been in charge for
years.

" Inwardly, Abby groaned.  Another confrontation with Bartholomew.

Just what she needed.  Well, the showdown wasn't going to happen
tonight.  For the moment she had seen about as much of Patience
Regional Hospital as she cared to.

"Sorry, " she said to Donna Tracy, who looked pale and shaken.

She picked up her briefcase and turned toward the door.  Harvey, arms
folded, puffed himself up like a eunuch at a harem-tent doorway,
barring her return into the room.  Suddenly, Abby turned back.

"Mrs. Ricci, " she said, "I just want you to know that Donna did not
want me looking at any charts.  She tried to explain the rules, and I
just pooh-poohed them."

"Well, she should have been more forceful."

"That's not so easy when you're young and working in a hospital, and a
physician orders you to do something."

"That may be so.  But it remains to be seen whether or not it is an
acceptable excuse.  I don't know what it is with you E.R doctors."

"What do you mean?  " "I've been here for twelve years.  The policy
regarding chart reviews has been in place all that time, and you're
only the second doctor to violate it.  But the other one was an
emergency doctor, too."

"Who?

" Abby asked, trying to seem casual about the question while doing her
best to match the woman's glare.

"It was Dr. Brooks, " Joanne Ricci said.  "David Brooks.  I don't know
what, if anything, the records committee decided to do to him, but they
insisted that I fire the girl who let him stay down here."  Chapter
NINETEEN.

Abby drove the Mazda home and then spent half an hour vacuuming out the
glass.  She felt tired, bewildered, and angry.  It was as if she had
done nothing more than buy a ticket to a play and suddenly found
herself the protagonist .  . . and the villain.

Leaving Patience was occupying more and more of her thoughts.  In the
morning, she decided, she would call her old boss at St. John's.  If
he had a position for her, well .  . . she would be very tempted to
take it.

Cadmium poisoning, mental breakdown, or whateverþJosh's strange,
threatening note had been very unsettling.  She had done her best to
get him diagnosed and treated.  But from what she could tell, he was
more irrational and uncooperative than ever.  Where did her
responsibility to him end?

Thanks to his last visit, there was no beer in the refrigerator.  She
settled instead for some iced tea and what remained of a box of vanilla
fingers.  She took a framed photograph of her and Josh from the counter
and set it on the table.  They had been hiking up Mt.  Tamalpais in
Marin County, ten miles northwest of San Francisco.  Josh had wedged
his Nikon on a tree branch and taken the snapshot using the automatic
timer.  The resulting inadvertent tilt of the frame had turned a
pleasant shot into art.  Abby closed her eyes and relived the warmth and
even the scents of that perfect autumn day.  But the emotionsþthe
incredible feelings of connection, of closenessþwere harder to capture.

On an impulse she brought out the regional phone book.  Josh had rented
from people named Sawicki, Quinn had said.  There couldn't be too many
of those in the book.  Perhaps there had been some developments with
the neurologist, she thought.  Perhaps Josh was just too embarrassed by
his recent behavior to callþor too pigheaded.

She was about to look up the name when her pager went oK The number
that appeared on the liquid display was one she didn't recognize.

There are no coincidences, she thought.  She dialed, expecting to hear
Josh.

But it was Lew Alvarez who answered on the first ring.

"Abby, I'm really glad I caught up with you.  Where are you calling
fromþthe hospital?  " "Home.  I guess you heard about today."

"I knew there was a multiple-injury accident of some sort when they
tried to get me to come in.  But when I called later in the day, they
said everything was under control.  I heard that Gary Wheaton's wife
got killed.  I feel awful for you about that.  I'm just calling to find
out exactly what happened and if you're okay."

"What happened depends on who you talk to.  And I'm okay, but I've
certainly been better."

"Tell me about it."  Abby glanced through the empty dining room into
the empty living room.

As tired as she was, spending the rest of the evening alone had no
appeal.  It wasn't sex she was after, but somehow the timing of Lew's
call, just when she was about to give in and try to reconnect with
Josh, had to mean something.

"Are you busy right now?  " she suddenly heard herself ask.

"Not really.  My shift at the state hospital was only twelve hours, and
not a bad twelve hours at that.  I was going to do some reading and
then call it a night."

"Well, would you like to get together?  I have a great deal to tell you
about."  l Lew's hesitation, although brief, made her uncomfortable.

He had to be involved with someone.  That must be it.  And the woman
was probably sitting right there.

"The night is very clear, " he said, "and the view from the meadow up
here is spectacular.  If you'd like to come up, I'd be very happy to
see you."  Abby set the Tamalpais photo on the table, facedown.

"Is twenty minutes too soon?  " "I'm not a bit surprised by all this, "
Lew said, after Abby had reviewed the events in the E.R and her
subsequent meeting with Oleander, Henderson, McCabe, and Terry Cox, the
attorney.  "I doubt anyone who matters in Patience even knew this
Willie Cardoza existed before today.  And if they did, I doubt they
thought much of him.  Even before I began making enemies around here by
siding with Dave Brooks, I was treated like an outsider.  At the time
they hired me, they were in pretty desperate need of good help in the
E.Rþdesperate enough to overlook my being Hispanic.

But I was certainly never invited to belong to the country club.  "
Abby thought about the country-club feelers she had already received
from both Oleander and Lyle Quinn.

"I think you should be proud of that, " she said.

They were on a weathered wooden-slatted swing, placed atop a knoll in
the meadow beyond Lew's house.  The night was intensely clear and just
chilly enough to warrant the frayed quilt he had carried up.  In less
than an hour Abby had counted half a dozen shooting stars.  But
although Lew was certainly warm toward her, as understanding and
supportive as she could wish, he had not responded at all to the
romantic setting.  He sat well to his side of the swing, absorbed in
her story, but hardly lost in her eyes.

"How was Cardoza when you left?  " he asked.

"Well, let's see.  He'd been charged with murder and was under police
guard, plus being cared for by a staff that would have been much
happier if he had died.  Other than that, I would say he was doing
okay."

"There's a prison hospital at Las Rosas.  He'll probably be moved there
soonþmaybe even tomorrow."

"Not that soon."

"Don't be surprised if it happens.  The hospital there is not that
bad.

They even have an ICU and a couple of ORs.  And the last thing Patience
wants is a crazed killer lolling around its hospital's ICU."

"Well, then, there's another big part of the story I think you should
know about."  Abby began with the bizarre ocular findings on Willie,
followed by the meeting with Colette Simmons in the hospital parking
lot.

"So you think these rings in this man's eyes might be a manifestation
of cadmium poisoning?  " Lew asked, clearly intrigued.

"It's possible."

"Needless to say, I've read a great deal on the subject.  Why haven't I
ever run into anything like this?  " "I'm not sure anything's been
published describing it.  The two thoughts I had were, first, that the
rings need a black light to be seen, and maybe no one with cadmium
poisoning has ever been examined that way before."

"Possibly."

"And, second, maybe the amount of cadmium exposure in Willie's case is
exceedingly high.  Most of what I've read describes the effects of a
low-dose, cumulative exposure over a long period of time.  Perhaps the
ocular rings come from a one-time, or short-term, high-dose
exposure."

"A single spill.  An accident of some sort."

"Air or water."

"Abby, we've got to test him, and soon."

"I'd already decided he should have blood sent for a cadmium level at
some point, but until you told me about the prison hospital, I didn't
think there was any rush."

"There is."  Abby wanted to share everything with him, to tell him
about her odd experience with Joanne Ricci in the record room and the
visit from Lyle Quinn and subsequent tour of Colstar with Kelly
Franklin.  But could she do that without firmly committing herself to
the Alliance?  She was in a very shaky position at PRH.  Openly joining
the Alliance would almost certainly put her on the unemployment line.

She wasn't certain anymore how she felt about helping Josh get to the
bottom of his problem.  But losing her job at the hospital would
effectively relieve her of the chance to decide, as well as the
opportunity to determine whether her efforts on Willie Cardoza had
saved the life of a man who should not be held responsible for what he
had done.

Joining the Alliance now, she reasoned, would cause her more problems
than it would solve.  Besides, the truth was, the only objective
finding they had was the rings in Willie's eyes.  Everything else was
still speculation.

"Lew, I just don't know about ordering any tests on Willie, " she
said.

"I got into trouble with George this morning for ordering cadmium
levels on three of his patients."

"You did that?  " "I .  . . I thought there were good indications."

She could tell he was thrilled with the news.

"I knew you were impressed by what you learned at the meeting.  I could
tell.  The tests were done at the hospital?  " "Yes."

"Then I assume they were negative."

"Lew, I need to think about this.  Willie is Martin Bartholomew's
patient.  He and George are like this."  She crossed two fingers.  "If
George finds out I had anything to do with sending off more blood tests
for cadmium, I'm finished."

"That's the point, Abby.  We don't order any tests."  The excitement
blazing in his dark eyes made him that much more appealing to her.

"I don't understand, " she said.

"We draw the blood ourselves.  Right now.  You said at the meeting you
had a friend who was a toxicologist at St.  John's."

"Sandy Stuart.

She's the best."

"We just get the blood to her for testing."

"And what if it's positive?  " "We use the result as a lever to pry
some cooperation from OSHA and the EPA.  They go to wherever Willie
Cardoza is and draw the blood themselves for retesting, and just like
that, we've got a foothold."

"And what if it's negative?  " "Then I back off, and you don't hear
another word from the Alliance.

But it's not going to be negative.  I know it in my bones.  Oh, Abby,
we've worked so damn hard for this breakthrough.  We need your help
right now.  We need it so much."  It Before Abby even realized what she
was doing, she had reached across to him.  He took her hands, then
gently drew her toward him.  His kiss was tentative at first, asking.

I don't know, Lew, her mind cried out.  I don't know what in the hell
I'm doing.  . . . But, please, don't stop.

She cupped his face in her hands and brought his lips against hers.

His arms tightened around her.  His lips parted as the uncertainty in
his kiss vanished.

"I've wanted to hold you and kiss you like this since the day we met, "
he said.  "I just .  . . didn't know your situation.  I didn't want to
do anything wrong."  She tucked her legs beneath her and rested her
head against his chest.

Across the valley a shooting star held on for longer than any of the
others.

"The only thing you could do wrong at this moment, " she whispered, "is
to let go of me."  They arrived at the hospital separately and parked
in different lots.  He would enter first and go to the ICU through the
E.R, stopping only to pick up the ophthalmologic black light.  His
excuse for being in the ICU would be to visit a coronary patient he had
admitted the day before.  She would enter through the E.R five minutes
later and immediately cut over to the laboratory.  There she would pick
up two large blood-collection tubes with anticoagulant and a large
syringe.

Abby drove to the hospital listening to Van Morrison and thinking about
what it had been like to be kissed and touched for the first time in
over two years by a man other than Josh Wyler.  Josh's kisses were
always an urgent prelude to making love.  Lew seemed satisfied just to
be close to herþto have her respond to him.  His touch was searching
and sensual, but also tender and even protective.  Had he moved toward
making love with her, she probably would have declined.  But she sensed
that no matter how much he wanted her, he would not say anything until
she had made it clear the time was right.  For the moment, at least,
she felt schoolgirl giddy, on the threshold of learning what this man
was all about.

"More stuff for Old Man Ives?  " The twenty-year-old lab tech startled
Abby as she was slipping a thirty-cc syringe and three collection tubes
into her clinic-coat pocket.

"Oh, hi, Grace.  That's right.  His leg is improving every day.  I
appreciate everyone looking the other way when I make my raids.  Ives
appreciates it, too.  How're you doing?  " "Okay.  I heard about what
happened in the E.R today, Dr. Dolan.  The tech who was on with you
said you were absolutely amazin."

"He did?  " "He said he's never seen any E.R doctor do all the things
you did today, and do them so fast."

"Tell him thanks for saying those things.  And thank you for telling
me.

That's really nice stuff to hear."  If she only knew.

Abby hurried up the stairs to the ICU.  The moment she entered the
unit, she knew Lew was there and that he had done his part.  There was
a great deal of commotion in the cubicle farthest from Willie
Cardoza.

The patient Lew had admitted the previous day was an eighty-year-old
man who was extremely hard of hearing and prone to be combative when he
was disturbed.  He had a long history of recurring chest pain, but no
evidence this time of any heart damage.  Lew planned to examine the man
enough to get him a bit riled, and then to express concern to the
nurses that he might be slipping into heart failure.  Rather than
disturb the covering physician, he would order an EKG, stat blood work,
a portable chest X ray, and a portable ultrasound, as well as an
immediate weight to see if the man was retaining fluid.  Now the old
gent was letting the nursing staff know how he felt about the barrage
of late-night tests.

Abby smiled warmly at the police officer, who did not seem to care, or
even notice, that she was making a return trip to Cardoza's room.  She
paused by the bedside and studied the monitor screen while she looked
through the glass wall at the dozing guard.  There was no one else
around.  She moved quickly to the other side of the bed, her back to
the guard so that her movements were shielded.  Willie's monitor
tracings were strong and steady.  He was most definitely a save.

Abby's target now was the arterial line she had placed in the radial
artery at the underside of Willie's right wrist.  She had inserted a
threeway stopcock valve in the line.  One arm of the valve connected
with the IV cathe er and another with the monitor screen through an
electrical transducer.  The third made it possible to draw blood with
no further needle sticks.  She slipped the large syringe from her
clinic coat and attached it to the empty arm of the valve.  The
movement roused Willie, who looked up at her sleepily.

"Hey, Doc, " he said, his voice still a raspy whisper.

"I'm just drawing a little blood, Willie."

"Go right ahead."  He peered up at her.  "Say, weren't you at that
picnic at Colstar Park?

Didn't I see you there?  " "Yes.  I saw you there, too, " she replied
as she worked.  "That was a very brave and kind thing you did for that
woman."  Abby switched the flow of the three-way from
vessel-to-transducer to vessel-to-syringe.  A gentle pull, and the
syringe instantly filled with bright-scarlet arterial blood.  She then
switched the valve back to its original setting.

"It was nothing, " Willie said.  "Angela has a lot of problems."  So do
you, Abby thought.

Working as rapidly as she could, she attached a large needle onto the
syringe and stuck it through the rubber stopper of the collection
tubes.

The vacuum in the tubes quickly drew the blood from the syringe.  She
had drawn up enough to fill two tubes completely and half of the
third.

Next she carefully capped the needle on the syringe, then slipped it
and the three tubes back into her clinic coat.

"I see you've reconnected with our friend Willie."  The words, spoken
loudly from behind her, stopped her heart.  She whirled.  Her knees,
now Jell-O, nearly buckled.

"Mr. Quinn.  Making rounds?  " She barely got the words out.  How long
had he been there?  What had he seen?  What did he think she was
doing?

Her mind was racing.  She brushed her hand against her clinic-coat
pocket.  The tubes of freshly drawn blood were concealed, but the top
of the syringe was protruding an inch or so.  Quinn's bland smile was
chilling.

"I was about to ask you the same question, " he said.  "I thought you
went off duty a few hours ago."

"I .  . . I was in the library.  As you probably know, Mr. Cardoza and
I spent a good bit of time together earlier today.  I just wanted to
see how he was before I went home."  Quinn knew.  She could see it in
his face.  He knew what she had been doing, and he was just trying to
come up with the most effective response.  In all likelihood she was
cookedþfinished at PRH.  She felt as if her face were the color of the
blood in her pocket.

"Ah, yes, today, " Quinn said.  "I heard you performed quite
admirably.

" "Admirably enough to be reviled by everyone from the medical chief to
the janitor."  Abby turned to Willie, took his hand, and bent over
him.

"Willie, you take care, now.  I'll see you tomorrow."

"You take care of that blood, Doc, " he replied.

She straightened up quickly and spun toward Quinn, uncertain whether
Willie had whispered or shouted the words.  But the Colstar security
chief was standing with his back to her now, talking with the guard.

She adjusted her clinic coat and its contents as best she could and
left the room.

"So, " she said to Quinn, "what brings you here?  " "Willie's
Colstar.

And what concerns Colstar concerns me."  Abby felt she could have
recited the words in unison with him.

"He's doing well."

"I'd like to say I'm glad to hear that."  His flint eyes were the
coldest Abby had ever confronted.

"Yes .  . . well, " she said, "he is under arrest.  I'm sure he'll be
punished for what he did."

"Peggy Wheaton was a very special person and a very good friend r * vs
or mme.

Again Abby almost filled in the words.  She was once more being
criticized for saving Cardoza.  But typical of Quinn, the chastisement
was oblique.  There was still a remote chance he hadn't seen her draw
Willie's blood, but she doubted it.  He was more likely just allowing
her to make clear what she intended to do with it.  Either way, all she
wanted now was to leave.  The commotion at the far end of the unit was
calming down now.  She caught Lew's eye for the briefest moment and cut
her gaze quickly toward Quinn.

Stay away.  Don't try to examine Willie's eyes.

Lew said something to one of the nurses and left by walking around the
nurses' station.  But Abby knew Quinn was far too observant to have
missed that he was there.

"Well, " she said, "I guess I'll be going."

"Neither you nor Dr. Alvarez is on duty, yet both of you are here.  Is
that a coincidence?

" cut it."  Abby glanced over at where Lew had been while she concocted
a response.

"We both had admitted patients to the unit.  So here we are."  It was a
lame explanation, but if Quinn had seen her drawing Cardoza's blood, it
really didn't matter.

"Yes, " Quinn said.  "Here you are."  He checked to ensure they were
out of earshot of the policeman.  "So I haven't heard from you since
your tour of Colstar.  My offer is still on the table, but I can't
promise it will be there much longer.  As you said, there are a number
of people who are quite upset over some of the decisions you made
today."

"I'm sorry about that.  I did what I strongly believed was right."

"I'm sure you did.  . . . Well, it's Sunday night.  Suppose we decide
that if I haven't heard from you by, say, Tuesday at noon, I may
conclude that you have no desire to serve as one of our consultants."

"I'm thinking it over."

"I hope you're also considering carefully what Dr. Oleander told you
about independently sending off blood for cadmium testing."  He seemed
to be looking directly at her clinic-coat pocket.

"I'm considering that, too."

"Do that."  There was dear menace in his voice now.  "And, by the way,
would you happen to know why Mr. Wyler has been absent from work for
the past few days?  People have tried calling him at the house he's
rented, but the phone's out of order."

"I haven't heard from Josh for a week, " she lied.  "If I do, I'll tell
him you're looking for him.  Good night, Mr. Quinn."  She started to
walk away.

"Dr.  Dolan, " he called after her.

She turned back to face him.

"Yes?  " ' Dr. Dolan, I just want to be certain you know how thin the
thread is that's holding you up at this hospital.  Please don't give us
cause to CHAPTER TWENTY.

The Patience Auto Glass people must be at the remote end of the town's
grapevine, Abby thought.  She was ecstatic when, just an hour after her
call, the purple-and-yellow truck pulled up her drive.  She had
expected that services of all kinds would be harder and harder for her
to come by as versions of the Wheaton/Cardoza story spread across the
valley.

It was a gray, drizzly morning, hardly the weather she wanted for the
spectacular drive through the mountains to Sacramento, then down to San
Francisco.  But she would take it.  The tubes containing Willie
Cardoza's blood were carefully wrapped in cloth and bubble plastic, and
packed in the sort of cooler used to transport human hearts.  Sandy
Stuart was expecting her by early afternoon.  The cadmium assay would
take a day or so to complete, although in an absolute emergency it
could be done faster.  Abby had assured her friend that there was no
reason for such measures.  Now, as the glass man worked on in the light
rain, she stood by the back door, fidgeting and mentally reviewing the
route she would take.  Planning a drive from Patience to anyplace was
never simple.

"You just can't get here from there, " was the way Josh had started his
directions the first time she was preparing to drive up from the city
to see him.  "You can go north then east, or west then north then east,
or just meander diagonally up the valley."  Today, she decided, she
would start by taking the narrow state highway west, away from town.

The serpentine two-lane road was one of her favorites, rising and
falling through dense primeval forest.  The air there, even on a day
such as this, would be sweet with evergreen and natural mulch, and so
oxygen rich that just standing still and breathing would be a rush.

After twenty or so miles she would cut south on another two-lane state
road, winding through the foothills of the Sierras to I-80.  From
there, it was an eight-lane shot through Sacramento to the bay.

The glass man was nearly through the job when Lew called.

"I'm at work at the state hospital, " he said.  "I thought you might be
gone by now."

"Any minute."

"Any problem getting the auto-glass people to come?  " "None.  I guess
the owner's one of the few people in Patience who isn't a dear friend
of Gary and Peggy Wheaton."

"As if you didn't feel lousy enough about her death, you have to live
with hearing that over and over."

"Exactly.  . . . Lew, I had a terrific time with you last night."

"Thanks.  So did I. " His voice trailed off.

Though he didn't say the words, Abby knew how he felt.  And she knew
that she was close, very close, to feeling the same way.  After leaving
the hospital last night, as planned, Lew had waited for her on a
little-traveled side street.  She parked behind his Blazer and then
slid onto the seat next to him.  Her pulse was still hammering from her
confrontation with Lyle Quinn in the ICU.  Breathlessly, she recounted
the scene.

"So, what do you think?  " Lew asked when she had finished.  "Did he
see you take the blood or not?  " "I don't know.  It seemed that he
did.  But he never really said anything.  God, but I dislike that
man.

" "Are you going to be all right tonight?  " "I .  . . I'll be fine.  "
"I have to be at the state hospital at seven in the morning, but ifþ"
"No, no.  I'm fine.  Really."

"Well, if you need me for any reason, just call me at Caledonia.  On
second thought, the switchboard there is totally incompetent.  Better
use my pager.  You have the number, don't you?  " "I do.  . . . Lew?  "
"Yes?  " "I probably don't have to say this, but I just want to be sure
you understand why I'm taking this chance.  I want to get to the bottom
of what's wrong with Willie, and I'm very worried about Josh.  But I'm
still no crusader."

"Abby, I know that.  Probably more than you realize.  I told you before
and I still mean it, no one's going to pressure you about the Alliance,
especially not me."  They kissed once, then again.  He brushed her
forehead with his lips, then her eyelids, her ear, and finally her lips
once more.  His mouth drew her in.  His breath and the sound of his
breathing were foreign to her, but incredibly comfortable.  His hand
touched her breast, lingering just long enough for her to know how
badly he wanted her.  She held him tightly and stroked the inside of
his thigh.

"Soon, " was all she had been able to say.  . . .

Abby looked out the kitchen window.  The glass man was packing his gear
and assembling the insurance forms for her to sign.

"Listen, Lew, this is it, " she said.  "He's done, and I'm off to see
the wizard."

"Just be careful, Abby.  I don't trust Quinn any further than I can
throw him.  I was a little worried after you went home alone last
night.

In fact, I wasn't going to tell you this, but I drove past your place a
few times during the night."

"What a waste."

"What?  " "Nothing.

That was a very sweet thing for you to do, especially with an early
shift staring you in the face."

"Just be careful, " Lew said again.

"And call me when you get home tomorrow."  Abby hung up and checked the
house one final time.  Then she signed the glass man's papers, tossed
her overnight bag onto the backseat, placed the cooler with the blood
samples on the floor, and headed off.  The drizzle was just heavy
enough for intermittent wipers, but the Mazda had a sure grip in almost
any weather.  She flipped through her case of tapes and whittled her
choices down to Tracy Chapman and Mary-Chapin Carpenter.  The grayness
of the morning gave it to Tracy.

Traffic was virtually nonexistent.  Abby opened the sunroof a crack
and accelerated to fifty, the fastest the winding road would
comfortably allow.  She worked her head from side to side, front to
back.  Gradually, the tension in her neck and shoulders began to
subside.  Even though it was just an overnight trip, she felt a sense
of freedom.  It had been a hellish month and a half since she had last
been home.  Home.  She wondered how long she would have to live in
Patience before she stopped thinking of San Francisco that way.

Forever might be a good guess.

A McDonald's tractor trailer roared by, no doubt headed for the
glittering new addition to the chain at Five Corners.  On either side
of the road the forest deepened.  Abby opened the sunroof another
inch.

Sweet, moist mountain air filled the car.

Everything is going to be all right, she told herself.  Quite possibly,
the answers for Willie Cardoza and Josh were as close as the cooler
right behind her.  And then, once that business was over, she could
turn her attention to finding the answers for Abby Dolan.

She was reaching down to punch the repeat button for an encore of
Chapman's "Fast Car, " when the Mazda was hit from behind.  Though the
jolt itself was minor, the surprise was anything but.  Abby shot
upright, confused and frightened.  Had she hit an animal or run over
something?  A second jolt, this time with a crunch of metal against
metal, brought everything quickly into focus.  She checked the rearview
mirror and then risked a glance over her shoulder.  A large battered
red pickup with a black steel frame in front was no more than a few
feet behind her.  It had oversize tires that raised its cab a foot or
two above the Mazda.

Abby's hands whitened on the wheel, and, instinctively, she jammed down
the accelerator.  The rain-slicked roadway flashed beneath her wheels,
rising and falling like an amusement-park ride, twisting from right to
left with no predictable pattern.  The truck sped up once more.  Abby
glanced in the mirror just as it hit her again.  The jolt was harder
than the others, though she still had no trouble maintaining control.

The unbroken double yellow line was snaking under the driver's side
whenever she chanced looking behind her.  She was constantly whipping
the wheel to the right to correct.  Suddenly, just as she was drifting
again, a massive tractor trailer shot up from a deep swale, barreling
past just a foot or so from her.  The roar was deafening.  The vacuum
it created nearly tore the Mazda from the road.  Abby screamed out loud
as she wrenched the wheel to the right.  The pickup, which had backed
off a bit, began to close in once more.  Was she unlucky enough to have
happened into the path of a madman?  Or was she specifically the
target?  Through her rearview mirror she caught a glimpse of the
driver.  At first it appeared as if a demon of some sort were behind
the wheel of the pickup.

Then it registered.  The driver was wearing a ski mask.  This was no
chance encounter.  It had to be Quinn or someone who worked for him.

Determined to avoid being hit again, Abby accelerated.  She was nearing
seventy.  It was only a matter of time before she failed to handle a
curve or simply skidded into the trees.  Her hands and arms were
shaking on the wheel.  Her mind, though, was responding reflexively, in
the way it had been programmed to react over twelve years of medical
crises.  Her thoughts were becoming clearer, more focused.  The
movement around her, as it had done so many times in the E.R, was
actually beginning to slow down.

The truck crept up on her again, closer and closer still.  There was no
way she could chance going any faster.  Any substantial bump was bound
to send her spinning out of control.  But the nudge this time was much
less than thatþa tap, perhaps a reminder that she was at the madman's
mercy.

Her speedometer hit seventy.  The truck pulled out to the left,
intending, it seemed, to force her off the road to the right.  Just as
quickly it swung back as a convertible flashed past, its horn
blaring.

The road turned sharply to the right, then dipped.  For a moment the
pickup dropped out of sight.  Abby wondered why Quinn, or whoever it
was, hadn't just bashed her from behind until she lost control.

One explanation, a lame one, was that he wanted to frighten her without
actually killing her.  More likely, though, he was toying with her.

Toying.  Vintage Quinn.

With the driver allowing some daylight between them, Abby hoped he was
simply giving up on her.  But she knew that possibility was unlikely.

She had to take action.  There were no gas stations, houses, or
restaurants along this stretch that she could remember, and there was
no sense in trying to attract the attention of someone speeding the
other way.  Her choices were either to stop and run, or to find some
way off the road.

The roller coaster was going uphill in stages nowþa rise, a small dip,
another rise.  The Mazda actually left the road at the top, slamming
down hard enough to grind the chassis into the pavement.  Abby's teeth
snapped together, biting the inside of her cheek.  She tasted her own
blood and imagined it all ending right there with a ruptured gas tank
and a fireball explosion.  But after the vicious bounce the Mazda sped
on.

Suddenly, as Abby crested another hill, a car emerged from the woods
beyond the right-hand soft shoulder not that far ahead.  It hesitated
for a fraction of a second, then sped across both lanes and vanished
into the trees to the left.  A crossroad of some sort!  It had to be.

She glanced in the rearview.  The pickup was still some distance back
but seemed to be gaining again.  She might be able to make the
turnoffbefore it crested the hill.  No time to process.  No time to
reason.  Just act.

Holding her speed, Abby pulled off the road, skimming along the gravel
shoulder just a few feet from the trees.  She waited as long as she
dared, then slammed on the brakes and swung the wheel sharply to the
right.  The antilock system stammered like a machine gun as the car
skidded into what was nearly a perfect right-angle turn.  Almost before
she realized she had done it, she was jouncing mercilessly down a
narrow dirt two-track logging road.  She tried glancing behind her, but
the turns were too treacherous.  All she could do was barrel ahead and
hope for the best.  She was going forty now, but given the
circumstances, that speed was nearly suicidal.  She had to slow down.

As she rounded a sharp curve, the dirt road forked.  For no reason
other than her right-handedness, she swung the wheel that way.  The
parallel tracks dropped quite steeply and looked for a moment as if
they were going to end altogether.  Branches whipped wildly at the
windshield and scratched along the doors.  The car lurched on, scraping
rock as it bumped through a dry streambed, then shot upward on the
other side.

How long had it been since she'd left the highwayþa minute?  Five?

Maybe thirty seconds.  Reluctant to slow down, Abby continued to lean
on the accelerator as hard as she dared.  Her arms were aching
horribly.  Her hands felt welded to the wheel.  Spewing dust and
gravel, the Mazda bottomed out again and again.  She tore up an
embankment and once more became airborne.  This time, though, the car
slammed down on pavement.  It was another road, even narrower than the
twolaner she had been on, but fairly well maintained.  She jerked the
wheel hard to the left and skidded to a stop, shaking as if she had
been dunked in icy water.  The road was utterly deserted.  With some
effort she flicked off Tracy Chapman and opened the door.  The silence
was consuming.  She turned her ear toward the dirt road she had left,
straining to hear the truck's engine.  Nothing.  Still wary, she forced
herself to stand on rubbery legs and opened the cooler, which was
upside down, wedged between the rear and front seat.  The tubes were
intact.

"Thank God for bubble wrap, " she whispered.

She breathe the oxygen-rich air.  Gradually, her pulse rate slowed
toward normal.  Her trembling ceased.  But her thoughts continued to
race.

Lyle Quinn, or someone sent by him, had just tried to kill her.

Or had they?

The truck, with its mammoth tires, was certainly capable of stopping,
turning around, and catching her in the woods.  Perhaps her pursuer had
missed seeing her turn off the highway.  Perhaps something mechanical
had gone wrong with the truck.  One thing was clear.  Quinn knew of her
cargo.

He had to know.  She patted the Mazda's roof, then slid back behind the
wheel.  Perhaps the Colstar security chief had just meant to send a
message that would frighten her back to the city for good.  If that was
the case, he had misjudged her.  The harder he pushed, the more
committed she would become to seeing things through.  It had always
been that way for her, and it would be that way this time as well.

Abby turned the key.  The engine hummed to life as if nothing had
happened.  The light rain had stopped, and the smallest opening had
appeared in the clouds.  She took one final deep breath to purge the
last of the shakes and drove toward what seemed to be east.  The trip
to San Francisco was going to take a little longer than she had
intended.  But, dammit, she was going to make it there .  . . and
back.

Lyle Quinn had just seen to it.

CHAPTER TWENTY- ONE | t was late afternoon when Abby arrived at Sandra
Stuart's office in l the pathology building at St. John's.  The
toxicologist whose lab was going to assay Willie Cardoza's blood for
cadmium left a message that she was delivering a lecture and would meet
Abby in the hospital library at five-thirty.  Meanwhile, the librarian
would have a bibliography and articles waiting for her to begin
reviewing.

After emerging from the narrow logging road, it had taken Abby nearly
half an hour to locate a gas station and get pointed toward San
Francisco.  She had given some thought to reporting the attack to the
state police but quickly discarded the notion.  What could possibly
come of it?  They'd never find the truck, and she certainly didn't need
the police to explain what had happened to her, and why.

She was ensconced behind a fortress of bound journals when Sandy
arrived at the library.  To many the toxicologist seemed taciturn and
introspective, but Abby had always found her to be droll,
compassionate, and a terrific listener.  And before a class she
transformed into an animated, invariably fascinating teacher.  A
meticulous academician, Sandy was a few years older than Abby and was
the mother of two young boys.  Her husband, who was a pathologist at
another hospital, had always seemed to Abby to be married more to his
work than to his wife.  But she had never once heard her friend
complain about the man.

"Sorry I'm late, " Sandy said.  "This was my exotic-poisons lecture,
and I can always count on an endless stream of questions at the end
regarding everyone from Socrates to Napoleon to Howard Hughes."

"I just appreciate your being here for me."

"Nonsense.  It's great to see you.  After we finish here, Fred's going
to watch the kids so we can go out for dinner and catch up.  Ristorante
Milano okay?  " "Only perfect.  As I recall, you were the one who first
brought me there.

Now I obsess about the place every time I'm forced to patronize the
Leaning Tower of Pizza in Patience."

"No wonder.  Well, let's do our best here.  Then tomorrow I'll get the
lab geared up for your assay.

I'll be teaching most of the day, so it will be late afternoon, or more
likely sometime the day after tomorrow, before I have results for
you.

" "Listen, I'm relieved you can do this at all."

"I'll confess we don't get much call for cadmium assays these days, but
I'm sure we can handle it.  You said Josh might be involved in some
way?  " Abby described the frightening changes in Josh that spanned
nearly six months and seemed to be accelerating.  Sandy listened
intently, occasionally making a note on whatever paper was handy,
studying it for a moment, then sliding it aside.  When Abby had
finished, Sandy sighed and reached across to pat her on the arm.

"I'm really sorry, Abby, " she said.  "I was so happy when you and Josh
found one another."

"So was I. " "But I will admit that I always thought he kept his
emotions somewhat pent up, especially when he was having such trouble
finding work and constantly maintaining such an upbeat front.  Still, I
just can't imagine his behaving the way you describe unless he's sick
from something, either a toxin or maybe a tumor of some sort."  Abby
sighed.  "I wish I could get him tested for cadmium, but there's no
chance that's going to happen, not with the way things are now."

"Well, I don't consider myself exceptionally well versed on the nuances
of cadmium toxicity, but I hope that by the time we finish plowing
through that bibliography you sent me and the additional articles I've
located, we both will be."  They stayed in the hospital library for
three more hours, poring over journals and textbooks, searching
especially for some reference to fluorescent ophthalmic rings and
psychotic violence in cadmium-toxic patients.

There were a number of allusions to acute mental illness, especially in
workers who had ingested or inhaled massive amounts of the metal.  And
there was one particularly intriguingþand terrifyingþ article from
Poland, reporting on a baker who had been a pillar of his community and
had suddenly, viciously, stabbed his wife and two children to death.

The baker's health had rapidly deteriorated, and one of the many blood
tests performed on him disclosed high levels of cadmium.  The source
turned out to be a cadmium-contaminated gold dental implant.  Removal
of the prosthesis, and subsequent chelation therapy, resulted in
negative blood levels and complete reversal of his symptoms.

A cure, Abby thought.  But, unfortunately, just a little latefor his
wife and children.

There were no references to the specific eye findings Abby had
discovered in Willie Cardoza, but as she suspected, it appeared that no
researcher had ever had reason to examine such patients with a black
light.

Finally Sandy closed the last of the latest pile of journals, set her
glasses down, and rubbed at her eyes.

"Well, Abby, I don't know about you, but for the last ten minutes every
other word I've read looks like either Ristorante or Milano."

"I'm ready."

"Well, I promise you some results on your Mr. Cardoza by the day after
tomorrow at the latest.  My lab will gear up and run the blood, and
we'll also send it off to a commercial lab for confirmation of whatever
we find."

"That would be great."

"But, tell me, what will you do if the findings are negative?  " The
question took Abby by surprise.  Swept along by Lew's enthusiasm, she
had never really considered the possibility.

She thought for a moment, then said, "If the test is negative, I think
I'll be coming home.  Hopefully, some hospital around here will have an
opening for me in their E.R.  If not, maybe I'll end up as a
Doc-inthe-Box at some mall.  Worse things could happen."

"I can't think of too much worse than having you drop out of emergency
medicine.

" What will you do if the findings are negative?

Sandy Stuart's question turned over and over in Abby's mind as she
drove back to Patience.  The more she thought about it, the more
convinced she became that Willie Cardoza was toxic.  After spending the
night at Sandy's she had put in another two hours in the library before
heading north.  She steered clear of the mountain roads and took the
interstates as far as she could.  The route wasn't nearly as scenic,
but memories of her harrowing trip down would have made it hard to
relax and keep her eyes off the rearview mirror.

The one issue still nagging at her was the simple fact that she was
still alive.  If Quinn was responsible for David Brooks's death, why
hadn't he just followed through with another "accident"?  Perhaps he
and Colstar had secrets that he feared weren't buried deeply enough.

Two accidental deaths among the emergency staff at the hospital were
bound to prompt an investigation, especially with the Alliance around
to call the question.

Abby drove into Patience from the west, along the same state road she
had taken out of town the previous morning.  The rain was gone, but a
heavy blanket of clouds still covered the valley.  In twenty-four hours
she would have the answer from Sandy Stuart.  For Willie's sake she
hoped the test would be positive.  Nothing would bring Peggy Wheaton
back to life.  But convicting a man of murder who was chemically insane
would add no dignity or meaning to her death.  That dignity would be
achieved only by punishing those who had created her killer with their
toxin.

On an impulse Abby cut off at Five Corners and headed north.  Lew's
farm was just a couple of miles away, and rather than drive all the way
home just to call him, she could do it from a pay phone.  She could
hear the relief in his voice.

"So, what's the verdict?  " he asked excitedly.  "Cardoza's blood has
got to be positive, yes?  " "It's not done yet, Lew.  Sandy's lab is
just getting geared up.  The blood'll be run late today or tomorrow.

She wasn't sure which."

"But she's going to call as soon as she has some numbers?  " "The
moment.  . . . Lew, some things have happened on this trip that I want
to talk to you about."

"Such as?  " "Such as someone in a big red pickup truck nearly running
me off the road yesterday.  I think Lyle Quinn or one of his Colstar
goons may have been trying to kill me."

"But you're all right?  " "Barely."

"Thank God.  After what happened to David, we shouldn't be surprised by
anything that monster does.  I was fearful from the moment you told me
Quinn might have seen you draw Cardoza's blood.  You're really okay,
though?  " "Yes, yes, I'm fine.  Lew, if you're free right now, I'd
rather tell you about all this in person.  I'm just past Five
Corners.

" "In that case the cows can wait."

"Want me to bring lunch?

There're some golden arches right across the street."

"I might not be able to do better, but I'd like to try.  Let's see.

. .

Do you have any problem with shrimp or artichoke hearts?  " "I suppose
the Big Mac I was planning on can wait, " Abby said.

"I like to cook, " Lew said as he set their lunch on the maple kitchen
table.

"You also like to understate.  This looks wonderful."  Abby had already
finished a detailed account of her close call on the highway, and her
evening with Sandy Stuart.  Now, over strawberry soup, a
shrimp-and-artichoke salad, and sourdough bread, she told him for the
first time about the visit from Lyle Quinn following the Alliance
meeting, and about her tour of Colstar with Kelly Frank un.

"They know we're getting close, Abby.  That's why they're trying to woo
you away.  The more minds and hands we have working on this thing, the
more likely it is we're going to figure out what they've done, and what
they're doing now to cover it up.  These people are vermin."

"I agree with you on Lyle Quinn, but I have to say that I liked Kelly
Franklin.

" "She's Quinn's stooge in this.  Mark my words."

"Maybe.  But if she's covering something up, I'm here to tell you she's
a heck of an actress."

"They're all fakes.  They've hurt people, lots of people, and they'll
go to any lengths to avoid the blame.  Colstar is an Ezra Black
company, and everyone knows that man is a scorpion.  The bottom line
for anything he owns is the bottom line."

"Maybe, " Abby said again.

"There will be no doubt in your mind when we get the results from your
friend at St. John's, especially if we can make some headway with our
analysis of the rest of the NIWWs."  He laughed at the initials, which
he had embraced as if they were an actual medical diagnosis.

"Speaking of NIWWs, Lew, I'm beginning to wonder if Josh could be
following Willie Cardoza's pattern.  I'm very concerned about him, and
I don't know who else to turn to.  I hope you don't feel awkward
talking about it."  Lew filled their cups with dark, aromatic coffee
and settled back down in the chair across from her.

"Abby, I'd be a fool and a liar if I said I wanted things to work out
between the two of you.  But I certainly don't want anything bad to
happen to him.  What's going on?  " "I mentioned to you that some of
Josh's symptoms resembled what Colette Simmons told me Willie was
like.

" "Yes.  I was impressed with the similarities."

"Then there was the article I told you about.  The one from Poland about
the guy who stabbed his wife and kids to death."

"Cadmium contamination in the gold dental implant."

"Exactly.  Well, Josh has been getting more and more irrational and
more and more physically violent.  He actually moved out because he was
afraid he might hurt me.  Now he seems to have disappeared.

l Quinn said he was missing from work and that no one had been able to
reach him at home.  Last night I tried calling him myself at the place
he's living.  The phone didn't even ring.  I'm very worried, and I
really don't know what to do."  Lew thought for a moment, then handed
her the phone and the Patience Valley directory.

"Here.  Try him where he's staying again."

"Thank you, Lew."  Abby looked up the number and spoke as she dialed.

"Orchard Road.  Do you know where that is?  " "I do.  It's not too far
from that McDonald's you called me from."

"No ring at all, " she said.  She looked up Colstar's main number and
called it.  "Kelly Franklin's office, please."

"Into the lair of the enemy, " Lew whispered.

"Kelly, it's Abby Dolan."

"Abby, it's nice to hear from you.  What's happened with Josh?  "
"Actually, that's what I was calling you about.

Have you heard from him?  " "He hasn't been at work for several days.

No one seems to know why.

Today there was some talk about his being replaced if he doesn't show
up or call in by tomorrow.  He has several partially completed
projects."

"Lord."

"Is there anything I can do to help you find him?  " "Just call me if
he shows up or you hear anything.  You have my number, don't you?  "
"Yes.  Abby, I heard what happened at the hospital the other day.  It
must have been awful for you, having to make a choice like that."

"It was, Kelly.  Thank you for appreciating that.  I haven't forgotten
that I owe you a call and dinner when all of this business calms
down."

"Don't worry about it.  Just find Josh."  Abby set the receiver down,
certain that Kelly Franklin's concern for Josh and for her was
genuine.

Lew was too invested in getting to the bottom of the Colstar syndrome
to think otherwise.  But this time he was wrong.

"Lew, I need to drive out to Orchard Road, " she said suddenly.  "Could
you tell me exactly where it is?  " "I can do better than that, " he
replied, slipping into a tan windbreaker.  "Let's go."  They left The
Meadows and headed back toward Five Corners.

"Lew, tell me something, " Abby said.  "Assuming Willie's blood is
positive for cadmium, what do we do then?  Whom do we go to?  The
police?

Joe Henderson at the hospital?  State authorities?  Federal?  " "How
about all of the above?  " "Seriously."

"Well, let's start by remembering that, for all intents, Colstar owns
the town, including, and maybe especially, the hospital.  That
eliminates Henderson, the locals, and even the state police.  A good
lawyer might get Willie off if we can prove he's been poisoned, but our
goal is to shut the plant down right now, and to keep it closed until
it comes clean and makes retribution.  As far as I'm concerned, that
leaves us back at OSHA and the EPA.  Either of them could intervene if
we could show conclusive proof that Colstar has acted irresponsibly, or
has information on an environmental exposureþair or waterþthat they've
held back."

"But you told me that both OSHA and the EPA have already sent teams in
to investigate."

"Exactly.  And there's not much chance they'd come back again, either,
unless we present them with positive blood work and some sort of
incontrovertible pattern pointing to the big concrete house on Colstar
cliff.  That's why we need more in-depth record study like what you
were doing the other night.  Age, sex, water supply, street location,
driving route to work, medications, recreational habitsþI don't know
what it is, but I firmly believe the explanation is to be found
somewhere in those records, or maybe in a combination of the records
and a questionnaire to the NIWWs.  We've just got to accumulate more
data."

"It's just not possible, Lew.  Joanne Ricci's got a lock on the
system.

I can't retrieve records anymore without going through the recordroom
person on duty.  That woman is hard."

"Dave Brooks and I used to call her the Dragon Lady.  Did you know she
fired that poor girl who helped you out the other night?  " "Donna
Tracy?  " "Yes.  I called Len McCabe in the E.R this morning to check on
changing some shifts.  He warned me against conducting any more
unauthorized chart reviews and told me about the Tracy girl.  The
hospital is starting to resemble a stalag.

" "I can't believe Donna lost her job because of me.  That's
horrible.

She has little kids.  After we check on Josh, I'm going to call her.  "
"Maybe she can come up with some way for you to crack back into the
system."

"Lew, I would never ask her to do that."

"Why not?  What does she have to loseþher job?  I'm telling you, Abby,
this is war.

And until you came, we didn't have a hell of a lot of ammunition.  "
For the first time since she had begun to know Lew Alvarez as a person,
Abby felt a spark of irritation at the man.

"I'm not here to join anyone's army, Lew, " she said.  "I keep telling
you that.  I just want to help the patient I'm being blamed for saving,
and the man who, until just a month or so ago, was the most important
person in my life."

"What about all those NIWWs?  I suppose you don't give a damn about
them."

"Okay, okay.  I care about them, too.  Lew, just don't push me.  When
people push me, all I ever seem to end up doing is pushing back.  And I
don't want that to happen between us."

"Understood.  I'm sorry.  I'll try to keep my feelings to myself."

Orchard Road was part of a middle-class housing development with no
trees older than five years or so, and remarkably featureless rows of
houses.  The Sawicki place, number seventeen, was a modest ranch, white
with maroon shutters, set on a typically small lot.  The lawn was brown
beyond reclamation, and the low shrubbery abutting the house was badly
in need of attention.

It saddened Abby to think of Josh living in such a place, even
temporarily.  She flashed on how excited he'd been, reporting that the
house he'd found for them to rent was on a secluded dead-end street,
backed up to the pine forest, and full of character.

The driveway, leading to a carport with a corrugated aluminum roof, was
empty.  They parked in the drive and rang the front doorbell.

Nothing.

Abby stepped behind the shrubs and peeked in the livingroom window.

What she could see of the room was a shambles, with newspapers and
crumpled computer printouts everywhere.  In addition, there were
half-empty cartons of take-out food, beer bottles and soda cans, and an
array of opened chip and pretzel bags.

"Let's go around back, " she said in a half whisper.

She followed Lew around to the backyard with a sinking feeling in her
chest.  The side door, under the carport, was locked.  The backyard,
like the one in front, was barren and brown.  A few weeds and lowlying
vines had begun to encroach.  Abby kicked at an empty tin can, one of
several lying about.  The shades were drawn on all the windows.  She
tried peering beneath but could see little.  Then she tried the steel
storm hatch leading to the basement.  The heavy door swung open.  Down
a short flight of stairs, she found the basement door open as well.

"Lew, quick, down here, " she called out.

"I'm not so sure this is a good idea, " he replied, pulling the hatch
closed behind him, then ducking to fit under the low door frame.

The basement was cluttered with tools and yard implements, plus a
typical array of boxes and old furniture.  They walked upstairs and
cautiously entered the first floor near the kitchen.  That room, like
all the others, was untended and littered with trash.  The sheets were
torn off the beds.  Josh's clothes were strewn about.  The phones were
unplugged or else torn from the wall.  Abby moved apprehensively from
room to room, peering behind the sofa and beds, dreading that at any
moment she would see Josh's body.  The smell from rancid food permeated
the house.

Josh's computer and printer were set up on a Formica table at one
corner of the living room.  The floor around it was strewn with balled
sheets of paper.  Abby smoothed one out.  It was a rambling, disjointed
letter to the governor, decrying those industrial barons throughout the
state who had forced their former employees into homelessness and
depravity.  A second page, similar in tone and composition, was a
fragment of a letter addressed to the President.  Abby was reaching for
a third sheet when Lew called to her from the bathroom.

"Abby, come on in here."  She dropped the paper and hurried down the
hallway, fearing the worst.

But there was no body.  Instead, there was a message, crudely printed
in reddish brown on the mirror.

VENGEANCE IS MINE I WILL REPAY "That's from the Bible, " Lew said.  "I
can't say precisely where."  Abby moved forward and peered closely at
the letters.  "Lew, " she said, "this is dried blood."  CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO.

The Patience Police Department was housed downtown in an elegant new
building of cedar, redwood, and glass.  The array of communication
dishes and antennae on the roof suggested that, like the regional
hospital, the station was state of the art.  And to Abby that suggested
Colstar.

She had driven alone to the station from Lew's farm to report Josh's
disappearance and the frightening findings at the Sawicki place.  The
sergeant taking her report was a thick-necked moose of a man whose name
tag identified him as Sullivan.  His manner stopped just short of open
contempt.

"I'd like to be of assistance to you, Miss Dolan, I really would, "
Sullivan said in an unabashedly patronizing tone.  "But, frankly, I
don't know what we can do about this situation."  Abby began to
simmer.

"The first thing you can do is call me Dr. Dolan.  And the next is to
let me speak to your captain."  Sullivan reddened.

"Captain Gould is out, Doctor Dolan.  He won't be back until later this
afternoon.  But I know he'd tell you the same thing.  If the Sawickis
file vandalism charges against this Wyler character, then we can get a
warrant and put out a bulletin on him.  But, otherwise, as far as we
know at this point, the only crime that's been committed is unlawful
entryþby you."  Just pray that you never get injured while I'm on duty,
Abby wanted to say.  But she knew such a threat would only cause her
more trouble.

Besides, there was no way she would ever treat Sergeant Sullivan
differently from any other patient .  . . except, perhaps, to order a
rectal temp.

Smiling inwardly at the notion, she signed the report and headed
home.

She was anxious to call Josh's parents and a few of his friends to
alert them to what was happening.  The trick would be to do so without
alarming them too much.  But, then again, why shouldn't they be
alarmed?  She certainly was.

Before she began making those calls, however, there was one that was
even more important to herþDonna Tracy.  The young recordroom attendant
had become a victim of Abby's search for answers.  An apology wouldn't
replace the woman's job, but for today it would have to do.

Donna was furious at her boss, Joanne Ricci, but not at all angry with
Abby.

"First of all, you saved Dad's life, " she said.  "You'd have to do
something pretty horrible to offset that.  But, second, as far as I was
concerned, all we were trying to do was get some information on
patients who were ill.  That's what I don't understand.  I don't think
you deserved to be spoken to the way Joanne did the other night, and I
told her so.

That's why she fired me.  Not for helping you, but for saying she was
wrong, and for telling her that if you asked to check over some records
again, I'd help you again."  Suddenly Abby found herself debating
whether or not to request just that.  Lew or no Lew, there was still
part of her that wanted to keep some distance between herself and the
Alliance.  But there was a much larger part that wanted to learn the
truth.  And Donna Tracy had opened the door.

"Donna, I want you to feel free to say no to what I'm about to propose,
" she said.

"Hey, that's easy.  I'm a no' kind of person to begin with."

"Here's what's going on."  Carefully, completely, Abby reviewed the
sorts of cases that had led her to believe that toxic exposure might be
at work in Patience.

"You need to get back into KarMen, " Donna said when she had
finished.

"That's the request you can refuse."

"Do you have a computer with a modem?  " Abby considered whether she
could return to Orchard Road and either take Josh's computer or use it
where it was.  But she wasn't even certain that the phone lines were
working, and with the police now aware of the situation, she would not
feel at ease hanging around the house.  Bringing the computer to her
place was a possibility, but she was worried about infuriating Josh
should he return home, and fearful that her well-documented lack of
mechanical aptitude would make it nearly impossible to set up the
system at home.

"Is there anyplace you can think of where I could find one?  " she
asked.

"Of course.  The bookstore at the community college has about a dozen
of them for rent in back.  Meet me there at, say, seven.  That way
we'll be certain Joanne has gone home.  I should be able to get you
into the system.  From there you're on your own."

"That's as much as I could have ever hoped for, Donna.  I'm very
grateful, but rememberþ" "I know, I know.  I don't have to help.  But,
Dr. Dolan, remember what my dad looked like lying there on that table
in the E.R with almost no heartbeat at all on his monitor?  " "Of course
I do.  I'll never forget that."

"Well, he just left with my mom for Hawaii."  It was nearing ten in the
eveningþone more hour before the Patience Community College Bookstore
closed for the night.  Abby was one of four still using the computers
in the back room.  She had yet to uncover any clear connections among
the patients she had reviewed, but she was amassing information.  She
sensed that, sooner or later, a pattern would emerge.

Donna Tracy had tapped into the KarMen record-keeping system with no
trouble whatsoever.  When Abby asked her whose password she had used,
all Donna would say was, "I have friends."  After Abby assured herself
that she could find her way around the system, she insisted Donna
return home.  There were a dozen or so years separating them, but Abby
enjoyed the younger woman's sarcastic humor and quickly felt
comfortable around her.  She had no wish to cause Donna more trouble.

"I can't tell you how much I appreciate what you've done tonight, "
Abby said, "and also how sad I am about your losing your job."

"There are more important things.  The message to me was that I was
working in the wrong place to begin with.  I need to go back for some
more schooling."

"Almost never a bad idea, " Abby said.  "Are you going to be all
right?

" she asked, uncertain how to approach the subject of money.

Donna made a theatrical show of looking at the data sheets and the
screen.

"I don't know, " she said.  "You tell me."  She patted Abby fondly on
the shoulder and left.

Now, almost three hours later, Abby summoned up the twentieth record to
be examined, a forty-five-year-old father of three, named Henry Post.

Post worked for the city as a groundskeeper/maintenance man in Colstar
Park.

Name .  . . Age .  . . Birth Date .  . . Address .  . .

Abby logged each fact onto her data sheets.  Then she referred to the
map of the valley she had constructed and divided arbitrarily into a
grid of twenty-five equal segments.  She located the man's residence
and work address with dots of colored pencilþsegment eight for the
house and twenty-two for the park.  There seemed to be a slight
clustering of dots in the southwestern part of the valleyþthe area
farthest from the plant itself.  But the grouping was not at all
striking.

Status, Outpatient Physician, G. Oleander.  Admitting diagnosis,
Chronic cough.  Discharge diagnosis, Chronic bronchitis.  Physical
findings, none.

Laboratory findings, CBC normal, Chest X ray normal, MRI unremarkable

. .

Abby dutifully recorded every available piece of information on the
man.  As she worked, she again became aware that something about the
data was bothering herþsomething even beyond the fact that a
predominance of the patients had George Oleander as their primary
physician.  The workups were, in most cases, simply too thorough.

There were too many patients getting CT scans and way, way too many
having MRIs, a sophisticated scan that was the diagnostic court of last
resortþincredibly accurate, but very expensive.  The patient was
inserted into a total-body cylinder and had to lie motionless for
nearly an hour while a three-dimensional picture of the body was
generatedþan unnerving experience for many people.  But there was also
an excessive number of blood counts, chemistry profiles, and standard X
rays.  In an age of medical-cost containment, peer review, and managed
care, such overuse of the laboratory was almost unheard-of.

The finding did nothing to explain the NIWWs, but it did seem too close
to universal to be considered coincidence, a fluke.  An insurance scam
of some sortþfee splitting with the radiologist or laboratory
directorþseemed possible.  But it was hard to believe that a prosperous
and patrician man like George Oleander would risk his reputation and
career for that level of larceny.

Struggling to ignore the tightness in her back from three hours of work
without a break, Abby finished with Henry Post and moved on to the next
NIWW, a thirty-three-year-old teacher named Mildred Moore.

. . . Admitting diagnosis, chronic skin abscesses.  Discharge
diagnosis, same.  Physician, G. Oleander .  . .

The pile of data was growing.  And with each additional fact Abby
sensed there was something already there that she was overlookingþa
pattern in those hundreds of pieces of information she had missed.  But
what?

She rubbed at her eyes, then stood and stretched.  One more hour.  She
could do it.  Tomorrow she wasn't on in the E.R until the evening.  That
would leave her time to check on Ives's leg, and then to return to the
bookstore computers for another go-round inside KarMen.  And somewhere
during that time, Sandy Stuart would be calling.

Abby twisted her neck until it cracked loudly, a habit that felt
wonderful but used to irritate Josh beyond words.  One of the remaining
students looked up, startled.  Abby grinned sheepishly and mouthed an
apology.  When she sat down at the computer again, the screen was
blank.  She dialed the access number for KarMen again.  Nothing.  There
was trouble.  She felt certain of it.

Quickly, she gathered her notes and hurried to the desk.

"I just lost my line, " she said.  "Are there any problems?  " "None
that I know of."

"How much do I owe you?  " "Four hoursþsixteen dollars."  Abby dropped
a twenty on the counter and left without waiting for change.

About a hundred yards down the road a cruiser sped past her, lights
flashing, headed toward the bookstore.  She pulled over and watched
through her rearview mirror until it turned into the parking lot.

"Sorry, Donna, " she murmured.

Then she swung back onto the road and hurried home.  There were plenty
of places where her data sheets would be reasonably safe.  She wondered
if the same could be said for Abby Dolan.

l, lE CHAPTER TWENTY- THREE Abby was suturing a child in the E.R when
she heard the screams from outside, followed moments later by the
horrible screech of tires and brakes.  She cut the fine nylon thread
and had just set her instruments down when Josh's Wrangler exploded
through the doors of the ambulance bay into the center of the E.R,
showering the floor with glass and debris and striking the nurse, Mary
Wilder, head-on.  Her body flew through the air and hit the wall at eye
level with a sickening thud.  In an instant there was chaos, with
patients and staff screaming, running, and diving for cover.

The Jeep hurtled forward through the central examining area, slamming
into a gurney in bay six with an elderly woman lying on it.  The
stretcher compressed like an accordion.  The woman's body flew twenty
feet across the room, limp as a rag doll.  Then the Jeep struck the
wall.

The hood folded backward, shattering the windshield.  Flames instantly
leaped out from the engine.

Abby raced forward into the billowing black smoke.  Through the
cobwebbed windshield she could see Josh struggling with the door.  His
head and face were bloodied.  She shouted his name, once, then again,
but her cries were lost in the shrieks of others.  She raced forward,
stumbling over the body of Mary Wilder.  The nurse's head was twisted
at a repulsive angle.  Blood trickled down from the corner of her
mouth.  She stared up at Abby with the vacant look of death.

Abby scrambled to her feet just as Josh stumbled from the Jeep.  He was
an apparitionþthe devil.  His teeth were bared in a snarling rictus of
hate.  Blood was cascading over his face.  But even through the crimson
she could see his eyes, glowing like hot coals.

"Josh!  " she screamed as he raised a pistol and aimed it point-blank
at a nurse.  "Josh, no!  " He heard her voice and lowered the gun a
fraction.  Then slowly, deliberately, he swung it around and pointed it
at her face.  She tried to call to him, to beg him, but there was no
sound.  All around her the scene blurred.  Movement slowed.  The
panicked cries of others became muted.  The swirling smoke hung
motionless.  And, finally, there was only the yawning maw of the
revolver muzzle, and above it, Josh's eyes, flashing out searing laser
streaks of gold.  Suddenly, from somewhere far in the distance, a
telephone began ringing.  Abby struggled to locate the sound.  The gun
barrel expanded, then disappeared.  The hideous eyes sparked, then
dimmed, then vanished altogether.  The smoke and the screams faded.

Now there was only the ringing.

Shaken, disoriented, and struggling for air, Abby rolled over and
slapped her hand down on the receiver.  She rarely remembered dreams of
any kind and had never experienced one with such horrible vividness.

Her mouth was gravel and sand.  The T-shirt she had been sleeping in
was unpleasantly damp.

"Hello?  " she croaked.

"Abby Dolan?  " Abby cleared her throat and worked herself up on one
elbow.  The images from her nightmare refused to be banished.

"Yes."

"Abby, I'm sorry if I woke you.  It's Joe Henderson."  In an instant
she was sitting up and forcing herself to concentrate.

The hospital president had never called her at home before.  It had to
be trouble.  She glanced at the alarm clockþalmost nine-thirty, the
latest she had slept in months.

"Just give me a second to get sorted out, Joe.  I was up late last
night."

"I know."  Uh-oh.

Abby took a sip of water from a half-filled glass on her night table,
then dipped her fingers in it and rubbed them across her eyes.  The
Josh nightmare was just too goddamn real.  Now, it seemed, reality was
about to become a nightmare.

"Go ahead, " she said.

"Abby, I wonder if you might be able to stop down at my office so that
we might talk."

"About what?  " If Joe Henderson was going to take her off the E.R
staff, she had no intention of making things easy for him.  There was a
prolonged silence while he searched for the best response.

"Abby, it seems you've generated quite a bit of controversy these past
couple of weeks.  I think it's time I presented things to you the way
they've been presented to me.  That way you have a chance to respond to
them."  Henderson always had some sort of twang or drawl to his
speech.

Now he seemed to have both.  Abby found herself wondering if either was
real.

"Is this going to be another committee?  " she asked.

"Pardon?  " Abby ignored the voice in her head that was begging her to
stay cool and simply agree to meet with the man.

"The last time you asked to have a word with me, the day of the
accident, I ended up feeling as if I had mistakenly wandered into a
fraternity induction ceremony."

"I'm afraid I still don't understand.

" "Joe, just try to imagine yourself being called into a room to
explain your job performance to four women."  Certain that Henderson
expected her to bow out without a struggle, she pictured him now,
trying to maintain his never-faltering, political grin.

"It will be just you and me, Abby.  You have my word."

"What time?  " "One?  " She glanced at the clock again.  There would be
plenty of time to hike up to Ives's camp.

"I'll be there, " she said.

Abby trudged up the trail to Sam Ives's place with an uncharacteristic
heaviness in her chest.  In her career as an E.R doc she had been party
to incalculable tragedies.  But until she'd come to Patience, her life
outside the hospital had been more tranquil than most.  Now, it seemed,
she was being attacked from all sides.  Oleander, Quinn, Josh, and now
Joe Henderson.  She had never shied away from making tough choices.  It
was one part of her job that had spilled over into her personal life.

But she hated the straitjacket feeling of having others make decisions
for her.  And in just an hour or so, she assumed, Henderson was going
to do just that.

Before driving to Ives's mountain she had stopped by the hospital and
stocked up on more than the usual number of dressings.  In the event
she was fired or suspended, it would become considerably more
difficult, if not impossible, to obtain the bandages, instruments, and
especially the drugs she had been using.  The antibiotic was too
expensive for the hospital pharmacy to give away, but in response to
Abby's urging, the head pharmacist had worked out a deal with one of
the drug houses.  The cost to Abby was quite manageable.

She was also worried about the treatmentsþthe regular debridement of
infected tissueþthat was allowing Ives's wound to heal from the base.

She hoped that Lew might take over if she was forced out of town.  Of
course, if the Colstar forces went for a complete purge, Lew might find
himself right behind her on the unemployment line.  The truth was,
though, she had never gotten even the hint from him or anyone else that
his job was in jeopardy.  Oleander knew of his antiColstar activities,
as did Quinn.  But somehow Lew had mastered the ability to stay out of
the limelight, and out of the way of those who could cause him
trouble.

Perhaps sometime soon he could give her lessonsþInvisibility 101.

Abby stopped at the edge of the clearing and was about to yell out her
usual warning not to shoot when she spotted him.  He was swinging in a
homemade hammock, suspended between two trees about twelve feet off the
ground.  A paperback book was propped on his belly.

"Hey, Doc, " he called out, "I thought you said you'd be up today, but
I wasn't sure."

"Ives, how do you get up there?  " "Same way as I'm about to get
down."

He grabbed a heavy cabled rope and flipped off the hammock without a
bit of preparation.  He descended under complete control, not even
bothering to use his legs.  It was only then, for the first time, that
Abby realized how powerfully sinewy his arms were.

"Tell me something, " she said.  "The night you got beaten up, did you
get any decent punches in at the guys who did it?  " "You know the
answer to that."

"You don't hurt people."

"I don't even hurt insects if I can help it."  He flipped the book onto
his worktable.

"Louis L'Amour, " he said.  "You ever read westerns?  " "I thought you
were into the classics."

"Obviously you haven't ever read Louis L'Amour.  Do yourself a favor
some day.  In fact, here.  I've read this one a couple of times."  Abby
knew better than to refuse even though she hadn't read a novel since
the day she'd decided to apply for the PRH job.  She thanked him and
dropped the frayed paperback into her pack.

"Okay, let's have a look."  The dual attack of germ-specific
antibiotics and the surgical removal of diseased tissue was working.

Healthy pink skin was appearing around the edges of the wound.  Abby
wondered what would happen to Ives if she had to leave Patience
entirely.

"So what's going on with you?  " he asked as she cleaned away what
little obvious infection remained.

"What do you mean?  " "Something's not right with you."

"How do you know?  " "Well, it's either the negative ionic aura that's
emanating from you, or the terribly sad expression on your face."

"I didn't realize it was so obvious."

"Anything you want to talk about?  " "I've been summoned by the
president of the hospital.  We're meeting in about an hour.  I think
he's going to fire me."

"For what?  " "I don't know how he'll choose to word the royal decree,
but the real reason is that I've been studying the records of patients
at the hospital.  I feel some of their problems may be due to a toxic
exposure from Colstar."

"Last time you were here, you mentioned something about cadmium."

"Exactly.  So far all the tests run at the hospital for cadmium have
been negative.  But just in case there's a problem with the lab here, I
took some blood from one patient down to San Francisco for analysis at
my old hospital."

"Excellent move."

"I've been trying to review the hospital records of patients I suspect
might have been victims, but I'm in hot water for not getting
permission from some stupid committee.  I haven't identified a cause or
pinned down the time of the exposure, but there's some sort of pattern
linking these patients.  I'm certain of it."

"Then you've got to keep looking."

"That's like telling a turtle who's been flipped on her back that she's
got to keep walking."

"Well, my money, if I had any, would be betting you get some sort of
warning.  From what I've been able to tell, Colstar is a very confident
company.  I suspect you're a lot less of a concern for them than you
think you are."

"How do you know so much about them?  " "Like I've told you, I keep an
eye on the place.  A couple of friends who visit me from time to time
used to work there.

We talk."

"Can you help me out in any way?  I mean, do you think your friends
know anything about a toxic spill or poor handling of cadmium?

" The hermit shook his head.

"Doubtful.  I can tell you that over the last couple of days there's
been a lot of activity around the place.  As soon as you've wrapped
that leg, I'll get my logbook and show you what I mean."  Abby finished
her work and watched as Ives went to his hut for his sack.

His limp was barely perceptible now, even though the wound was far from
healed.  She remembered how badly hobbled he had been just a few weeks
ago and wondered how much pain he must have been having, to give in
that much.  Ives hadn't talked much about his past, but he did share
that he had been a philosophy professor at one of the state schools
and, before that, had served in Vietnam.  He was uncomplicated and
often childishly simplistic in his views of things.  Yet he appreciated
life on a daily basis more than anyone she had ever known.

Ifþoh, hell, whenþshe left Patience, she would miss him.

Ives set his sack on his worktable and opened the logbook.

"There have been a number of big-shot-type cars cruising up Colstar
Hill over the last four days.  Two Jags, a Mercedes, a Porsche.  It
didn't recognize any of them.  But the big company event was yesterday,
" he said.  "A stretch limo with none other than Senator Mark Corman in
it.  You know him?  " "Of him."

"He was accompanied by a fellow in a suitþmaybe his aideþand the guy I
call the Man in Black.  My friends tell me his name is Quinn.

He must not like making decisions about what to wear each day, because
I've never seen him dressed any other way."

"His name's Lyle Quinn.

He's head of security.  He may dress like a cartoon, but I believe he's
a very dangerous man."

"Hmmm.  Big-shot senator visits battery factory.  What do you suppose
that means?  " "Well, for one thing, he's originally from Patience."

"That's right.  I knew that."

"And for another, according to Josh, Colstar is always competing with
other manufacturers for government contracts."

"I imagine that's it.

Corman is probably adding to his store of pork barrels.  Speaking of
our friend Josh, any word from him?  " Abby shook her head.  She had
shared some of what she and Josh had been going through, but this
wasn't the time to bring Ives up to speed on the latest sad
developments.

"Listen, " she said, "I'm sorry I can't stay, but I've got to go face
the music at the hospital.  Whatever happens, job or no job, I'll try
to be back to see you in three days, right about this time."

"They won't fire you.  Mark my words."

"We'll see."  She started to leave, then returned and gave him a quick
hug.  "Take care."

"You take care, " he said.  "Between now and when I see you again, I'm
going to be keeping an eye on my favorite factory and thinking about
why a U. S.

senator is so interested in batteries."  CHAPTER TWENTY- FOUR Joe
Henderson was resplendent in a blue-and-white seersucker suit.  His
office was on the second floor of the hospital, and Abby noted that he
had almost the same view as did George Oleanderþacross the meadow to
the Colstar cliff.  She had been interviewed by Henderson on her first
visit to the hospital, and although he had made any number of
inadvertent remarks that some would have considered sexist, she felt
they had hit it off reasonably well.  Seated in his pine-paneled
office with its hunting trophies, Abby had had no trouble attributing
the insensitivity to a man who simply wasn't aware that there was
anything objectionable in telling her how unusual it was to see a woman
physician as attractive as she was.  It was no surprise, then, when he
had followed up the inappropriate compliment by asking, "So how'd you
end up becomin' a doctor, anyhow?  " Now she sat rigidly in a
low-backed leather chair, waiting for the man to finish praising her
skill as an emergency physician and get to the point of their
meeting.

"It's not your overall knowledge or your ability in question here.  I
want you to know that, " he was saying.

"Then what is it?  " "Well, frankly, some fairly influential members of
the board of trustees and also some members of the medical staff
believe they have good reason to question your maturity and your
judgment."  Abby felt some weakening in her resolve not to lose her
temper.

"Explain, " she said.

Henderson ran his fingers through his thinning hair and fiddled with a
desk game shaped like a putting green.

"Well, let's start with the fact that some of our doctors feel you've
gone out of your way to make them look or feel inferior to you.  As far
as I know, none of them has suffered too badly because of your
remarks.

But this is a very tight community, and the thing we all treasure and
protect the most is our reputation."  Abby was gripping the arms of her
chair now.

"Please, go on, " she said.

"Next there's this business of Peggy Wheaton.  There are those who were
there that day who feel you had no right to desert her in her moment of
crisis in order to tend to .  . . to the man who killed her in cold
blood.  Even if, as you say you believed, Peggy had no chance, folks
still think that leavin' her the way you did showed poor judgment on
your part."  He paused to give her a chance to comment, but she said
nothing.  Her jaws were locked as tightly as her hands.  Ives was
wrong.  Henderson was building to a carefully orchestrated crescendo,
the grand finale of her termination.

"And, finally, " he went on, "there's this business of your conducting
an unauthorized review of hospital records.  The rules of this hospital
are spelled out quite clearly in our staff bylaws.  Because our
community is such a closely knit one, the hospital staff felt it was
essential to protect patient confidentiality as much as possible.  We
also wanted to prevent any unauthorized audits that might pit one
physician against another.  The other night in the record room Mrs.
Ricci expressly spelled out the rules to you.  Yet we have reason to
believe that last evening you again were calling up records, this time
from a computer at the community college.  Now, I will admit that we
don't have absolute proof it was you.  But the security built into our
new record II keeping system identified that the intrusion was taking
place and found the phone number of the bookstore.  We got a detailed
description from the girl who was working behind the counter."

"It was me, " Abby said.

"Why?  Why would you do such a thing when you knew it was forbidden by
hospital law?  " Abby hesitated, uncertain of how much to share with
the hospital president.  Obviously, he had ties to Colstar.  Every one
in Patience did.

But he also ran the institution that was caring for all these
patients.

It was certain that since Oleander and Quinn knew about the continuing
existence of the Alliance, Henderson did, too.  But maybe he didn't
realize how extensive the toxicity problem seemed to beþand how
explosive.  Maybe it was time for her to start getting the word out.

She tried to think of what damage Henderson could do if he was
committed to helping Colstar cover up whatever it was they had done.

True, he could fire her.  But he was about to do that anyhow.  She
decided to chance imparting at least some of what she believed was
going on.

"Joe, you said the hospital bylaws were established to protect patient
confidentiality.  Well, I violated those laws because I believe those
same patients' lives may be at stake.  And I believe Colstar may be at
fault."  Henderson sat forward and pushed aside his putting green.

"Then why in the hell didn't you talk to someone?  " he asked.

"Who?  Dr. Oleander almost jumped down my throat for ordering cadmium
levels on a couple of his patients."

"All negative, I've been told.

" "See?  That's a perfect example of how there are no secrets in this
town at all.  The things I believe Colstar might have done are
crimes.

People may even have died because of them.  The company could be
heavily fined and even shut down.  If there's been a deliberate
cover-up, people could be sent to prison.  So who am I supposed to talk
to?  Do you want me to ask permission from the record-room committee to
investigate?  Well, Martin Bartholomew is the head of that committee,
and he's also the head of the employees' clinic at Colstar."

"I see.

" "So I just decided that the welfare of my patientsþyour patients,
too, incidentally, since they all have been inpatients or outpatients
hereþwas worth breaking that bylaw for."

"Abby, how can you believe the company is responsible for exposing
people to cadmium when there is absolutely no proof?  No positive
tests.

Nothing!  " "I'm waiting for an independent lab in San Francisco to
call with the results on some samples of blood I brought to them.  "
"You don't trust our lab?  " "Quite frankly, I don't trust anyone right
now."

"What patient was it?  " Again Abby resisted any knee-jerk response.

Was there any way she would be putting Cardoza at risk by revealing
that it was his blood?

Considering her encounter with the man in the ski mask and his pickup,
it seemed clear that nothing she could say was going to be
hotoff-the-press news.

"Willie Cardoza, " she responded.

Henderson's attempt at looking surprised missed badly, she thought.

"You think he was poisoned with cadmium?  " he asked.

"I do, actually.  That would explain the violence, the insanity
inherent in what he did.  I've researched the subject quite
thoroughly.

Violent, psychotic behavior has been reported from cadmium, especially
with high-dose exposure.  Cardoza has some physical findings in his
eyes, as well, that I think may quite possibly be due to some sort of
heavy-metal poisoning.  And cadmium is a heavy metal.  It would
certainly make me feel better to know that he wasn't responsible for
what he did, although no matter how the tests turn out, I still defend
my decision to work on him and not Peggy Wheaton.  I did what every E.R
doctor is trained to do in a triage situationþtreat those who have a
chance of making it."

"Chance of making it in your opinion."

"Dammit, Joe!  All right, all right.  If it would make you any happier,
I'll say it.  In my opinion.

Now, let's just drop it."

"Did anyone else see these findings in Cardoza's eyes?  " "Not yet.

But anyone who wants to can do it anytime."

"It won't be quite as easy as that.

Cardoza was transferred to a prison hospital early this morning.  "
"Which one?  " "I'm afraid I'm not permitted to give that information
to anyone."  Abby sighed.

"What a carnival."  Henderson dearly found her remark offensive.

"We don't think so, Doctor, " he snapped.  "This hospital and the
Colstar corporation take the health of the people in this area very
seriously.

Two and a half years ago, when the community first raised health
concerns about the company, investigators from the Environmental
Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
were welcomed up on the hill and given free rein.  The two teams were
each here for almost a week.  They found a few minor violations, which
were dealt with immediately, but nothing that could have caused any
health danger in the valley or to the plant workers.  You were up
there.

You saw how they operate that plant."  Another nonsecret.

"How do you know I was up there?  " she asked.

"Abby, what difference does it make?  The problem is that you have gone
out of your way to create conflict where none existed.  It seems to us
that your temperament, your way of doing things, is much more suited to
. . . to a place that's not as .  . . tightly woven as our valley.  The
letters of recommendation from your directors at St. John's were
glowing.  Superb.  Perhaps you should consider returning to some sort
of academic environment, where controversy is more a way of life.  "
"Joe, I don't think patients like Bill Tracy and Hazel Cookman and a
number of others I've cared for would say that I foster controversy and
conflict.  I know I'm having trouble adjusting to some aspects of
living in this community, but once I step through the doors of the
emergency room, I feel totally at ease.  Before I came here, I was
dreading having to work with no backup in the hospital.  Now I've
discovered that I actually enjoy the challenge.  I don't want to
leave.

At least not right now."  Henderson shook his head.

"I heard there are some nurses and doctors who aren't even speaking to
you anymore."

"They're upset about Peggy Wheaton.  That's understandable.  Just about
everyone is.  But they'll come around.  And those who don't, still have
to take care of the patients."

"Abby, I'm sorry.  It just isn't working."  t f She took a deep,
calming breath.

"Joe, after you called this morning, I read over my contract.  It
spells out very clearly what I can be fired for.  I don't believe that
anything you've said this morning about me and my job performance
qualifies."

"I don't want to fire you, Abby.  I want you to consider resigning."

"And if I say no?  " Henderson drummed his fingers on the desktop, then
removed a folder from his desk.

"I believe that one of those reasons spelled out in your contract has
to do with demonstrating flawed judgment in critical situations.  I
have here the autopsy report on Peggy Wheaton."  He opened the report
to a specific page, studied it for a very dramatic ten or fifteen
seconds, and then slid it and another page across to her.

Abby looked at him quizzically.

"I was present for the autopsy, " she said.  "The whole thing.  Start
to finish.  I don't understand whatþ" "Just read those pages, Abby.  "
The first page in the technically written document was the description
of the removal of the top of Peggy Wheaton's head, and the examination
of the trauma to her skull and brain.  The single-spaced,
computer-printed paragraph covered most of the sheet.  Abby read it in
shocked disbelief.  The injury described was far less serious than the
massive fractures and brain damage that Abby had diagnosed in the E.R
and confirmed through her observation of the autopsy.  In fact, as
described, the trauma was minor enough to have easily not caused
Peggy's death.

"This is a lie, " she said.  "Every word of it."

"I think you should read the next page as well."  The second sheet
described the findings in Peggy's chestþa contusion to the heart with a
traumatic hemopericardiumþa constricting accumulation of blood between
the heart muscle and covering membrane.  If the finding was true, and
Abby knew from having seen Peggy's perfectly normal heart that it
wasn't, she would have been guilty of missing the very treatable cause
of the woman's death.

"You're crazy if you think you can get away with this.  I'll just
insist that the tissues be reexamined."

"Feel free.  I believe what tissue remains will conform completely with
this report.  The report is official, signed by the medical examiner,
Dr. Barrett."  Abby groaned.  Barrett was the chief of pathology at
Patience Regional.

He also ran the laboratory that had never found cadmium in anyone.

"I can't believe you all would sink to this."

"Abby, I assure you that no one wants this report to become public
knowledge.  It would reflect badly on the hospital, and terribly on
you.

In fact, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Gary Wheaton and his attorney
choose to pursue the matter in court.  That would tie you up
indefinitely."

"Am I that great a threat to Colstar, that you all would do this?  What
in the hell is going on here?  " "We would like you to give us two
weeks' notice."

"If I refuse?  " "Then I'm afraid we'll just have to decide what's in
the best interests of this hospital and this community."  At that
moment Abby's pager went off, and at almost the same instant the
loudspeaker outside Henderson's office sounded.

"Code ninety-nine, X ray.  Code ninety-nine, X ray."  Abby glanced down
at her page.

"It's the E.R, and it's urgent, " she said, pushing back from the
desk.

"They need help at the code."

"We can complete our conversation later, " Henderson replied icily.

"Perhaps we'd better see what's going on in radiology."

"Tell your secretary to call and say I'm on my way.  And in case I
forget to say it later, Joe, you're a son of a bitch."  The overhead
page was continuing to broadcast the location of the code ninety-nine
as Abby sprinted down the hall to the stairway.  The radiology
department was on the ground floor, not far from the E.R.  She tried to
recall what doctor from her E.R group was on the schedule for today.

Whoever it was would certainly be there running the code.  Just as she
raced through the open doors to radiology, she remembered that the E.R
doc on duty was Jill Anderson.  And that, she knew, could mean
trouble.

Jill was skittish and insecure, and prone to bursts of temper.  Talk
about impaired critical judgment!  Abby had wondered more than once
what Jill was doing in a specialty that required nothing if not a cool
head.  She was a disaster waiting to happen every time she put on her
clinic coat.

A technician stationed by the doors pointed down the-brightly lit
corridor.

"The MRI suite, Dr. Dolan!  " she called out.  "Please hurry!  " The
magnetic resonance imaging suite consisted of a small waiting/
reception area, a dressing room, and the room housing the massive MRI
unit itselœ The code ninety-nine was being conducted in there.  Several
people, including two nurses, were standing outside, craning to see
through the thick glass walls.

"Just bump someone out and go right in, " one of them said.

Over her years as a med student, resident, and then emergency
specialist, Abby had been involved in hundreds of code ninety-nines.

But the bizarre scene in the crowded MRI room was one she would never
forget.  Jill Anderson, tears streaming down her face, muttering to
herself, was fumbling with the equipment to do a subclavian IV
insertion in a woman who was kicking and flailing her arms about
desperately.

Every bit of the patient's skin that Abby could see was flaming red.

Standing across from Jill, Dr. Del Marshall, a radiologist in his
sixties, was trying to ventilate the patient with a black Ambu
breathing bag.  Even from the doorway Abby could tell he was doing an
ineffective job of getting air into her lungs.

"What's up?  " Abby asked as a nurse stepped back to give her room by
the stretcher.

"Anaphylactic shock, " Jill said.  "She went into it while she was
inside the MRI cylinder.  Her jaws are clenched too tightly to get a
tube in.

She's hardly breathing."  Why in the hell didn't you wheel her out of
this closet and back to the E.R?  Abby wanted to scream.  The forty-five
seconds or so that such a move would have taken would have been repaid
a thousandfold with the space and equipment at their disposal in the
E.R.  Now Abby couldn't tell if time was too precious for that.

She moved behind Del Marshall to get a better look at the patient, l I
and at what the radiologist was doing.  Above the black rubber face
mask, she saw the patient's bright-red hair.  Marshall backed away and
let Abby handle the breathing bag.  She lifted it from the woman's
face.  Lying there, her eyes wide with panic, fighting desperately and
futilely to get air past the swollen tissues in her throat, was Claire
Buchanan.

CHAPTER TWENTY- FIVE.

, Claire Buchanan's face, puffed and crimson, was barely
recognizable.

She was thrashing about as if someone were smothering her with a
pillow.

Jill Anderson looked only marginally better.  Her mascara was beginning
to smear beneath both eyes, and her normally pale complexion was
bloodless.

"I've got to get this line in so we can paralyze her with some
Anectine, " she said.  "Once her jaws are relaxed, maybe I can get a
tube m.

Paralyze.  Tube.  From what Abby could tell, Claire Buchanan was still
conscious.  The use of such words in this situation was totally
inappropriate.  To make matters worse, the time that was being lost as
Jill struggled to get an IV in could prove fatal.  The lactic acid that
was rapidly building up in Claire's bloodstream from her low oxygen
levels could cause a cardiac arrest at any moment.

By the accepted rules of practice Jill was in charge of the code
ninety-nine.  But there was no way Abby could allow things to continue
as they were.  Besides, what did she have to lose?  Henderson had more
or less just fired her.

"Jill, " she said with undisguised firmness, "let me help."  At that
moment Jill looked like a frantic, treed animal who had just realized
there was no place else to run.

 "Take over, " she said.

Thank God.

Abby was already experiencing the familiar slowing of movement and
muffling of sound as her mind and body homed in on the critical
elements of the situation at hand.  In just a few seconds she
understood the crisis and what she and the others had to do to reverse
it.

"Jill, please get a tourniquet on that arm, " she said.  "Someone else
keep a couple of fingers on her femoral pulse until we can get our
portable monitor hooked up."  She next turned to the nurse, Mary
Wilder.  Before Peggy Wheaton's death they had been on a first-name
basisþallies in the E.R war.  Since the triage episode the nurse hadn't
spoken a kind word to her.

"Mrs. Wilder, please give Dr. Anderson point eight of epinephrine on
a twenty-seven needle."  Wilder looked at her dispassionately.

"Yes, Doctor."  Despite the situation, and in spite of herself, Abby
flashed on the nurse's horrible death in her nightmare.  If you only
knew .  . .

"Jill, don't worry about a line, " Abby said.  "Just find some little
vein and get the epi in.  You can do it.  I know you can.  Put it in
her femoral or external jugular if you have to.  Just make sure it's
IV."  She checked Claire's jaws, which were, in fact, rigidly closed.

Trying to get a breathing tube through her mouth was out of the
question.  But there was another wayþin fact, there were two.  One of
the techniques, nasotracheal intubation, she could possibly do right
there.  The other, an emergency tracheotomy, would require the surgical
lighting, wall suction, and equipment of the E.R.  And that meant a
risky dash.

"I need a six-oh nasotracheal tube, " she said.

The nasotracheal breathing tube was made to be passed through the nose,
down the back of the throat, and between the vocal cords.  Because the
NT tube was held tightly in place by the long nasal passage, it caused
less tissue injury over long periods of assisted ventilation than
the more wobbly endotracheal tube, inserted through the patient's
mouth.  But the nasal technique was slower to perform, technically more
difficult, and damaging to the nose if not done correctly.

Usually, when inserting the nasal tube, a lighted laryngoscope blade
would be slipped into the patient's mouth to push the tongue aside and
allow the physician to use a long-handled clamp to guide the NT tube
downward through the vocal cords.  This time, though, because of
Claire's tightly clenched jaws, using the laryngoscope was out of the
question.

Abby would have to do the insertion blind, by feelþand hearingþalone.

It was a technique she had practiced many times but had seldom used in
an emergency situation, especially with a patient who was still awake
and thrashing about.

She turned away from Claire Buchanan for a moment and added softly,
"And somebody please get over to the E.R and get us ready for a
tracheotomy if I can't get this in."  She turned back to the stretcher
and set about trying to calm Claire down.  She also used the mask and
bag to deliver high-flow oxygen along with what little air the woman
was managing to get in on her own.

Their worst enemies right now were time and the cramped quarters in
which Jill had opted to work.  Abby identified the people who were not
essential to the moment and asked them to wait outside.  Del Marshall
she motioned back to a corner, out of the way.  The radiologist, who
was hardly used to this kind of crisis, readily complied.  He was
tight-lipped and plaster pale.  For a moment Abby worried he was going
to pass out.  As she watched him move aside and brace himself against
the wall, her line of vision connected with Joe Henderson, who was
watching and listening from just outside the doorway.  For the briefest
moment their eyes met and held.  Then, with no other acknowledgment,
she turned away.

Claire's face was horribly swollen now and a mottled crimson.  Her lips
were like sausages.  Her eyelids and the surrounding tissues were so
puffed that it was impossible to tell whether her eyes could even
open.

And to make matters worse, her struggles were weakening.

Come on, Jill, Abby urged silently.  Get that epi in.  . . . Dammit,
come on!

The nurse working the crash cart handed over the nasotracheal tube.

"Did you check the balloon?  " Abby asked.

Too often she had seen a breathing tube inserted flawlessly, only to
discover that the circumferential balloon used to seal the space
between the tube and the inner wall of the trachea was defective.  The
insertion would have to be repeated with another tube, but this time
through vocal cords that were often traumatized and swollen from the
initial attempt.

"No, Doctor, " the nurse muttered.  "Sorry."

"Do it, please, " Abby demanded.  "And it's got to be lubricated
better."  Keep upsettingpeople likeZill and this nurse, and it will be
a miracle if you're not Iynched, she was thinking.

"I've got it, Abby!  " Jill exclaimed suddenly.  "Epi's in!  " "Way to
go.  I knew you could do it.  Now, please get to work on that
subclavian, and take your time.  As soon as it's in, give her some IV
steroidsþmake it forty of Solu-Medrolþand also give her fifty of
Benadryl."  Claire had stopped breathing altogether.  In a few more
seconds they would have to begin doing CPR.  But without a way to get
oxygen in, the pulmonary part of the CPR would not be possible.  Abby
couldn't remember the last time she had seen an anaphylactic-shock
patient die in the emergency ward.  The treatment was usually
effective, and at St. John's there was just too much talent around,
including skilled trauma surgeons who could perform a perfect
tracheotomy in just a minute or two.  But this time the severity of
Claire's allergic reaction, plus Jill's indecisiveness and poor
judgment, had put them in a deep hole.

Abby tried one last blast of oxygen from the breathing bag.  Claire's
neck was as rigid as her jaws.  The resistance to proper air flow was
intense.  On the other side of the litter Jill was moving with
agonizing slowness.  There was no way Abby could wait for the IV to be
established.

She tried to rid her mind of all extraneous thoughts.  But some images
of Claire Buchananþsnippets of their two encountersþrefused to be
dispatched.

". . . Are you the nervous type?  " "I don't think so, except that I'm
very claustrophobic.  . . . " Abby glanced down the long, gleaming MRI
cylinder.  How in the l hell could anyone with true claustrophobia make
it in there for the forty-five minutes usually required to complete a
study?

Hang in there, Claire .  . . . Please, just a little bit longer.  . .

Abby felt the icy fingers of panic beginning to take hold.

". . . I was a damn good dancer, at least for Sioux City.  . . . "
Don't leave us, Claire.  . . . Don't leave us now.  . . .

"Okay, everyone, let's get this tube down.  Mrs. Wilder, put your
hands on both sides of her rib cage.  When I ask you to, give her some
rhythmic compressions.  That way at least I'll have a little bit of a
target.  I'm making one pass.  If I don't get it, we're going to the E.R
for a trach.

Are we sure there's no surgeon in the house?  " "The one on call has
been paged, but he's coming in from his office."  It had been six or
seven years since Abby had performed her last emergency tracheotomy.

But if she failed to get the ventilation tube in, there was no other
option.  If she had to, she would race Claire Buchanan over to the E.R,
suck up her courage, and do it.

"Jill, hold off until I get this tube in, please.  Every one else, I
need perfect silence so I can hear air moving through her cords.

Ready, Mrs. Wilder?  " Instantly the room was totally quiet.  Abby
bent down, her lips next to Claire's ear.

"Claire, can you hear me?  " No response.  No movement.  "Claire,
you're going to feel a plastic tube inside your nose.  It's to help you
breathe."  Still no reaction.

There was no time left for explanations.  And no need.  Claire
Buchanan, though her jaws were still rigidly locked, was on the
brink.

The two nurses who could backed out of the room to allow more work
space.  Abby took the lubricated tube in one hand and slid it into
Claire's right nostril.  The one-time Rockette barely moved.  Next,
Abby slipped her free hand beneath the woman's head and cradled it.

The tube caught briefly on one of the nasal ridges, but a little
rotating and some gentle pressure freed it and allowed Abby to advance
it into the back of Claire's throat.  Step one was doneþthe easy
part.

Abby hunched over now, her ear just above the opening of the tube.

"All right, Mrs. Wilder, " she said into the silence, "compress about
once every three seconds."  Faintly, Abby heard the puff of air.  She
advanced the tube another half inch.  This time she heard nothing.  She
guessed that she had gone behind the opening of the trachea into the
beginning of the esophagus.

She withdrew the tube an inch and rotated it slightly to angle the tip
more forward.

"Dr. Dolan, I'm not feeling a femoral pulse anymore."  Abby checked
Claire's carotid pulse.  It was still there, but very faint.  Time was
just about up.

"Hold off on the compressions, Mrs. Wilder, " she said.  "If we have
to race to the E.R, we're going to do it without any CPR until we get
there.

So everyone get ready."  She was down to it.  One more try, ten more
seconds, and she would have to make the time-consuming sprint to the E.R
and perform a tracheotomy under the worst circumstances.

"Quiet, everyone, " she said again, although there was hardly any
noise.

"Okay, Mrs. Wilder, compressions, please."  Abby hunched over the tube
opening once more.

The nurse squeezed down rhythmically, once, then again.  Claire
Buchanan's arms and legs were twitching spasmodically now,
purposelessly.  Suddenly Abby heard it again, the faint hiss of moving
air.  She advanced the tube down a quarter of an inch.  The sound was
louder.

Suddenly she encountered resistance again.  Was she against the
epiglottis, deep in the throat?  The bony ridge above the larynx?  Or
perhaps even the swollen vocal cords themselves?

Abby felt herself beginning to panic once more.  This whole thing was a
nightmare.  An absolute disaster.  Should she try forcing the tube
down, hoping she was against the vocal cords, or give up and risk the
mad dash to the E.R for an emergency tracheotomy by a doctor who hadn't
performed one in years?  She waited for another wisp of air, and when
she heard it, forced the tube down as hard as she dared.  If she
fractured or tore a crucial structure, with possibly fatal hemorrhage
into Claire's lungs, she would bear the full responsibility.

There was momentary, total resistance.  Then, with a soft popping
sound, the tube advanced almost an inch.  Abby knew she was in.  The
tip had pushed between the obstructing vocal cords and was now in the
lower trachea, just above its split into the main bronchial tubes to
Claire's right and left lungs.  There might be some swelling in those
tubes, but with epinephrine already on board, the blockage shouldn't be
enough to keep them from ventilating her.

"Ambu bag, please, " she said.  "Quickly!  " Mary Wilder passed over
the breathing bag.  Abby attached it to the top of the tube and began
ventilating as fast as she could.  There was a tank of oxygen beneath
the stretcher.  Abby connected it to the breathing bag through a
plastic tube.

"I think I feel a femoral pulse, " the nurse called out.

"Excellent.  Jill, you've got one more shot at that subclavian.  Then,
in or out, we make tracks for the E.R.  Take your time.  I know you can
do it.

Just like the epi."  Jill Anderson, her tears no longer flowing, seemed
as if she were about to back off entirely.  Then, with a glance at
Abby, she located her landmarks and slid the needle in beneath Claire's
collarbone.  The blood return was immediate.  A perfect shot.

"Yes!  " Jill exclaimed unabashedly.  "Yes!  " One nurse applauded.

With a good intravenous route established, the steroids, some more
epinephrine, and the antihistamine, Benadryl, could be given IV.

In less than a minute Claire began more purposeful movements of her
limbs.

"Her pulse is much better now, " the nurse exclaimed.  "Much better.

" "Great, " Abby said.  "Let's get her the hell out of this box and
over the E.R.  Mrs. Wilder, would you please lead the charge?  " The
graying nurse looked over at Abby with unbridled relief.

"It's Mary, " she said.

CHAPTER TWENTY- SIX B Y the time Claire Buchanan was transferred from
the E.R to the ICU, her symptoms had begun to recede.  She was groggy,
but clearly awake.  George Oleander, who had come in immediately to
take over her care, expressed gratitude to Abby for her treatment
success, but he had no explanation to offer for Claire's severe
allergic reaction.  He also made no defense of his insistence not to
refer her for a dermatologic consult.  Abby wanted to suggest sending
off a cadmium-level stat, but given the controversy swirling around
her, she decided the suggestion could wait.

Her actual shift in the E.R wasn't scheduled to begin for a few more
hours, and she was hardly in the mood to offer to take over early for
Jill Anderson.  Instead, she decided, she would go up to the unit to
check on Claire, then maybe take a walk, and, finally, have dinner at
the Peking Pagoda.  With all she had been through today, the very least
she could do for herself was a Pupu Platter.

Before heading up to the unit Abby went to a pay phone to check in with
Sandy Stuart at St. John's.  The toxicologist was at a conference for
another two hours, and her secretary had no idea who would have been in
charge of a cadmium assay.  Abby left her beeper number and
instructions for Sandy to call as soon as she had any information.

The unit was fairly quiet, due in part to Willie Cardoza's transfer.

Abby immediately sensed a change in the attitude of the unit nurses
toward her.  Two of them made a point of coming over to congratulate
her for "the save."  One of them actually muttered something about
"that Wheaton thing."  Clearly, the pendulum of hospital opinion was
swinging back in her favor.  Abby wondered how far it would head in the
other direction again if Henderson began leaking the lie that she had
not only overestimated the severity of Peggy's head injuries, but that
in her haste to tend to Peggy's murderer she had completely missed the
constrictive hemopericardium that had probably cost the woman her
life.

A wave of loneliness washed over her.  She glanced at the time and
wondered where Lew was.  He had been working a fair amount at the state
hospital lately because the main-coverage doctor had left without
notice.  She wondered what would happen to her embryonic relationship
with him if she was forced to resign and move out of Patience.  She
believed something very special might be developing with Lew, but the
two of them were hardly far enough along for her to stay in Patience
just for him or for him to leave because of her.  And, besides, the
situation with Josh remained unresolved.  Maybe it would be best if she
simply ditched them allþJosh, Lew, the hospital, everythingþand started
over someplace.  That notion was not very appealing, especially since
leaving would vindicate the slimy methods of Joe Henderson, to say
nothing of the heavy-handed approach of Mr. Ski Mask in his red
pickup.

Love, marriage, kids, a reasonably interesting job, a nice place to
live.  Her goals in moving to Patience had always seemed perfectly
straightforwardþnever far-fetched or self-serving.  And it had all
started out so right, so innocent.  How in the hell had all this
happened?

Ironically, Claire Buchanan had been placed in the same cubicle Willie
Cardoza had occupied.  She still had the lifesaving NT tube in place,
but Abby noted through the glass wall that the tube was now attached to
moisturized oxygen, not to a ventilator.  A very good sign.

. S There was a beefy man in a turtleneck and sports coat seated next
to her stroking her hand.  Dennis Buchanan, the man who could sell
iceboxes to Eskimos, the man who had rescued Claire from the
Rockettes.

Watching his gentle, concerned attentiveness brought a bittersweet
fullness to Abby's throat.  Once upon a time Josh had cared for her
like that.  And knowing that he did had made almost every problem in
life bearable.

She shook off her melancholy as best she could and moved closer to the
glass.  Claire's lips were much less swollen already, and her eyes,
though still puffy, were open.  The terrible inflammation in her skin
had also begun to ebb.  With any luck she would have the tube removed
before long.  Abby saw no sense in trying to speak with her at this
point, especially while her husband was there.  But later tonight she
would stop by again.  Even if the tube was still in, Claire would
probably be alert and strong enough to communicate in writing.  And
there were a number of questions Abby wanted answered, the most
pressing being, What happened?

Abby started out of the unit.  Then, bothered by the persistent gnawing
feeling that she was missing something, she suddenly turned and went to
the nurses' station.  Claire's old hospital record was in a slot just
below the loose-leaf-bound current record.  The old record wasn't
large.

There were no inpatient stays before this one, except for the delivery
of a healthy baby girl sixteen years before, and only five
emergency-room visits, the two in which Abby had been her doctor, a
sprained ankle, removal of a piece of glass from her foot, and an
episode of upper-abdominal pain that was believed to be gastritis.

Gastritis.  Claire had said something about that, something that Abby
thought was unusual at the time.  She flipped through the laboratory
and X-ray reports.  Blood counts had been done on the evening Claire
had come into the E.R with belly pain.  Then, a day later, she'd had an
MRI, which was normal.  That was it.  That was what had seemed so weird
when Claire had first mentioned it.

An MRI, appropriate when a doctor suspected a condition not easily
visualized by conventional X rays, seemed an odd and extravagantly
expensive choice in view of Claire's symptoms.  And for someone with
claustrophobia, like Claire, it was bound to be an ordeal.  In
addition, the time required to run each study meant that there was
often a long waiting period to get one done.  Yet George Oleander had
ordered an MRI without first going to an upper GI series, or even, from
what Abby could tell, a trial course of treatment.  Why?

And why had he ordered a second MRI today?

Abby left the unit and returned to the MRI suite.  It occurred to her
for the first time how unusual it was for a hospital the size of
Patience Regional to have its own MRI machine at all.  Granted, the
facility served a fairly large geographic area.  But as far as she
knew, most hospitals this size referred patients to a free-standing MRI
center that served several hospitals.  And some facilities actually
contracted with a mobile unit that was built inside a tractor trailer
and hauled from hospital to hospital.  Yet here was PRH with not only
an MRI, but a very up-to-date CT scanner as well.  And there was a
great deal of crossover in the diagnostic capabilities of the two
techniques.

The room housing the gleaming MRI unit showed no hint of the drama that
had unfolded there just two hours before.  The floor was polished and
the machine was already in operation again.  Del Marshall sat outside
the room at a console, checking the remarkably precise images as the
machine produced them.  Inside, the sheet-covered feet of the patient
could be seen just inside the cylinder.

"Hi, " Abby said.  "How're you doing?  " Marshall looked up at her and
smiled warmly.  He was a lean, fatherly man, with Ben Franklin glasses
and razor-cut gray hair.

"I didn't have a coronary in there, if that's what you mean."

"You actually seemed to be handling yourself pretty well."

"That's kind of you to say, but I know better.  It's one thing to take
all those courses in CPR and advanced CPR.  It's quite another to be
confronted with a flesh-and-blood patient who's stopped breathingþ
especially when it happens in your MRI machine.  I can understand my
being a basket case, but I confess I was a little surprised Jill
Anderson wasn't more up to the task.  I don't know what would have
become of that poor Buchanan woman if you hadn't been there."

"Thanks.  Del, do you have any idea what happened in there?  " "No, no
idea at all, " he responded with knee-jerk quickness.  "One moment she
was perfectly peaceful, the next she was thrashing about violently,
kicking the inside of the tube.

We pulled her out, and she was already swelling up and turning
beet-red."

"Well, I just stopped by the unit, and she seems to be making a nice
recovery.  I was wondering if you would happen to have Mrs. Buchanan's
request sheet in there.  I just want to get some data for my
dictation."  Abby phrased the question carefully.  She had no idea how
connected the radiologist was to Henderson or to George Oleander.  And
the last thing she wanted was for either of them to know she was poking
around for more information.

Marshall called up Claire's sheet on one of the screens.  The specific
line Abby was looking for was Provisional Diagnosis.  According to it,
Oleander had requested the study for recurrent hives, possible occult
malignancy.

The diagnosis of possible occult malignancy was reasonable enough.

Hives sometimes were the outward manifestation of serious internal
disease.  But this MRI, like Claire's previous one, seemed to have been
ordered prematurely.  Of course, there could have been any number of
diagnostic studies done through Oleander's office of which Abby would
have been unaware.  But she sensed that was not the case.  Oleander had
a strange predilection for ordering MRIs, as did the other physicians
with NIWW patients.  But there was something else about the
MRIsþsomething that seemed to be floating just beyond her grasp.

There was just enough time before her E.R shift to go home and review
the data she had managed to gather so farþfocusing this time on the
MRIs.  The Pupu Platter would have to wait for another day.

Abby thanked the radiologist and left the hospital trying to sort out
what she was discovering, and what pieces were missing.  Pending the
results of the assay of Willie Cardoza's blood, she would try assuming
for the moment that all of the NIWWs, including Cardoza, Claire
Buchanan, and even Josh, were cadmium toxic to one degree or another.

How could that possibly tie in with the inappropriate, excessively
ordered MRIs?

Unlike standard X rays or even CT scans, which were a computerized
integration of hundreds of individual X rays, magnetic resonance
imaging involved placing the patient in a magnetic field and then
bombarding that person with radio waves.  The billions of hydrogen ions
in the body, mostly located in water, would vibrate under the influence
of the magnet in such a way that their density could be measured and
then converted to incredibly detailed slices through the body.  The
slices were used to create three-dimensional pictures of any organ.

The science behind an MRI was straight out of Star Trek, and for years
many distinguished scholars had derided the believers.  But scholars
had laughed at Newton, too.

As far as Abby knew, no adverse effects of any real consequence had
been attributed to magnetic resonance imaging.  At a lecture on the
technique sometime in the past year, she had learned that there was a
slight but significant rise in body temperature in patients undergoing
the test, possibly caused by the intense radio-wave bombardment.  With
time and a massive volume of cases it seemed possible something else
would show up.  But for the time being the temperature rise was
itþexcept, of course, for the psychological trauma of lying in a metal
tube for most of an hour, unable to move at all, surrounded by the
echoing pings, hums, and clangs of the charging and discharging
electromagnet.

The problem, as Abby saw it, was coming up with a workable explanation
for how the MRIs fit in with the varied clinical presentations of the
NIWWs.  The understanding of the biochemistry of the brain was still in
its infancy.  Perhaps, she reasoned, the radio waves, the magnetic
field, or even the claustrophobic effects of being slid into the narrow
tube set off some sort of chemical discharge.  And perhaps, in the
presence of cadmium, that chemical discharge short-circuited the
brain.

Perhaps.

Perhaps.  Perhaps.

The truth was, the explanations she was conjuring up didn't make much
sense.  Some cases fit, some didn't.  There simply wasn't any
consistent pattern.  Willie Cardoza had an MRI after his head injury.

Josh had never been ill before coming to Patience, and had never had an
MRI.  Claire Buchanan seemed to be having trouble with her immune
systemþespecially the immune chemicals in the skin.  Other NIWW
patients had nothing more than persistent fatigue, and still others, a
chronic cough that was unresponsive to antibiotics.

By the time Abby arrived home, the best theory she had come up with was
that she had stumbled by accident on a scam to raise revenues for the
hospital or justify its MRI unit by ordering an excessive number of
tests.  What did the scam have to do with the NIWWs?  Probably
nothing.

Upon her hurried return home from the computer room at the
community-college bookstore, Abby had searched for a spot to hide the
loose-leaf notebook containing her data sheets.  She thought there was
a good chance that someone, probably Lyle Quinn, would try to find and
destroy them.  Finally she had settled on a hollowed-out area just
behind the furnace in the basement.  The spot would probably yield to a
careful search, but the searcher would have to wade through a hell of a
lot of junk first.

She carried the notebook upstairs to the dining-room table and brought
out a blank sheet of paper.  This time she would concentrate on just
the MRIs.  She jotted down the dates when the tests had been done, the
doctor, the diagnosis, the results.  Nothing.  The only finding that
looked like a pattern was that in most cases the study was negative.

She rubbed at her eyes and paced around the house.  Something was
there.  She felt certain of it.  Maybe she needed more cases.  But more
likely she was approaching her work with a burden of preconceived
notions.  If she could only clear her mind of expectations .  . .

She was still pacing when her beeper went off.  The return number was
not local, but still in the 916 area.  Lew answered on the first
ring.

Abby had never heard him so excited.

"I'm at the state hospital in Caledonia, " he said.  "And one of the
patients we have here right now is Angela Cristoforo.  Do you know who
that is?  " "Yes, the girl who cuts herself."

"Exactly.  Well, this is the second time she's been here since that
incident at the Colstar picnic.  This time her mother found her burning
herself with a curling iron.  Apparently she had set her bed on fire as
well."  Abby flashed on the scene at Colstar ParkþAngela screaming at
Lyle Quinn, with Willie Cardoza approaching her, ever so carefully,
from behind.

". . . Let me die!  I deserve to die!  " "Poor baby, " she said.

"Poor baby, maybe, " Lew said, "but she's also the break we've been
waiting for.  And you did it."

"I don't understand."

"Her eyes.  I finished doing an intake exam on her, and then I started
thinking about the rings you found in Willie Cardoza.  Angela
Cristoforo has them, Abby!  The same ones you described.  Invisible
under regular light, glowing like fire under a black light.  Both of
them are poisoned, both of them are violently insane, and both of them
worked for you-know-who.

Have you heard anything from your friend in San Francisco?  " "Not
yet.

Soon, I think.  In fact, I thought this page from you might be Sandy.

Have you drawn blood on Angela?  " "I'm about to.  Abby, we're going to
get them.  I knew we would.  As soon as you mentioned those NIWWs of
yours, I knew we'd get them.  All we need now is a little more
timeþjust a little more time to get everything organized and put our
findings together."  A little more time may be all I have left around
here.

"Lew, that's great news.  You've worked very hard for this these past
years.  You deserve a breakthrough."

"You were the breakthrough, Abby.  You did it.  Will you page me as
soon as you hear about Cardoza's blood?  " "Of course.  Where are you
now?  " "In the on-call room.  But I have to see some patients.  It's a
full moon."

"Lord.

That bodes ill for my shift in the E.R tonight."  Abby decided against
telling him anything about her meeting with Joe Henderson or the
fabricated autopsy report.  This was Lew's moment.  There was no reason
to spoil it.

"Abby, I can't wait to see you again.  How about tomorrow?  We can have
lunch at my place."

"Sure.  That would be fine."

"You don't sound that enthused."

"Oh, I am, Lew.  I just have a lot on my mind.

Remember, Colstar has been your fight for several years.  I'm just
trying to keep my head above water here."

"I understand.  I'm sorryþI keep making the same dumb assumption about
you and the Alliance over and over again."

"It's all right.  I'm on your side.  You know that.

" "Are you headed into the hospital now?  " "Yes.  There's a patient in
the unit whose eyes I want to check."

"Just keep me posted."  Abby set the receiver down, replaced the
notebook behind the furnace, and gathered her things for work.  Lew was
right.  She had sounded lukewarm about having lunch with him.  And he
didn't deserve that.  She was justifiably upset over what had happened with
Henderson and unjustifiably angry at Lew for not being around to help
her come up with the appropriate response.  Little Abby Dolan, feeling
sorry for herselœ That was it in a nutshell.  Lew was off now seeing
patients.  But as soon as there was a chance later on, she would call
and apologize.  She was down to one ally she could really count on in
Patience.  Now she was trying to drive him off.

Dusk was already settling in when she drove back to the hospital.  Even
though there were still almost two weeks left in August, the air
smelled like autumn.  The summer that had once held so much promise was
nearly over.  What next?  she wondered.

Lew's finding in Angela Cristoforo was sure to stir up the hornets.

Abby hoped he had sense enough not to disclose his discovery
prematurely.  Tonight, when she called him to apologize for sounding
like a brat, she would warn him.  The bogus autopsy report on Peggy
Wheaton demonstrated that the opposition was resourceful and not about
to cave in on any point without a fight.

She stopped by the E.R and once again slipped the ophthalmologic black
light into her clinic-coat pocket.  First Willie Cardoza, now Angela
Cristoforo.  Their symptoms were similar, they were both employed at
Colstar, and both of them had telltale eye findings.  Now it was time
to see if one of the NIWWs was a member of that club.

Claire Buchanan was alone in her cubicle in the ICU.  Abby was grateful
to see that the NT tube had been pulled.  Instead, Claire had only
oxygen prongs.  Mindful of having been surprised in the unit by Lyle
Quinn, Abby was careful to stand facing the door.

"Hi, " she said, "remember me?  " "Dr. Dolan from the E.R."  Claire's
vocal cords, swollen from the intubation and her allergic reaction,
made her voice barely audible.  Her lips and eyelids were puffy, but
less so than even a little while ago.  Her skin remained somewhat
mottled, but now with varying shades of pale and pink.  The allergic
reaction she had endured was one of the most virulent Abby had ever
seen.  But thank God she was going to make it.

"How're you feeling?  " Abby asked.

The one-time Rockette smiled weakly.

"Been better."

"If you feel too tired to talk to me, I can come back.

" "It's okay.  I remember your trying to help me in that MRI room.

Thank you."  Claire still had to pause for breath every few words.

Their conversation would have to be brief.

"It was a close call, " Abby said.  "I'm glad you made it.  Can I get
you anything?  Some water?  " "That would be great."  Abby held the
paper cup and straw for her.

"Claire, I don't want you to try to say too much right now, but do you
think you could tell me what happened down there?  " The woman
shrugged.

"I really don't know.  I hated having the MRI test, so I took the
tranquilizer pills Dr.  Oleander gave me."

"Pills?  More than one?  " "Three, I think.  I don't really remember.

Then, when I was ready to go into the tube, they gave me an eye
coverþblack cloth, like the one some people use to sleep with."  She
stopped to take some breaths and another sip of water.

"Claire, we can talk about this later."

"No, it's okay.  At first I .

. . I thought I was doing pretty well.

Then, suddenly, I felt like I was having trouble breathing.  The air
seemed heavy, like it was liquid or something.  It even had a weird
taste."

"A taste?  " "That's just the way it seemed.  All of a sudden my
itching got worse.

Much worse.  Then I couldn't breathe at all.  It was horrible.  I'll
never go inside one of those things again, I promise you that.  "
"Well, try not to make promises like that.  That test is coming up more
and more in people's lives."

"Not mine."

"Claire, I'm just grateful you're getting better.  I'll stop back to
see you later.  But before I go, I want to check your eyes with this
light."  Abby glanced outside the cubicle.  No one was close by.

Quickly, she pulled the curtain and cut the lights.  She was aware of
her own heartbeat as she clicked on the black light, leaned over the
bed, and looked through the built-in magnifier.  Claire's eyes were
perfectly normal.  No rings.  No abnormal glow of any kind.  Abby
rubbed her own eyes and looked again.

Nothing.

"See anything I should know about?  " Claire asked.

"They look perfect, " Abby said, still straining to see some telltale
color.  "Absolutely perfect."  Finally she flipped on the lights and
opened the curtains.  The movement caught the attention of one of the
nurses, who left the others and approached the cubicle.

"Claire, I'll be back to see you later, " Abby said, adding loudly,
"Just take it easy and do whatever the nurses tell you."  She smiled at
the nurse and left without waiting for questions to be asked.  But now,
with the lack of findings in Claire's eyes, she had a bunch of
questions of her ownþand there was absolutely no one she knew of who
could answer them.  She was almost at the E.R when her pager went off
again, this time displaying a call from the 415 areaþSan Francisco.

Abby hurried to an out-of-the-way pay phone, fumbling for her calling
card as she ran.  For a moment she wondered if it might be Josh.  But
Sandy Stuart answered after one ring.

"Sorry to take so long to get back to you, Abby, " she said.  "But we
ran the sample twice with two different methods.  Then I got caught in
a meeting.  I didn't even know the final results until just a few
minutes ago."  After the negative eye findings on Claire, Abby sensed
that she was not going to hear good news.  And negative findings on
Willie Cardoza's blood would mean they were back to square one.

Assuming there was a square one.

"I'm ready, " she said.  "What'd you find?  " "You hit it right on the
button, Abby.  Your patient's loaded with cadmium.  Any level of that
stuff is toxic, but his was over ten micrograms per deciliter.  People
can get quite ill at levels of just one point five or two, so this guy
has been exposed to the stuff big time.

What kind of a town is that you're living in, anyhow?  "

CHAPTER TWENTY- SEVEN.

How long have you had this ingrown toenail?  " .  . . "Three weeks?

Sir, it's two-thirty in the morning.  What made you come in now?  " .

. . "Of course, of course.  You couldn't sleep.  . . . " The steady
stream of patients with nonemergency complaints would have been
demoralizing under the best of circumstances.  But tonight, over the
seemingly endless twelve-hour night shift, Abby was in constant danger
of letting her impatience boil over.

She was also in constant danger of violating a critical E.R maxim, never
assume anything.  Almost lost among the barrage of chronic sore
throats, six-day-old ankle sprains ("The doctor told me I'd be feeling
better in a week, but I know I won't feel any better tomorrow than I do
tonight"), and cranky babies, was an elderly gentleman complaining of
"indigestion."  Distracted by the news from Sandy Stuart's lab, and
numbed by the parade of mundane cases, Abby had examined the man too
briefly and was about to give him some samples of antacids along with
the usual come-back-if-you're-not-better instructions, when Providence
made her slow down a beat and look at his face.  There was something
thereþa sallowness to his complexion or a flicker of fear in his
eyesþthat caused her to back off on discharging him and instead order
an electrocardiogram.  The EKG showed a rather large heart attack in
process.  Within an hour of admission to the ICU the man suffered a
cardiac arrest, which was quickly and effectively treated by the
nurses.

By morning Abby knew she was hanging on by her fingernails, checking
the clock every ten minutes or so, dreading the next patient, the next
potential error.  The news of Willie Cardoza's cadmium toxicity and
Angela Cristoforo's eye pathology was certainly vindicating for her,
and probably lifesaving for the two of them.  But it was also
terrifying in its implications for Josh.  And unlike Willie and Angela,
who were in hospitals and would soon be undergoing chelation therapy,
Josh was out there someplace, on a mission of vengeance against
God-only-knew-who.

Willie had killed Peggy Wheaton.  Angela had come close to killing
herselœ Could there be any doubt that Josh, too, was capable of
homicidal rage?

So much of his behavior these past weeks made sense now.  Yet how he
and the others could have become so seriously cadmium toxic remained
the darkest mystery.  It had to have been a spill of some sortþa
one-time release of the metal into water or air, with Josh, Willie,
Angela, and probably others being at the epicenter of the accident.

While Abby was writing discharge instructions for the last patient she
would see on her shift, she asked the night nurse to call the record
room and ask whether Angela Cristoforo had ever had an MRI.  Abby was
certain that a request from Dr. Dolan to the record room for
information of any kind would trigger a call to Joanne Ricci or even
Joe Henderson.

The nurse made the call, no questions asked.  Fifteen minutes later,
just as Abby was packing to leave, the woman returned with the
report.

No MRIs on Angela.

Instead of driving home, Abby headed for Five Corners at the other end
of town.  She felt desperate to find Josh.  And the only place she
could think of to start was the house on Orchard Road.  Unless he had
come back and cleaned up, there were angry letters and parts of letters
still strewn about the floor, at least one of them addressed to the
President.  Then there was also Josh's computer.  Somewhere among those
files there had to be a clue.

But first there was the matter of breakfast.  She hadn't had anything
to eat since midnight but a few packets of saltines and a dish of
institutional Jell-O, probably strawberry.  Having missed out on dinner
at the Peking Pagoda, it seemed only appropriate to reward herself for
making it through the night with an Egg McMuffin and a hash brown or
two.  She wasn't proud of her eating habits, but neither was she all
that upset by them.  Her parents were doing well in their midseventies,
despite her mother's being a horrible and totally indifferent cook.  It
was ironic that of all her friends, the one who was the least appalled
by her junk-food habit was Josh, who could probably count his lifetime
consumption of Egg McMuffins on his thumbs.

She flashed on the cupcake wrappers and such that she had found in his
Jeep, and on the Styrofoam carry-out containers strewn about the house
on Orchard Road.  If she ever needed proof positive that he was insane,
there it was.  Her feelings toward Josh as a mate for life might have
been driven off for good, but she still cared about him too deeply to
endure the thought of his hurting someone, or being hurt or sick
himself.  She simply had to find him.

She sat at a corner table in McDonald's, sipping coffee.  All around
her, people were preparing to start their day.  It was life as usual in
Patience, California, the community perfect.

Surely, there had to be someone besides her and the three Alliance
members who knew that the town was sick.  Surely, Lyle Quinn or Kelly
Franklin, or more likely both, were aware that some sort of
environmental spill had taken place, or was even ongoing.  Surely, Joe
Henderson was acting on the orders of someone to get Abby Dolan out of
the hospital and out of Patience before she figured out what was going
on.

She scanned the restaurant again, wondering how these people and the
rest of the valley would react if they knew that Colstar had endangered
their health and the health of their loved ones.  The truth was, it
wouldn't be easy to convince any of them.  Evidence would have to be
overwhelmingþairtight.  And even then Lew's story of the tire company
in Texas proved how irrational people could be when their way of life
was at stake.

Maybe the status quo was in most people's best interest anyway,
regardless of what it was.  Maybe the best thing she could do, once she
had found Josh, was to get him the medical help he needed and then get
out of town for good.  She could leave the infighting to Lew, the
Alliance, and anyone else he could recruit.

She left the restaurant just as a busload of laughing, chattering
seventy- and eighty-year-olds emptied out in front.  A sign on the bus
said Vegas or Bust.  One of the tourists, a sprightly gent with a
Fortyniners cap, looked about at the shopping center and the hills
beyond.

"Nice town, " she heard him say.  "Very nice."  There was no evidence
on the outside of the house on Orchard Road that anyone had been there
over the past two days.  The storm hatch in the back was still
unlocked.  The basement and upstairs were in the same awful shape.  And
the terrifying dried-blood message remained on the bathroom mirror.

ENGEANCE IS MINE I WILL REPAY The smell from rotting food was more
intense.  Abby opened some windows, then found a trash bag in one of
the kitchen drawers.  First she discarded all of the carry-out
containers and obvious garbage.  Then she turned her attention to the
balled sheets of correspondence scattered on the floor.  One by one,
she smoothed the letters out and read them.

Forty-five minutes later she had a list of nineteen names and
businesses, including the President, the governor, the CEO of IBM, and
even a woman Josh identified as his third-grade teacher.  According to
an especially venomous letter, replete with invective that Abby had
never heard Josh use, the teacher was guilty of stifling the creativity
of her students and of trying to inflict her jaded view of life on
impressionable children.

In every paragraph, every word, Abby could feel her former lover's
pain, confusion, anguish.  But none of the subjects seemed like an
actual target for murder.

Vengeance is mine.

She threw the last of the papers into the trash bag and turned on
Josh's PC.  She had used the computer for correspondence and, on two
occasions, to prepare lectures, so she knew her way around it easily
enough.  It was almost ten.  Outside, rain had begun falling steadily
from a slate sky.  Abby rubbed at the gritty fatigue that was beginning
to settle in her eyes.  Her nervous energy was starting to fade.  She
thought about making some coffee but decided against it and called up
the first of Josh's folders, this one labeled Correspondence A. There
were similar folders alphabetically labeled through H.

To her absolute dismay the folder consisted of thirty-five letters,
memos, and even some poems, almost all of them tirades of hatred and
anger.  Some were later drafts of letters she had already read.  Abby
skimmed each one and added names to her list where appropriate.  Of
necessity she had to go faster and faster.  Her concentration was
getting feebler by the minute.  She finished A and went on to B. When
she realized there were another twenty-five files in Correspondence B,
she decided she could make it through C, then she would have to take a
break.  She could have some lunch with Lew and maybe doze off at his
place.  Afterward she would hit the caffeine and keep going.  She had
to keep going.

Correspondence B was more of the sameþa letter to a restaurant that had
once improperly prepared his medallions of veal, a letter to the owner
of the house they were renting, complaining about the poor quality of
the construction.  Then, suddenly, she noticed a file with her name on
it.  The date the file had last been worked on was just five days
ago.

It consisted of a single paragraph.

Dear oneþ I didn't ask for this.  I don't understand why I have been
chosen.  But I know what I have to do.  It is clear that I will not be
allowed to have you, to love you, until I am free.  That is why I am
going mad.  I have fought it and battled it, when all I ever had to do
was give in.  Give in and accept that I am being tested.  Vengeance is
the Lordts and vengeance is mine.  I must earn your love and respect.

I must repay what was done to me.  I must avenge my shame.  And now I
am off to do just that.  When I have met them face-to-face, and ended
their lives just as they have ended mine, I will be ready to reclaim
your love.  Killing them will be a giftþa gift to you, a gift to us, a
gift to the man I once was.  Pray for me, Abby.  Pray for us.  Pray the
pain ends once and for all.  And mostly pray for them.  Vengeance is
mine.  I shall repay.

Bricker .  . . Golden .  . . Gentry .  . . Forrester.

BrickerGoldenGentryForresterBrickergoldengentry forrester Abby stared
at the names.  She knew them all.  Steve Bricker was Josh's immediate
supervisor at Seradyne and had once been his friend.  Nancy Golden was
a colleague in Josh's lab.  When the personnel cuts were made, Josh had
been convinced that Nancy was kept, even though her work was inferior
to his, because of an extracurricular relationship she had with Pete
Gentry, the head of the research-and-development section.  Alan
Forrester was the president of the company.

For the year after his termination from Seradyne, Josh had handled the
whole business philosophically, with his typical wry humor.  But now
his insanity-fueled hatred, almost certainly a manifestation of cadmium
toxicity, had marked these four Seradyne employees for death.

Abby had no idea where Josh was.  But now, at least, she knew where he
was headed.  Suddenly her fatigue was gone.  She printed out a copy of
the letter, hurried from the house, and sped to Lew's farm, praying all
the way that Josh had not yet acted on his plan.

The short drive seemed interminable.  Lew's Blazer was parked by the
split-rail fence.  As she skidded to a stop on the dirt-and-gravel
drive, Abby honked the horn to give him some warning she was there.

There was no need.  He was approaching the Mazda's door as she was
opening it.

"I heard you spin into the driveway down at the bottom of the hill, "
he said.  "I'm so attuned to the quiet up here, sometimes I can tell
when one of the cows isn't breathing right.  What's happening?  " Abby
jumped out, kissed him lightly on the lips, and handed him the
letter.

"I got this out of Josh's computer, " she said, heading toward the
house.  "Those four people all worked with him at the lab in Fremont.

I've got to call and warn them."  Fremont was located on the Oakland
side of the bay, about two thirds of the way to San Jose.  Abby had no
problem reaching the Seradyne operator.

"Steve Bricker, please, " she said.

She held her breath, half expecting a pregnant pause as the operator
debated whether and how to tell her that Steve Bricker was dead.

"This is Steve Bricker."

"Thank God, " Abby whispered.  "Steve, this is Dr. Abby Dolan.  Do you
remember me?  " "Josh Wyler's Abby?  " "That's right."

"Is he okay?  " "Well, actually, he's not."  Abby imagined the man,
sitting in stunned disbelief, as she reviewed the evidence that Josh
was psychotic from heavy-metal poisoning and was headed toward
Seradyne, intent on exacting vengeance.

"Abby, I find this all a little hard to accept.  Josh was always such
an easygoing guy.  I know he was upset about the cutbacks and
reorganization here, but, hey, I thought the severance package he got
was pretty fair."  Abby had met Steve Bricker only once and remembered
him as being very much taken with himself.  Now, after just a brief
conversation, she knew why she hadn't much liked him.  The man had all
the sensitivity of a football.

"Josh didn't want a severance package, Steve.  He wanted his job.

Things haven't worked out too well up here, and right or wrong, he
blames you."

"That's crazy."

"That's exactly the point, Steve.

Josh needs help badly.  If we can find him, there's a decent treatment
to remove the cadmium from his system."

"Well, for his sake he'd better not try anything.  I have a permit and
a gun, and I damn well know how to use it."  Abby groaned.  This was
precisely what she didn't want to have happenþa macho man ready to
defend his turf.  Shoot first, ask questions later.

"Steve, I'll call the others.  I don't want Josh to get hurt."

"As long as he doesn't try anything, he won't be.  Alan Forrester's on
vacation.  Nancy Golden's right down the hall.  So's Gentry.  I can
talk with them.  I'll talk with security also.  Maybe they'll put
someone extra on.  Not that we need it.  Place is tight as a drum.  "
"Steve, whatever happens, please try not to let him get hurt.  That's
the least you can do."  Bricker refused to back down.

"If it looks like he's going to hurt me or any of the others, I can
tell you thisþhe'll be the one to get hurt first.  That's the way it
is.

You know, back when they were making the cuts, I actually tried to talk
Forrester into keeping him.  Now look what I get for it."  Abby sighed
and set the receiver down.  She could try to explain more about Josh's
condition, but Steve Bricker would never understand.  She would call
the Fremont police and then, just in case, Josh's brother in LA.  There
was no sense in worrying his mother, who was already frantic from
Abby's last call.  After that there wasn't much she could think of to
do.

"How'd it go?  " Lew sat down across the table from her, his eyes full
of concern.

"Bricker's cleaning out his revolver.  Looking forward to the gunfight
at the O. K. Corral, " she said.

"Just what you needed."  Lew came around the table and massaged her
shoulders and temples.

"Oh, that feels wonderful."  Abby allowed her eyes to close for just a
minute.  He buried his face in her hair and pressed his lips against
her.

"We'll find him, " he whispered.

"Thank you, Lew.  I don't know what I'd do if you didn't understand
about Josh.  Were you able to reach the prison hospital?  " "I did.

The stupid doctor at Las Rosas wouldn't confirm or deny that Willie
Cardoza was a patient there.  I told him what he needed to do, and I
think he understood me, but I'm not sure.  Maybe you could get in touch
with Willie's girlfriend.  She has to know for certain where he was
sent."

"Good idea.  What about Barbara Torres and the pharmacistþ what's his
name?  " "Gil Brant.  I'll call them and set up a meeting to bring them
up to speed.  But, frankly, Abby, I think they're both cardboard
warriors.  It's one thing to attend meetings.  It's quite another to
put your position in I town on the line by bucking the establishment.

That's why Dave Brooks was so valuable.  He was absolutely
relentlessþfearless.  You've got a lot of his qualities."

"Nonsense.

I'm thinking more and more about just pulling up stakes and getting
out."

"You can't do that, Abby!  Not when we're so close to breaking this
whole thing wide-open."

"We're not that close, and you know it.  We have a positive blood test,
and after the O. J. trial, you know how much that means.  Plus we have
findings that suggest some people are cadmium toxic.  But we still
have no idea how it could have happened.  And I don't think Colstar is
just going to roll over and hand us evidence of what they did.  In
fact, I've been thinking that we may be putting Angela Cristoforo and
Willie Cardoza in danger just by getting the word out that they're
cadmium toxic.  Besides, Lew, no matter how hard I try, I still don't
feel as if this is my town or my fight.  I've been staying involved
because of Willie and Josh.  Now one of them's going to be taken care
of, and hopefully the other one will be, too.  Colstar influences
everything and everyone around here."

"I know they're powerful, butþ" "Lew, they've manufactured evidence
that I'm responsible for Peggy Wheaton's death.  If I don't resign,
they're going to make it public."  Lew listened in agonized silence as
she filled him in on her meeting with Joe Henderson.

"Damn them, " was all he could say.  "Damn them to hell."  He knelt
beside her.  "I'm so sorry, Abby.  I'm so sorry they've done this to
you.  But we still need you.  I need you."  He drew her lips close to
his.  His arms tightened about her as his lips parted.  His tongue and
his gentle hands became more searching.  Abby found herself wondering
what it would be like to lie naked next to him, to feel him on top of
her, inside her.

"Lew, please, " she managed, pulling away.  "I love having you touch
me.

I love being with you.  But I'm just too distracted.  Right now I've
got to follow through with finding Josh."

"Sorry.  You're right.

It's not the time."

"Don't be sorry.  When it happens between us, I want to be a hundred
percent there."  She kissed him again, quickly, then picked up the
phone.

"Who now?  " "The Fremont police, then maybe Josh's brother in LA.  And
then I thought I might call Kelly Franklin again."

"Don't you think that's risky?  I mean, you said yourself that Colstar
might try to eliminate the toxic patients."

"Colstar, maybe, but not Kelly.  I just don't believe she has that in ,
, her.

"That's where you and I differ, " Lew said.  "She's a snake, just like
the rest of them."

"You'll just have to call it my woman's intuition and bear with me."

As she had expected, Abby got little encouragement from the Fremont
police or from Josh's vapid, money-conscious sister-in-law.  The
conversation with Kelly Franklin didn't start out much better.

"How certain are you about this Cardoza's blood work?  " Kelly asked.

"Very certain.  The woman who ran the test is one of the foremost
toxicologists in the country."

"I just don't believe it.  I've been over every inch of this company
and the way we handle toxic substances.

Dozens of times.  I just don't see any way this could have happened.

" "The exposure may be widespread, " Abby added.  "I have over a
hundred fifty patients on a printout who've had strange, ill-defined
symptoms that are quite consistent with cadmium toxicity."

"Those are the ones you mentioned with the excess MRI tests?  "
"Exactly."

"But I don't see the connection."

"Neither do I. At least not yet.  But I'm fairly certain there is
one.

The cadmium levels are no coincidence, and neither are all the MRIs.  "
"What do you want me to do about it?  " "Kelly, I don't know.  It looks
like Colstar is making people sickþ very sick in some cases.  What are
you supposed to do about it?  " "You know, this is crazy.  You have one
positive blood test in a man who once worked for us, and some sort of
rings in the eyes of a lady who's probably on multiple powerful
psychiatric medications, and you want me to close down the company!

I'll look into things, Abby, but I need much more than what you've
given me to take any action at all."

"Just do me one favor, then."

"What?  " "If you're not going to take any action, please don't share
this discussion yet with Lyle Quinn.  I don't trust him."

"Abby, I don't think I can promise that."

"Please?  Just for a day.

Twenty-four hours."

"I'll consider it.  But no promises."

"Thank you."

"And Abbyþ" "Yes."

"I really don't think Lyle is all that bad.  If you look past the
posing and the theatrics, he's not nearly as hard as he wants everyone
to believe."

"If that's true, he's sure got me fooled, " Abby said.

She set the receiver down.

"What did she say?  " Lew asked.

"Just about what you'd expect.  At least I've got her thinking.  Lew,
I'm going to take a rain check on lunch.  I want to stop by the
hospital and speak with the patient who had the bad reaction in the MRI
tube.  Then I want to shower off this all-nighter grunge and crash for
a few hours."  She could see his disappointment.

"Listen, whatever you say.  I'm better at dinner than lunch anyway.

When you wake up, you're bound to be hungry."

"Dinner sounds great.

I'll call you as soon as I get up.  If you don't hear from me by five,
feel free to call."

"Perfect.  If our cause can't get you to stay around, maybe my salmon
poached in brown ale can."

"Lew, come on."

"Just kidding.  I know you'll do whatever you need to do."  Abby pulled
him to his feet and kissed him on the mouth.

"I love that you understand that, " she whispered.

Chapter TWENTY- EIGHT.

Abby had no desire to run into Joe Henderson at this point, but she did
want to speak with Claire Buchanan again.  And if Claire's allergic
reaction continued to respond rapidly to treatment, she might be
discharged as soon as tomorrow morning.

Abby rationalized to herself that she wanted to check on the woman's
condition and wish her well.  Together they had faced death and won a
reprieve.  But she knew that was only part of the story.  Something
about the MRI tests was still gnawing at herþsomething that might
become clear by going over Claire's story one more time.  And Abby knew
that with her own decision to leave Patience all but made, there would
probably not be another chance.

What she had told Lew was true.  She had been willing to stay at the
hospital and in the town until Willie Cardoza was properly diagnosed
and treated.  She owed the same to Josh.  But now there was nothing for
her to gain by staying, and much to lose.  She had underestimated the
resolve and resourcefulness of Colstar and, in particular, of Lyle
Quinn.  The struggle to expose the truth about Colstar might continue,
but in the end, she suspected, the Alliance would lose.  And if she
chose to remain and fight beside them, she would almost certainly
become a casualty.  Joe Henderson held all the cardsþevidence that her
critical judgment was impaired, and a community that had already joined
ranks against her.  She was history at PRH.  Nothing could change that
now.  But a malpractice suit holding her responsible for Peggy
Wheaton's wrongful death could tie her up indefinitely and jeopardize
her ability to find another E.R job, maybe kill it altogether.

Clearly, the best thing she could do for Abby Dolan at this point was
to admit that she was overmatched and get out.  People were being
harmed by Colstar.  That was a given.  But people all over the world
were being harmed by corrupt corporations and governments.  Those
tragedies weren't her responsibility, and neither was this one.  And,
dammit, she had tried.  She had stuck her neck out for Lew and the
Alliance, and now the blade was about to fall.

The arguments for leaving were perfectly sensible.  And yet she
remained on the fence.  She had been working at the hospital for less
than two months, but she had become part of a number of patients' lives
in ways she never had at St. John's.  Feeling as if she had deserted
themþdeserted herselfþwould hurt as much as knowing that she had been
beaten so badly when she was in the right.

Then there were her deepening feelings for Lew.  Her choosing to stay
in Patience and fight Henderson, Quinn, and Colstar might be the best
thing for their embryonic relationship, or the worst.  She had already
sacrificed her academic appointment for one man.  Was she ready to risk
her entire career for another?  If she abandoned the cause, though,
would Lew ever forgive her?

And, finally, there was Josh.  If their situations were reversed, he
would make any sacrifice to save her, she was certain of that.  She
stood a much better chance of locating him if she wasn't spending long
hours at the hospital.

No, she told herself.  This time her head had to prevail over her
emotions and her instincts.  There was too much to lose by staying in
Patience.  She would bequeath her data sheets to Lew and be off for San
Francisco as soon as possible.  With any luck she would be somewhere
not too far from Seradyne when Josh made his move.

Feeling relieved at having closed in on a decision, she entered the
hospital through the E.R, and called the operator to check on Claire
Buchanan's status.  The one-time Rockette was out of the ICU and in a
single just down the hall from it.  Abby found her in a recliner in the
bright, airy room, gazing out the picture window at the Colstar
cliff.

Claire lit up at the sight of her.

"Boy, am I glad to see you again, " she said, her hoarseness now much
improved.  "The nurses told me you saved my bacon by getting that
breathing tube in.  I remember you were there, but to tell you the
truth, I didn't know what was going on.  That's why I didn't thank you
before."

"There were a lot of people helping you.  I'm just glad you're okay."

"I would be if I could get rid of this itching."  Claire pointed to
the same skin lesions Abby had seen on her in the E.R.

They still looked like small blood-vessel inflammation.

"Claire, tell me something if you can.  You've had two MRIs, right?  "
"Yes."

"Any other X rays?  " "Not really.  They did a chest X ray just a
little while ago."

"But before that?  " "None."

"How about blood tests?  " "Dr. Oleander's done some, and you did
some.  I don't think I had any before my first MRI, though.  That was
when I was having that stomach pain."  Abby stared at the woman in
disbelief.

"Are you sure?  " "I may be nothing much more than an old chorus girl,
but I have a heck of a memory.  He did some blood tests after the first
MRI, but none before."  Now it was Abby who was gazing out the window,
past the meadow and the barbed-wire-topped fence.  The Colstar cliff
and the massive plant atop it looked somber and foreboding in the gray
midday light.  She closed her eyes.  The pattern that had seemed so
elusive to her, so nebulous, was coming into focus.  Claire Buchanan
had provided the lens.  Not only were the MRI studies at Patience
Regional Hospital ordered and performed in excess, but many of them
were done before the actual problem that brought the subjects into the
hospital.  It was almost as if the studies themselves were causing
illness.  The confirmation of her theory lay in the KarMen
record-keeping system of the hospital.  But she thought she had enough
data of her own in the looseleaf notebook packed in the wall behind her
furnace.

"Claire, it's been a pleasure meeting you, " she said, now suddenly
impatient to get home.  "I'm very glad you're doing so well."

"Thank you.  Tell me, Dr. Dolan, do you think I'll ever get-rid of
this rash and itch?  " Abby took the woman's hand in hers.

"You know, Claire, they teach us from day one in medical school never
to make any promises to patients.  But I'll tell you whatþI'm going to
promise you that before long you'll have some answers as to what's
wrong.  And with any luck those answers will point the way to the right
treatment."  Claire Buchanan stood and hugged her.

"You take care, now, Doctor, " she said.  "And don't forget to leave
yourself some time for fun."  Abby took the staircase to the basement
and left the hospital through the service door.  The notebook, and the
conclusions buried within the data, were the legacy she would leave for
Lew and the Alliance.  A significant number of the NIWWs had had an MRI
that preceded their major complaints.  There was some sort of scam
going on at PRH, she reasonedþsome sort of kickback deal with the
radiologists, the hospital, or both.  But no one appreciated that many
of the patients involved in the scam had been exposed to cadmium.  And,
together, the magnetic field and the intense ultrasound were somehow
interacting with the cadmium to produce symptoms.

Abby mulled over the explanation as she drove home.  It was weak, she
acknowledgedþas tenuous as wet tissue paper.  It was a square peg she
was trying to hammer into a round hole.  But it was a theory with some
data to back it up.  And that was more than the Alliance had been able
to accomplish in their three years of trying.  There was no reason for
her to feel she had failed.

She pulled into her driveway with no recollection of having gotten into
the car or driven home.  It was a familiar phenomenon Abby had long ago
labeled autohypnosisþone of the most consistent signs of extreme
exhaustion.  For nearly twenty-nine hours now, from the moment the
phone in her bedroom had rung with Joe Henderson's call, she had been
awake and on the move.  Studying the data in her notebook could wait,
she decided.  She could not function without a few hours of sleep.

She entered the house through the back door and went immediately to the
answering machine, desperately hoping for some news of Josh.  There
were two messages.  A woman from Patience Auto Glass had called to see
if there had been any problem with their service.  Then there was a
no-message hang-up.  Abby rewound the tape just a bit and listened
again.

Whoever it was had waited through her greeting message and a good ten
seconds into the recording before hanging up.  She turned up the volume
and listened a third time.  It was a stretch, but she swore she could
hear breathing.  Josh!

"Say something, " she muttered.  "Come on, say something."  She took
off her slacks and blouseþthe outfit she had worn for her ill-fated
appointment with Hendersonþand put on a light cotton nightshirt.  Then
she opened the front door to check on two days' worth of mail.  The
metal mailbox was screwed to the house, just beside the front door.

She opened the top of the box and was about to reach in when the wooden
doorjamb next to her face burst apart, showering her with splintered
wood.  An instant later, there was a soft crack from somewhere up the
hill far to her right.  Before she could even react, there was a
metallic snap from the mailbox, and the side blew off.  Abby cried out
and instinctively ducked and backed away.  Then she saw the bullet
holes above her in the wood.  She flattened out on the stoop and pulled
the screen door open with her fingertips.  As she did, another bullet
tore through the screen and snapped a hole in the partially open front
door.

Except for the single faint crack, she hadn't even heard any of the
shots.

Her body was on red alert now, her heart hammering against the inside
of her chest, her lungs unwilling to accept air.  She had completely
misjudged Kelly Franklin.  The woman had sold her out to Quinn as soon
as she had hung up.  Damage control was now being initiated.

I think he's not as hard as he wants everyone to believe.  Isn't that
what Franklin had said about her pal, Quinn?  Well, screw you, lady,
Abby thought.  Screw you.

Desperately, she scrambled back into the house on her hands and knees
and kicked the door closed with her feet.  Then, gasping for breath,
she snaked on her belly to the bedroom phone.  Behind her the picture
window in the living room shattered inward, showering the sofa and
braided rug with glass.  Cringing from the noise, she dived between the
bed and the wall.  She was reaching across the quilt to call 911 when
the phone rang.  She hesitated, then snatched up the receiver.

The voice, almost certainly a man's, was raspy and muffled.

"Get out!  " it said.  "Get out now!  " Bathe in an icy sweat, she put
down the receiver, then snatched it up again and called the police.

The officer who answered knew immediately who she was and where she
lived.

"We'll send someone over soon, ma'am, " he said as if she had just
called to report a stray dog in the neighborhood.

Make it someone other than the man who just shot at me, she wanted to
reply.

She set the receiver down, and then, overwhelmed by the adrenaline of
fear and anger, she cried.  Fifteen minutes later, when two police cars
pulled up in front of the house, she had washed her face, put on a
Stanford Med sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, and brewed a cup of tea.

Through the shattered plate-glass window she saw Sergeant Sullivan
emerge from the front cruiser, laughing and chatting with a man wearing
jeans and an Oakland Raiders windbreaker.  Without bothering to
announce their arrival, they began inspecting the carnage around the
front stoop.

The other cruiser, Abby noted, had "Captain" painted just above the
blue accent stripe on the right fender.  The officer who stepped
outþCaptain Gould, Abby remembered Sullivan calling himþwas in uniform,
complete with cap.  He looked to be six four or five and had on
mirrored sunglasses and cowboy boots.

From bad to worse, was all Abby could think.

As Gould approached up the front walk, he noticed her watching and gave
her a half salute.  She nodded and motioned him in.  He paused briefly
to speak with the two men inspecting the bullet holes, then entered
without knocking.  Abby predicted with exact accuracy the first words
out of his mouth.

"Dr.  Dolan, I'm Captain Gould.  I've heard a lot about you."

"Well, now you're hearing that someone tried to kill me."  Gould
slipped off his sunglasses with Clint Eastwood deliberateness and
dropped them into a case on his belt.

"Who?  " Abby debated what her answer should be, then finally shrugged
and said, "I think it was Lyle Quinn."  The policeman laughed out
loud.

"Pardon me, Captain, " Abby said, "but I don't think this situation is
particularly funny."  She knew that her temper, under marginal control
in the best of circumstances, was already smoldering from profound
fatigue and anger.

The last thing she needed to do now was to blow up at the captain of
the Patience police force.

"Pardon me, Doctor, " he replied, "but there are two things I think you
should know.  First of all, Lyle Quinn and his wife are at St.
Margaret's Church right now helping my wife, among a dozen or so
others, prepare for tonight's auction and dance."  Abby felt
embarrassment burn in her cheeks, along with irritation at this latest
example of Patience cronyism.

"What's the other thing?  " she asked stonily.

"Well, excuse me if this seems insensitive, Dr. Dolan, but Sergeant
Sullivan and Detective Jacques out there tell me that the shots that
hit your house were most likely fired from a ledge on the side of that
hill over there."  He pointed toward the spot.  "I make that three
hundred yards, maybe a little more.  Lyle was a decorated officer in
the Rangers.  With the sort of high-powered rifle and sniper scope
available at any army/navy store, he could have put a hole in the O in
Stanford if he had wanted to."  He gestured at the lettering on her
sweatshirt.  "Same goes for most of the hunters in this community,
which is to say most of the men.  Believe me, Doctor, the fact that
you're alive means that nobody was trying to kill you."

"Right after the shots were fired, a man called me.  He muffled his
voice with a handkerchief or something, but his message was clear
enough."

"And it was?  " "'Get out.  That's all he said.  Get out now."

"See, I told you whoever was up on that ledge was just trying to make a
point."

"Get out, Captain, " Abby said sweetly.

"What?  " "That was the message to me.  Now it's my message to you.  I
was shot at, Captain, not picketed.  I'm simply not in the mood for
your < smug sarcasm right now.  So, please, leave me alone.  I'm
tired, I have a headache, I want to get some sleep, and it's dear that
this farce of an investigation is going to lead nowhere."  Gould
hesitated for a few seconds, then shrugged and said, "Suit yourself.  "
He took a step toward the door before turning back to her.

"Dr. Dolan, I don't approve of that caller's methods, but I believe
you should pay attention to what he said.  There's a lot about this
town that you just don't understand.  We depend on each other a great
deal here.

You stamp on someone's toe on the east side of the valley, and someone
on the west side is sure to say, Ouch!  " "Nicely put.  Thanks for your
advice.  I'll watch where I step."  Gould glared at her and looked for
a moment as if he was going to say something else.  Then he simply
marched down the walk to his cruiser and drove away.  A few minutes
later, without so much as a word to her, Sergeant Sullivan and the
detective left as well.

Abby found a handyman listed in the local paper who was willing to
bring a sheet of plywood right over and nail it across the window.

When she had finished cleaning up the glass in the living room, she
considered trying to doze off in a chair until the repairman arrived,
but she was too wired from her ordeal and too furious at just about
everyone who had anything to do with Patience, California.

First the red pickup, now this.  Get out!  Get out now.  Lyle Quinn was
delivering his message with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball.

Well, I've got news for you, Lyle, Abby thought.  I'm off the fence
nowþbut not on the side you expected.

She went to the basement, retrieved her notebook, and began plodding
through the data once more.  Unlike her previous efforts, though, this
time she knew what question to ask, which came first, the illness or
the test?

Abby wasn't surprised when the repairman took much longer to arrive
than he had promised.  Although there was no way the man could have any
idea what she was doing, she was just paranoid enough to close her
notebook and conceal it in a kitchen cabinet until he was finished.

Her preliminary survey of the data was confirming what she suspected.

Somehow the MRIs were preceding certain symptoms, not just diagnosing
them.

It was after three.  Almost thirty sleepless hours now.  The handy man
talked incessantly as he worked, sharing town gossip with no regard for
whether Abby knew the person or not.  She brushed off several questions
about the nature of the damage to the front of the house, then finally
explained it away as blandly as she couldþsome vandals on a spree.

Still, bullet holes were bullet holes, and she could only imagine what
a juicy yarn he would be spinning for his next customer about the crazy
lady from the big city.  She was smiling at the notion that no story
the man could conjure up would come close to matching the truth, when
the phone began ringing.

Reflexively, Abby hurried to the bedroom nightstand.  But then she
could only stand there, staring down at the phone through one ring,
two, three.  One more ring and the answering machine would kick in.

Thinking about the hang-up she was certain had been Josh, she forced
herself to pick up the receiver.

"Hello?  " "Abby, this is Kelly Franklin."  The woman spoke in a near
whisper.  "Are you alone?  " Abby felt her temperature rise a degree at
the mention of the woman's name.

"I'm not, " she said coolly.  "There's a repairman fixing a shattered
window in my living room.  What do you want?  " "Please get rid of him,
Abby.  I have to know you're alone before we can talk.  I need to
change phones and call you back.  Is ten minutes long enough?  "
"What's this all about?  " "Please.  It's very, very important.  "
"Where are you?  " "Right now I'm at the library.  Pleaseþtrust me.  "
Abby sank onto the bed.  Why should I, lady?

"Okay, Kelly, " she said.  "Ten minutes."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

It took some fast talking and a twenty-dollar tip, but at last the
handyman got the message that Abby wanted him to take a breakþ now.  He
was halfway down the front walk when Kelly Franklin called again.  This
time Abby snatched up the phone.

"Your friend Quinn had someone deliver an ultimatum to me with a
high-powered rifle, Kelly, " she said.  "You led me to believe you
wouldn't tell him about our conversation for twenty-four hours.  It was
more like twenty-four minutes."

"I never said a word to him.  I swear I didn't."

"Spare me.  You said you thought he was all bark and no bite.  Well,
those bullets were the real thing.  They wrecked the front of my house,
and they scared the hell out of me.  Our staunch protector, Captain
Gould, pooh-poohed the whole deal.  He thinks that whoever pulled the
trigger was an expert marksman who was just trying to frighten me out
of town.  I didn't bother pointing out to the man that one hiccup, one
little gnat in his expert marksman's eye, and any further attempts to
frighten me out of town would have been unnecessary."

"Abby, please believe me.  I never even saw Lyle after we spoke.  Of
course, he may have a tap on my phoneþthat doesn't seem beyond him.

But I never said a word to him or anyone else.  I was far too busy
following up on some of the things you told me."  She was clearly upset
at Abby's accusation, but Abby reminded herself of Lew's warning that
the woman was a consummate actor.  Still, according to Captain Gould,
Lyle Quinn was at church all afternoon.  If Kelly hadn't called him,
she had to be right about the tap on her office phone.

Abby felt some of the hard edge of her anger toward Kelly begin to
soften.

"Where are you calling from now?  " she asked.

"My car.  I don't trust the office phone.  And there are always people
hanging around pay phones, waiting to make a call."

"All of a sudden you're starting to sound as paranoid as the rest of ,
, us.

"I'm beginning to feel that way.  Abby, I was bothered by some things
you said the first night we were together.  Especially a question you
asked about openings on the northeast face of the cliff.  You didn't
explain the question, but it seemed clear to me you wouldn't have
brought the subject up unless you knew something."

"I saw an old slide of the cliff, and it looked as if there were
openings then.  So a friend of mine and I scanned the face with
highpowered binoculars.

There almost certainly were openings there at one timeþthree of them.

But they've been sealed off or camouflaged somehow."

"I know."

"What?  " "I know there were three windows.  One of my good friends
works at the library.  I told her I wanted a book on the Patience
mine.

She found one locked away in the archive room.  It's waiting on reserve
for you."

"I'll stop by there tomorrow."

"If it's possible, it might be better if you could go now.  The
library's closed tomorrow until one."

"I haven't been to sleep since yesterday morning, " Abby said, rubbing
at her eyes.

"Abby, I believe you now.  Something has to be going on at Colstar.

Something that I don't know anything about.  And I'm frightened.  I
left a note for you in the book explaining some things I've found.  I

. . I probably shouldn't have done that."  Resigned as much as curious,
Abby stuffed her nightshirt under the pillow and dragged a brush
through her hair.

"I'll be at the library in fifteen minutes, " she said.

"Thank you.  You'll understand more when you read my note to you.  But,
first, stop by the registry of deeds in the basement of town hall.  Ask
for volume fifty-eight, and look on page one-seventeen."

"Page one-seventeen, volume fifty-eight."

"The registry's open until four.

The library closes at five."

"Anything else?  " "Yes.  Forgive me for doubting you.  Whatever it
takes, I'm going to find out why people in this company have been
keeping secrets from me."

"Just be careful."

"I will.  Read the note I left for you and do what it says.  I'll
contact you through your pager later today or this evening.  And,
please, don't call me at the office."  She sounded agitated now, her
words spilling out one on top of the last.

"Easy does it, Kelly.  We'll get to the bottom of things."

"No!  " she snapped.  "They lied to me.  I hate being lied to.  I don't
detest anything else as much."  Without waiting for a reply, she
slammed the receiver down.

Abby gazed longingly at the bed.  As a resident, she had once done four
straight months of alternating thirty-six hours on, twelve hours off,
and had held up reasonably well.  In fact, during training there was a
certain cachet that surrounded "doing a thirty-six."  But now she knew
there was nothing heroic about long stretches without sleep, and a lot
that was not only stupid, but for a physician, downright dangerous.

The Patience town hall, located on the small village green not far from
the police station, was the only granite building in town.  Like most
everything else in the valley, it was postcard perfect, with a
manicured lawn and a tree-lined duck pond in back.  The cornerstone put
the construction of the building at 1922.

On the way into town Abby stopped at the convenience store for a
sixteen-ounce cup of hi-test coffee and a sugar fix in the guise of a
jelly doughnut.  In fifteen or twenty minutes she would feel as if
another thirty or forty sleepless hours were quite within her
capabilities.  The chemically induced bravado would last for an hour or
two, but the crash that followed would be the biologic equivalent of
Black Monday.

No one took any particular notice of her as she crossed the
marblefloored foyer and followed the signs down to the registry of
deeds.  The wizened man dozing behind the counter could well have been
there since the cornerstone was laid.

Abby cleared her throat, startling him to his feet.

"Excuse me, I need to review some records, " Abby said.  "Volume
fifty-eight."

"Can't take the volumes out of that room."

"I know.

" "We close in an hour."

"I know."

"You real estate?  " "Medicine.

" "Oh."  The man had resumed his nap before Abby passed by him into the
dimly lit registry.  The space smelled of mold, dust, and old paper.

The volumes, hundreds of them bound in khaki, canvaslike fabric and
embossed in gold, filled five or six long rows of shelves, as well as
shelves lining the stone walls.  She found volume fifty-eight with
ease, but wondered how she would have found anything if she had had to
depend on the man at the desk.  What, she wondered, had brought Kelly
Franklin here in the first place?

Page 117 was the first of a series of documents dealing with the
Patience mine.  It recorded the seizure of the property known as the
Patience Gold Mine in 1919, by the village of Patience.  The reason
given was failure to pay taxes and other bills.  The next document
registered the purchase of the property from the village by the
California Battery Company.  The date was October 18, 1925.

The several succeeding pages described and depicted plans to build an
alkaline-battery manufacturing plant on the site of the old mine.

. L Abby scanned the architectural drawings and knew immediately why
Kelly had started her there.  Fifty feet in from the cliff was the main
shaft of the Patience mine, descending over a hundred feet from the
surface, and terminating beneath ground level at the bottom of the
cliff.  There was an artist's arrow pointing at the shaft with the
notation "To be sealed off."  Nothing else.

Wedged into the binding was a small slip of paper.  A, it read, I had
no idea this shaft even existed.  I don't believe it was ever sealed.

Signed, K Abby traced the main aspects of the drawing on typing paper
and tiptoed past the now-sleeping clerk.  The existence of the shaft was
not that surprising.  But keeping it secret from the environmental
health and safety officer of the plant certainly was.  The
caffeine-and-sugar mix, which had kicked in some time ago, was now
augmented by a jet of her own adrenaline.  Her initial take on Kelly
Franklin, dating back to the ball field in Colstar Park, had been on
the mark, after all.

Lyle Quinn had pushed Abby over the edge with bullets and a battered
red pickup.  Abby had done the same to Kelly Franklin with a barrage of
facts.  And the Colstar house of cards was beginning to quiver.

The library was directly on the opposite side of the green from town
hall, but Abby walked casually around the green rather than across,
careful to stay as far away from the police station as possible.  There
was a pay phone on a pole by the front lawnþundoubtedly the one Kelly
had used to call her.  Abby fished out the number of Seradyne in
Fremont and called Steve Bricker.

"Steve, it's Abby Dolan, " she said.  "Anything?  " He laughed.

"Peaceful as a manger, " he said.  "Abby, don't you think you're
blowing this whole business out of proportion?  " "Actually, I don't.

A woman here is dead.  She was run down by a man whoþ" "I know.  I
know.  Who was poisoned with cadmium, just like Josh.  You told me
that."

"Objects of hatred seem to become magnified in these people's minds."

"And Josh hates the four of us because we cost him his job.

Abby, it just isn't going to happen.  We've got an extra security man
inside the factory, the Fremont police are circling the block every
fifteen or twenty minutes, and Pete Gentry and I are carrying guns just
in case.

Now, if I were you, I'd be calling hospitals.  If Josh is as sick as
you say he is, maybe he'll show up at one of them."

"That's a good idea.

Maybe I'll do that."

"Say, listen, Abby.  You said you were coming down here."

"As soon as I arrange for coverage at work."

"I always thought you were a real interesting woman.  How about we meet
someplace for a drink?  " "Good-bye, Steve."  Ass.

The book Kelly had left on reserve, A Brief History of the Patience
Mine, was narrow and threadbare.  It was held closed with a rubber band
that kept Kelly's envelope in place, and possibly kept the binding from
falling apart as well.  "Property of the Patience Historical Society"
was stamped on the inside of the cover.

Abby took the book to a carrel in the stacks and opened Kelly's note.

I have worked for Colstar for five years and have studied detailed
blueprints of the plant for hours and hours.  Until you suggested it, I
had no idea there were any subterranean areas beneath the company.  But
there are.

After you have finished with this book, please ask the librarian named
Esther to direct you to the two issues of the Patience Valley Chronicle
I alerted her to.  Look at the obituary for Schumacher, and the story
and obit for Black.  Good luck.  K The Patience Gold Mine, first opened
in 1850, produced a steady yield of ore for almost fifty years before
going dry.  Abby flipped through the pages of the small volume, which
was written by one of the last owners of the mine, William H.
Gardner.

In addition to creating incredible profits for some, the mine seemed to
have spawned intrigue, financial ruin, suicide, and even murder.

What goes around comes around, Abby thought as she flipped through the
pages.  Colstar International, through the California Battery Company,
seemed to have inherited some of the Patience Gold Mine genes.

There was a small piece of paperþKelly's paperþprotruding from between
pages thirty-eight and thirty-nine.  Those pages and the ones following
showed sketches of the mine.  Extending some ninety or a hundred feet
from the main shaft through the outer wall of the cliff face were three
ventilation shafts that correlated perfectly with the three windows on
Lew's slide.  The highest of the openings was twenty five feet below
the mesa surface, the next, twenty-five feet below that, and the
lowest, another twenty-five feet down, which placed it twenty five feet
above the ground.  On the other side of the main shaft were two
enormous man-made caverns, which expanded each year as miners chipped
away at the rock.

One of them appeared to be at about forty feet down and the other just
below ground level.  The drawings were fairly crude, but there was one,
captioned "Piercing an Imposing Wall of Rock, " that showed the
ventilation openings clearly.

Abby traced that one and then skimmed the rest of the book.  It was
past four-thirty, and the caffeine was beginning to wear off.  She
returned to the front desk and found Esther, a cherubic woman with a
large button on her blouse proclaiming that Readers Are Leaders.

"Here's the Chronicle from the twelfth, " she said.  "The one from last
February is on this microfiche.  The machines are in the central hall,
just through those doors."

"Thank you."  Abby tucked the paper under her arm and turned away.

"Kelly's a fine woman, isn't she?  " Esther said.

It was a statement, not a question.  Abby turned back and smiled at the
librarian.

"The best, " she said.

There was an open microfiche reader, so Abby decided to start there.

The newspaper issue was from February 3þsix and a half months ago.  The
front-page headline heralded the upcoming election to fill a vacancy on
the regional planning board.  The sports page praised the Valley
Regional High School basketball team for once again winning its
league.

So normal.  However, one of the obituaries that day was anything but.

Gustav "Gus" Schumacher, 44

Was Foreman at Colstar A memorial service attended by two hundred
relatives and friends was held at the Congregational Church for Gustav
W. "Gus" Schumacher, a Colstar employee for twenty years and a foreman
in the packaging unit for ten.  A friend to many in Patience and a
devoted father, Mr. Schumacher died in Las Vegas on January 15 in a
gun battle with police.

Immediately prior to his death, Mr. Schumacher is alleged to have shot
and killed three employees of the Golden Nugget Casino.

Family members relate that Mr. Schumacher had once incurred heavy
losses in that casino but that he had not gambled in several years and,
in fact, had been active in founding the Valley chapter of Gamblers
Anonymous.  They also report that Mr. Schumacher had not been feeling
well and had recently been under a doctor's care.

Schumacher leaves his wife, Dorothy, two sons, Gregory and Lance, a
daughter, Heidi, and two grandchildren.

Memorial donations may be made to the Valley Region Little League.

Stunned, Abby read then reread the obituary.  A triple murderer,
eventually gunned down by police, yet thought enough of in the
community to have a well-attended memorial service.  Schumacher had not
been feeling well and had recently been under a doctor's care.  She had
no doubt that the symptoms he was experiencing would include blinding
headaches and violent, unpredictable mood changes.  A call to his widow
was all that would be needed for confirmation.

The second death was as fascinatingþand disconcertingþas
Schumacher's.

It was written up on the front page and in the obituary section of the
August 12 Chronicle.  Abby had read about it and even discussed it at
work.  But at the time there was no reason, other than the obvious, to
be interested in it.  Now there was.

Twenty-seven-year-old Ethan Black, son of the industrial baron, Ezra
Black, had ended his own life with a leap from the twenty-thirdstory
office of noted San Francisco psychiatrist, Graham DeShield.  Ethan
held a degree in accounting from Cal State Fullerton and had been
employed as comptroller at Colstar for the last two and a half years.

He was a pilot and had done some set design for the Valley Players.  In
addition to Ezra and Estelle Black of Feather Falls, California, he
left a sister, Ellen St.  Germaine, of Berne, Switzerland.

DeShield refused comment to the press except to issue a statement that
said Ethan had been responding well to treatment of his severe
depression, and that his death was a terrible shock.

Ezra Black, the billionaire industrialist, speaking from his Feather
Falls ranch, expressed his profound grief at his son's death and also
some frustration with the medical establishment for not having solved
the mystery of depression.  Ironically, one of Black's companies,
Coulter Pharmaceuticals, manufactured the antidepressant Xerane, one of
the most widely prescribed drugs in the world.

Abby took notes on the article and the obituary.  She knew of Dr.
Graham DeShield and, in fact, had once attended a lecture he had given
to a packed house at grand rounds.  It had been several years, maybe
five or six, but she remembered feeling that he had described some of
his celebrity patients in enough detail so that they were identifiable
by anyone who read the papers or watched TV.

The self-aggrandizing allusions had made his talk fascinating, but Abby
remembered feeling grateful that for the brief period of her life when
she had seen a therapist, it wasn't DeShield.  She set aside her notes
and studied the face of the young man who was heir to a billionaire's
fortune.

It was the headaches, Ethan, wasn't it?  she thought.  But how did you
get exposed?  You worked in the accounting office.  How on earth did
you get exposed?

CARDOZA .  . . CRISTOFORO .  . . SCHUMACHER .  . . BLACK.  . . JOSH.

Abby printed the names out block style, then added, .  . . HOW MANY
OTHERS?

She packed her things in her briefcase, then gathered two more pieces
of information before leaving the library.  The first was the telephone
number of Gustav Schumacher's widow, and the second was the location of
Feather Falls.  The town, on the edge of Lake Oroville and the Plumas
National Forest, was barely a dot on the state map.  But Abby suspected
that most of that dot belonged to Ezra Black.  She recalled reading
articles about his vast ranch and estateþa splendidly isolated, rustic
palace with its own helipad and game preserve.  Depending on the roads,
Feather Falls looked like a one- to two-hour drive south.  It wouldn't
be the first time she had used her M. D. to get through operators to
unlisted numbers.  Whether Ezra would be there, and whether he would
see her, were other matters altogether.

It sounded insane to be trying to approach the owner of Colstar about
the cadmium crisis caused by his own company.  But his son had died a
horrible death.  And possibly, just possibly, Ezra Black had no idea
why.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

Dorothy Schumacher, Gus's widow, lived in a modest red-shingled ranch
on the west end of the valley.  It was just after eight in the morning
when Abby pulled up in front.  The previous evening she had succeeded m
convincing an operator that there was a medical emergency that required
her to speak with Ezra Black in Feather Falls.  The tycoon had spoken
with her, although he was clearly annoyed with her ploy.

"My daughter is in Europe, my wife is here with me, and my son is dead,
Dr. Dolan, " he said.  "There is no medical emergency that could
possibly be of interest to me.  So state the business that is so
important you had to abuse your privilege as a physician.  If I sense
you have done so to request money from me in any form, I shall hang up,
and you can expect to hear from the state medical board first thing in
the morning."  In spite of herself Abby felt intimidated talking to the
man whose face she had seen on the cover of Time, and whose reputation
as a maker and breaker of people was universal.

"I want to talk about your son."

"Go on."

"I would prefer to speak with you in person, Mr.  Black."

"Why?  " "I have reason, good reason, to believe that Ethan might have
been chemically toxic when he died."

"What sort of chemical?  " "Please, Mr. Black.  This would be much
easier for me to explain in person."

"Dr. Dolan, we have not met, but I am well aware of your role in the
death of Gary Wheaton's wife.  And what I know does not sit well with
me.

So kindly answer my question, or this conversation is over."  Abby felt
flustered and frightened.  Black was used to being The Man.

And there was no way he was going to relinquish an iota of control to
her.  She had somehow expected that getting hold of him would be the
hard part.  Now she knew better.  She tried to choose her words
carefully, knowing that if she was too careful, Black would sense it at
once and might close up shop on her.  She wished she had done some
research into Ethan Black's medical history, but there simply wasn't
time.  All she had were the few facts she had read in his obituary and
a lot of hunches.

She knew that he had been an employee of Colstar, that he had been
depressed, and that he had killed himself in a horribly violent
manner.

The rest was pure conjecture.

"I believe the chemical he was exposed to is cadmium."

"From the plant?  " "Exactly."

"Ridiculous."

"I have high blood levels documented on one patient, and evidence that
several more have been exposed.  All of them worked for Colstar at one
time or another, and all of the patients I know about have exhibited
violent behavior toward themselves or others."  There was a prolonged
silence.  Abby knew that something she'd said had struck a nerve.

"I'll see you at noon tomorrow here at Feather Ridge, " Black
ordered.

"Just drive straight through the town of Feather Falls and keep going
about half a mile.  The main street ends at our ranch.  The gateman
will be expecting you."

"Thank you, Mr.  Black."

"Just be sure to bring enough hard evidence to interest me in what you
are saying.

Because as things stand, I don't trust you, and I certainly don't
believe you."  But you believe something I said, Abby thought as she
set down the receiver.  The main questions were, What?  and Why?

Desperate for sleep, with her body rapidly running down, Abby tried
unsuccessfully to locate Willie Cardoza's girlfriend.  Colette
Simmons's phone had been disconnected.  According to Lew, Angela
Cristoforo, Abby's second choice, lived with her mother.  Abby tried
the number but got no answer.  There were some notes regarding
headaches in Angela's Caledonia State Hospital record, but nothing that
well documented, and nothing Abby could get her hands on before she had
to leave for Feather Ridge.

That left only the widow of Gus Schumacher.  Her number had been listed
under "Dorothy and Gustave" in the Patience Valley phone directory.

"Gus was such a good man, " Dorothy Schumacher said.  "I knew there was
something that caused him to do what he did."

"I can't make any promises, " Abby replied.  "But I'd like to meet with
you for a short while tomorrow morning if that would be all right."

Dorothy gave her directions and made her promise to leave room for
coffee and homemade strudel.

Abby set the alarm for six, located Josh's tape recorder, and set it on
the dining-room table.  Then she pressed her face into the pillow,
almost too exhausted to fall asleep.  Thirty-eight hours straight.  She
felt as if she had aged a year.

Dorothy Schumacher, soft and prematurely silver-haired, looked as if
she had been put on earth to wear an apron and spoil her
grandchildren.

She greeted Abby with inborn warmth, but Abby could tell that she was
putting up a brave front.  Dorothy brought her directly into the
kitchen, which was busily decorated with souvenir plates, collector
spoons, and wrought-iron trivets.  Lew had said to allow two and a half
hours to make the eighty-mile drive to Feather Falls.  Abby knew from
the moment Dorothy started bustling about, talking nonstop about her
late husband, that she would have to work hard to maintain some control
over this conversation if she was to reach Ezra Black's home by noon.

"If it's all right with you, Mrs. Schumacher, I'd like to record what
you have to say."

"Please call me Dotty.  Nobody calls me Mrs. Schumacher or even
Dorothy.

Dotty always just seemed to fit, ever sinceþ" "Dotty, is it okay to
record some of this?  " "I have no problem with that.  No problem at
all.  When we were married twenty-three years ago, we recorded our
wedding ceremony.  Imagine, twenty-three years.  I listened to it just
the other night andþ do you take cream in your coffee?  " "A little
milk, please.  No sugar."  Abby switched on the tape, then flicked it
off again as the bereft woman began talking wistfully about the last
bowling league she and Gus had been in.  It was going to take some
artful interviewing to keep Ezra Black listening for more than a few
seconds.  She waited until Dotty paused for a breath and switched on
the machine again.

"Dotty, I don't want to put any words in your mouth, " she said
quickly, "and I'll try not to.  But could you please tell me what Gus
was like for the few weeks before he went to Las Vegas and .  . . and
got into trouble."  Once again Dotty started rambling, giving a
day-by-day account of Gus's life before he left on his fateful trip to
the Golden Nugget Casino.

Abby had spent many hours in medical school learning how to avoid
asking patients closed-ended, leading questions such as, "Does the pain
go up into your jaw?  " Rather, no matter how much longer and more
cumbersome the history taking would end up being, the request that
needed to be made over and over again was, "Tell me about your chest
pain.  . . . Tell me more.  . . . Is there anything else you can think
of?  " She knew that, as with patients, being forced to ask directive
questions would greatly devalue Dotty's story.  And Ezra Black would
know it, too.  Still, without several hours and a skillful sound
editor, there was nothing else she could do.

"Dotty, did Gus have any headaches?  " "Oh, yes, they were very bad.

One day while he was working in the garden, he actually had to lie down
right back there onþ" It had been the right idea, just the wrong
performer.  Abby could feel any hope of presenting Black with this tape
slipping away.  Once again she flicked off the recorder.  A frontal
assault was going to be the only way.

"Dotty, I don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to try to keep the
questions and answers short."

"Would you like some more strudel?  I use that low-cholesterol,
low-salt butter."

"It's wonderful, but no, thank you."  She clicked on the tape once
again.

"Dotty, did anything unusual happen along with Gus's headaches?  " The
woman stopped wrapping strudel for Abby to take home, actually stopped
talking, and thought in silence for a surprisingly long time.

"By unusual, " she said at last, "do you mean like the flashing lights
he complained of before the headaches actually started?  " Shielded by
the table, Abby clenched her fist and pumped it excitedly.

Nice going, Kelly, she was thinking.

"Yes, Dotty, " she said.  "That's exactly what I mean.  Tell me about
the flashing lights.  . . . " As Lew had predicted, Abby made the
spectacular drive down to Feather Falls in just over two hours.  She
had wanted to take him along for company, moral support, and to present
a unified front to Ezra Black, but he was on duty in the E.R.  He would
be working an extended shiftþfrom eight A. M. until almost
midnightþbecause Jill Anderson and her husband had a wedding to
attend.

Abby cruised down the neatly kept main street and was out of town in
just a few blocks.  The narrow road curved upward through rolling
range, high above Lake Oroville.  Then, past a small painted sign that
said simply Feather Ridge, it entered a rich, perfectly planted orchard
oranges, pecans, avocados, and even several cork trees.  About two
hundred feet farther was the guardhouse, and beside it, an ornately
wrought ten- or twelve-foot-high gate that spanned the roadway.  The
letters "EB" were scrolled on both sides in bronze.  Extending out from
either side of the gate as far as Abby could see was a seven foot-high
iron-rail fence topped with several tightly strung strands of thin wire
that she guessed were electrified.  And beyond the gate, beyond the
orchard, there was only grassland and a gently rising tree-lined
road.

So this is where the other zero point zero, zero, zero, one percent
lives, she thought.  Not bad.  Not bad.

"Dr. Dolan, we've been expecting you, " the gateman said.  "Would you
mind opening your trunk and stepping out of your car?  " Maybe not so
great after all, she decided as the gateman and another identically
uniformed guard checked her with a metal detector and carefully
searched the Mazda inside and out, including beneath the hood.

To amass wealth of this magnitude, there must be countless
casualtiesþand enemies.  One of the guards examined the tape recorder
and passed it over to her.

"Would you play this for me, please?  " Abby did as she was asked.  The
guard apologized to her for the inconvenience, made a call from a
cellular phone, and opened the gate electronically.

"You'll be met at the house, Doctor.  Have a good day."  Abby drove
slowly through the gate and up the road, feeling slightly like Dorothy
approaching Emerald City.  The road continued upward for almost half a
mile, then crested above a broad, verdant valley.  On the far side of
the valley, sprawling across the side of a small mountain, was a
magnificent rustic estateþrough-hewn logs, massive windows, decks and
balconies, and seven chimneys.  Abby paused for a time to take in the
entire panorama.  The view to the north encompassed the lake.  To the
south was the heavily forested area she assumed was the game preserve,
and behind her was a vista that might have extended to Japan.  It was
daunting to think of the movers, shakers, and world leaders who had
driven in over this road or flown in by chopper.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Abby rolled down into the valley past a dozen grazing horses, and up to
the house on Feather Ridge.  A security man opened the door for her and
asked her to leave the key.  Apparently, Ezra Black disliked
automobiles cluttering his front drive.  She mounted the broad stairs
to the veranda, thinking about the modest home of Gus and Dotty
Schumacher.

How strange that suddenly their lives and Ezra Black's were so
intimately entwined.  But she knew, even without the full story on
Ethan Black, that they were.  The problem was going to be convincing
Ezra Black.

She was shown to his study by a cadaverous servant wearing a white
dress shirt and black vest, but no coat.  He was the first man she had
met on the property who she decided was not wearing a gun.

"Welcome to Feather Ridge, " he said.  "Mr. Black will be down
presently."  He offered her a drink, and she opted for a Diet
Pepsiþsomething to hang on to.  The room was about as she would have
expectedþhuge rough-hewn beams, animal heads on the walls, plush
oriental carpets on the floors, perfectly worn leather furniture.

Black's deskþmahogany, Abby guessedþcould have been marked off in
yards.  Unimaginable wealth.

Yet none of it had been enough to keep Ethan from diving out a
twenty-third-story window.

There were several framed pictures on the desk.  Not feeling
comfortable walking around to view them, she turned the nearest frame
around and then picked it up.  It was an eight-by-ten black-and-white
of Ezra Black arm in arm with Senator Mark Corman.  Several seconds
passed before Abby recognized the backdrop, purposely blurred to get
sharp detail of the two subjects.  They were standing in front of the
main entrance to Colstar.

She replaced the photo and picked up another.  This one, in color, was
of Black and a man who she felt certain was Ethan.  He was a bit taller
and huskier than his father, but there was no missing the likeness.

They were wearing waist-high waders and standing knee-deep in a
mountain stream, each proudly displaying a large trout.  Ethan looked
about eighteen.  Suddenly Ezra Black's loss was real to herþ more than
just a link in a chain of events.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Dr. Dolan."  Abby whirled, immediately
self-conscious that she was still holding the photo.  Ezra Black
stepped forward and extended his hand.  Abby shook it, then somewhat
sheepishly set the frame back where she had found it.

"Thank you for seeing me, " she managed.

Black motioned her to one of a pair of hand-tooled beige leather
couches and settled himself on the other.  He was bigger than life in
print and on television, but in person he was rather ordinary in
stature.  In fact, he was actually slight, without an ounce of excess
fat.

His pale-blue shirt perfectly matched his piercing eyes.  She could
almost see the energy crackling off him.

Abby had long ago learned the distasteful feeling of having a man
undress her with his eyes.  Ezra Black's steady gaze was something else
entirely.  She was not being disrobed, she was being scanned.  X-ray
vision to her soul.  The sensation was not disturbing, not even
intimidating.  It was, in fact, impressive.  She bet herself that he
was seldom very far off the mark in his assessment of people.

"I assume you deduced that photograph is of my son and me, " he said.

"I felt very sad seeing the two of you together and obviously enjoying
one another so much.  You have my sympathy for what happened."  His
expression, the slight raise of an eyebrow, suggested that he was
surprised by her empathy.

"Ethan and I had our differences, " he said.  "What father and son
don't?

He was never ambitious enough for me, I suppose I was never
understanding enough for him.  But on the whole, we were reasonably
close.

Do you know much about him or about the way he died?  " "No, sir.  Only
what I read in the papers."  Abby was careful not to bend the truth in
any way.  She was struck by the fact that Black had asked her nothing
about herself, her background, or how she came to be practicing at
Patience Regional Hospital.  Then it occurred to her that within
minutes of hanging up after their phone conversation last night, he
probably knew a great deal.  Unfortunately, that would mean he had
probably gotten the Joe Henderson or Lyle Quinn version.

"If all you know is what you've read in the papers, why would you
conclude my son was toxic from cadmium?  " No wasted time.  No small
talk.  Ezra Black's way was strictly put up or shut up.  She opened her
briefcase and passed over what documents she had accumulated as she
discussed each one.

"This is a list of over one hundred fifty cases treated at Patience
Regional Hospital over the last two years, none of which has had a
positive test leading to a specific diagnosis.  All of their symptoms
are consistent with the many faces of cadmium toxicity."  Black glanced
at the list for no more than a few seconds and set it aside.

"It says that a number of these people have had negative tests for
cadmium.  Have any of them had a positive blood test?  " "No, sir,
butþ" "What else do you have?  " Abby felt the already chilly
atmosphere grow colder.

"I have five other people who are not on that printout, " she said,
passing over a chart she had made.  "As you can see, all of them worked
at one time or another for Colstar.  One of them is your son.  Two of
the five have died violently.  One of the others, Angela, is a
self-mutilator.  Josh Wyler is off on some crazy mission of vengeance
right now.  Willie Cardoza is the one who ran down Peggy Wheaton.  "
Abby sensed she was speaking too rapidly, but she feared that if she
slowed down, Black would cut her off for good.  "As you can see, four
of the five, not counting Ethan, whom I don't know about, had severe,
distinctive headaches.  This cassette is of an interview I did this
morning with Dotty Schumacher, the widow of the third person on the
list.  I thought maybe something she said would resonate with what you
know of your son's case."  Black popped the cassette into the player
and listened stonily for ten minutes.  It was impossible to read what
he was thinking.  He clicked off the machine and gestured to the chart
once again.

"If I understand this correctly, the one positive-cadmium blood test
you have here was on the man who murdered Gary's wife?  " "Yes.  The
test was run by a toxicologist at my old hospital in San Francisco.  We
have blood going out on Angela Cristoforo now."

"What about all these negative tests?  " Black was like a guided
missile.  Abby knew this was not the time to accuse his company of
purposely switching samples or falsifying data.

But since that probably was, in fact, the truth, there was no decent
alternative explanation.  She hoped her response didn't sound as feeble
to him as it did to her.

"The cases on that printout, with a few exceptions, did not have I X

symptoms as severe as the five people on that chart.  They might have
tested negative because their exposure to the metal wasn't that
great.

" "And this box, Eye Findings, that you've checked positive on Cardoza
and Cristoforo?  " "A yellow glow around the iris of their eyes when
looked at with an ultraviolet light."

"And you think this .  . . this glow is from cadmium?  " "You have
scientific proof of that?  " Abby hesitated just a second, then shook
her head.

"No.  No, I don't."  She could sense that she had still not piqued his
interest, and now she had played every card in her hand.  There was
half a minute of silence while the billionaire processed what she had
presented.  His face was still an undecipherable mask.

"Do you belong to the Alliance?  " he asked suddenly.

Abby felt her hopes sink.  Ezra Black had read the evidence, but he
remained unconvinced.  Now she was going to have to defend her motives
in bringing it to him.

"I've been to one meeting.  I confess that I felt sympathy toward
their issues.  But I haven't considered myself a member, and I had no
intention of actively supporting their cause until certain people
started trying to frighten me into leaving Patience."

"Frighten you?

" "Someone tried to run me off the road while I was taking Willie
Cardoza's blood to St. John's in San Francisco.  Then, yesterday, that
same someone, I suspect, shot at me in front of my house.  The police
think they were trying to miss.  I'm not so sure."

"So instead of frightening you into leaving town, they've driven you to
stay and fight."

"I think people are in great danger from this chemical.  At first I
didn't feel it was my fight.  Now I do."  For the first time since
meeting Ezra Black, Abby had no trouble reading his expressionþutter
disdain.

"Dr. Dolan, " he said, "as far as I can see, you couldn't be further
off base.  Those misguided zealots in the Alliance have taken advantage
of you.  They've been tilting at the Colstar windmill for almost three
years, and they have nothing to show for it.  They knew you were
looking for some explanation for your boyfriend's insane behavior and
some way to justify your decision to treat that animal, Cardoza.  So
they fed you just enough lies to help you put two and two together and
come up with five!  " "That's not so."

"Trust me, Doctor.  It is.

There is no cadmium exposure.  -Never was, and from my plant, never
will be.  My son Ethan was always weak.  From the time he was a child
he had a great deal of difficulty in developing self-esteem.  The two
years he spent at Colstar were the longest time he had ever held a
job.

But, in general, he was managing fairly well.  Then one night he
skidded off the road going home from work in a storm.  He was driving a
stupid little sports car with no protection.  That was his problemþthat
and the damn high-society psychiatrist I was foolish enough to trust.

Ethan sustained head injuries, including a laceration and a severe
concussion.  He couldn't even remember the accident.  That's when his
personality began to change and he began to go downhill.  Ethan's
problems dated from that accident.  Not from any goddamn cadmium
exposure."

"Butþ" "My son was a numbers cruncher, for crying out loud!  An
accountant.  How in the hell would he have gotten poisoned from an
industrial exposure?

Well?  Answer me.  How could he?  " "I don't know."

"That's because he never did.  You put words in this Schumacher woman's
mouth, and you know it.  She hears you, and suddenly she's thinking
about how much she can extort from Colstar."  He stood and handed the
tape recorder back to her.  "Dr. Dolan, my company is in a very
delicate position right now in a number of areas.  I warn you not to
cause any more trouble for us.  My man will show you out."  He turned
and started out of the room.

"Mr. Black, you're wrong, " she said firmly.  "And I think you know
it.

There was a sustained cadmium exposure a big one, I'd guess from
Cardoza's blood levels.  And somehow the people on those lists were
hit, including your son.  Go speak to Mrs. Schumacher yourself if you
think you're such a good judge of who's misguided and who's not.  "
"Good day, Doctor, " Black said without looking at her.

"Okay, have it your way.  One more question, then I'm gone.  Did Ethan
have an MRI?  " Black turned around and eyed her evenlyþanother
penetrating scan.

"That test was done the night of his injury, " he said finally.  "It
showed nothing, just like all the other tests.  Do you have some reason
for asking me that question?  " Abby stared down at the floor, then
back up at the man.

"When I do, sir, " she said, "you'll be the first to know."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

Although Abby had been in the Feather Ridge mansion for less than an
hour, by the time she left, the bright, crisp day had turned overcast
and humid.  She was somewhere between the house and the main gate when
the first of a series of squalls hit.  The drive back from Feather
Ridge, hampered by the wind-driven rain and impassable truck traffic,
took a seemingly endless three hours.  When hunger got the better of
her, she stopped at a roadside diner for an omelette and home fries.

The visit with Ezra Black had hardly gone as Abby had anticipated.  But
why?  Black had been interested enough in what she had to say to invite
her out to his home.  Yet he refused even to admit to the possibility
that Colstar was responsible for a cadmium leak.  She had actually
planned to suggest exhuming Ethan's body as confirmation of her
theories.  Fat chance.  If digging up the man's son was somewhere
between third base and home, she was still in the dugout waiting her
turn at bat.

She pulled out of the diner lot just as a huge semi roared past ahead
of her.  The narrow highway looked as if it was going to be solid
yellow line for miles, so she slowed down until she was out of exhaust
range and cruised.  For a time she lost herself in Nanci Griffith's
latest album.  But there was just too much going on in her head to stay
distracted for too long.  Time was running out for Josh and anyone else
who had been exposed.  And with that folder sitting inside Joe
Henderson's desk, time was running out for her, too.

The only explanation that kept making sense for Black's rude behavior
was that he knew something about what had happened at Colstar.  He knew
there had been a cadmium spill of some sort.  Perhaps he was aware of,
or even responsible for the  subsequent coverup.  But until her call
he had no idea his accountant son had been a victim.  Even now he
wasn't sure.

So he had invited Abby to Feather Ridge to size her up as opposition,
and to hear what she had to say.

It had been ridiculously naive of her to believe that he would simply
embrace all her facts and theories on the spot.  The man had not become
a billionaire by taking anyone's word on blind faith.  He had listened
to her, and now he was checking out her story.

"What did you expect him to do?  " she asked out loud.

But even if Black had no idea that Ethan's death was connected to his
employment at Colstar, something she had said over the phone had
registered.  For the final thirty miles of the drive back to Patience,
she played that telephone conversation over and over in her head.  She
hadn't said much, reallyþonly that a large number of stillundiagnosed
cases had passed through the Patience Regional Hospital E.R with
symptoms consistent with cadmium toxicity, and a group of at least five
Colstar employees had exhibited bizarre, often violent, behavior that
she believed was caused by massive exposure to the metal.

Violent behavior.  Was that it?  Was that the hook that had gotten Ezra
Black's attention?  As she rolled down the final hillside into
Patience, Abby mulled over the possibility.  Although Ethan's suicide
was tragic, it was explainable by his depression.  According to Ezra,
the depression was believed to be a product of his son's head injury
and profound, preexisting low self-esteem.  But supposing there had
been more going on.

Supposing Ethan had behaved with the same illogical, unbridled violence
as Josh, Willie, and Gus Schumacher.  There would
be no reason for Ezra to share that information with herþespecially if
he had gone out of his way to cover it up.  But if he knew that Ethan's
violent behavior was no longer a secret, there was at least a chance he
would allow his company to accept responsibility for what it had done

. . or was still doing.

There was only one person Abby could think of who might be able to
confirm that Ethan Black had demonstrated excessive, irrational
violence before his deathþone person who could effectively tie him to
the other four casesþDr. Graham DeShield.  It was clear that Black
Ezra blamed the therapist, at least in part, for his son's death.

Considering Black's reputation, it wouldn't be surprising if he had
already done something to make his displeasure with the psychiatrist
known.  If so, it was possible that a soothing feminine voice and a
little pandering to DeShield's ego might get him to bend the laws of
patient confidentiality just a bit.  From what Abby remembered of the
man, it was a distinct possibility.

It was just four and still raining when she reached home and swung into
the driveway.  The large sheet of plywood across her picture window was
as obtrusive as missing front teeth.  Mindful of her nocturnal visit
from Lyle Quinn, she remained in her car for a minute until she sensed
no one was about.  As had been her habit since Josh moved out, she had
left several lights on in the house.  Against the dreary late afternoon
the glow from the windows was comforting.  She entered the kitchen and
immediately checked around the house.  There was no sign anyone had
been there.  Everything seemed to be in place.

She called information in San Francisco and got DeShield's office
number.  Then she left notice with his service that her call was an
emergency regarding his patient Ethan Black, and that the operator
should try to reach the doctor rather than wait for him to call in.

Assuming he got her message, it was hard to imagine he wouldn't
respond.

It was only then that she noticed the red light flashing on her
answering machine.  One message.  Her first thought was, Josh.

"Abby, I'm assuming you recognize my voice, " the tape said.  In just
the first few words Abby could feel Kelly Franklin's tension.  "I'm
calling from my car.  I've left an envelope for you with the woman who
gave you something from me yesterday.  Please try to get it before this
evening.

If we miss connections, I'll be in touch."  Abby listened to the
message a second time.  Kelly's paranoia seemed to be building by the
hour.  But given her own experiences, first with Lyle Quinn, then with
Joe Henderson, Abby was not surprised.  The woman Kelly was referring
to had to be Esther at the library.  There was still half an hour
before it closed.  But what to do about DeShield?  Clearly, she had to
drive into town.  The only thing she could think of was to change the
greeting on her answering machine.

"This is Dr. Abby Dolan, " she said.  "I've had an emergency and will
be away from my office until five.  Dr. D. , please leave a number
where I can reach you then.  It is very important.  Thank you."  The
repetition of her new message was still playing when she snatched up
her windbreaker and hurried out to her car.  She reached the library at
exactly four-thirty, just as Esther was locking the front door.

"We closed at four today, " the librarian explained as they huddled in
the doorway against the continued steady rain.  "Kelly came by at about
two with an envelope for you.  She said I was to destroy it if you
didn't pick it up before we closed."

"Damn, " Abby murmured.

"Fortunately, " Esther went on, with a tiny smile, "I decided to do so
after I got home."  She passed the white business-sized envelope over,
and Abby thanked her.

"I know it's probably none of my business, Dr. Dolan, " Esther said,
"but is Kelly in some sort of trouble?  This is all very
cloak-and-dagger, and she's seemed very nervous these last couple of
days.  That's just not like her."

"She's under some stress at work, " Abby ventured.  "But I'd rather let
her tell you about it."

"We're in a quilting group together.  Every Thursday night.  The
Thimblefingers.

We raffle the quilts off for charity.  I sure hope she's .  , ,
oKay.

The woman was stalling for more information.  Surely her interest was
just the concern of a friend, but suddenly Abby felt herself prickle
with caution.  There was no telling how tightly the Patience grapevine
was coiled.  She thanked Esther and hurried back to her car, wondering
how people who were intrinsically mistrustful ever managed to function
in the world.  Then she drove to a deserted street a mile out of her
way before she would chance opening Kelly's envelope.

Abby, forgive me for dragging you out here, but Lyle's been hanging
around a lot more than usual, and I'm afraid to leave much of a message
on your machine.  I sense that he knows we've been in contact, but he
hasn't said anything.

I think I've found the staircase that leads to the lower chambers of
the mine.  Second shift will be the best time to see.  The truth is, my
job allows me access to any part of this plant, so even if I get
stopped, I should have a decent excuse.

There's a small, very secluded park just a few blocks from my house.

Enclosed is a map of how to get there.  Let's meet there at seven.  I
don't know what's going on here, but I am convinced something is.  And
I believe it's happening right under me.  I'm angry, but I'm calmer
than you might think.  Wish me luck.  See you at seven.

Abby read the letter until she had nearly memorized it, then tore it up
and studied the hand-drawn map.  Kelly had marked the park and her
house.

She included her home address and phone number, as well as a note at
the bottom that the key to her house was beneath a large planter by the
back door, and the phone number of her ex-husband was taped to the
kitchen phone.  Paranoid, frightened, or more likely both, Abby
decided.

She hid the map beneath the repair records, owner's manual, and bag of
corn chips in her glove compartment, and headed home.  It was almost
five.  She would give Graham DeShield until six, and then would stop by
the E.R to bring Lew up to speed on all that had transpired.  After
three years of chipping away, he deserved to know that Colstar's facade
was beginning to crumble.

Kelly Franklin sat in her locked office, the blinds drawn.  She had
been hunched over blueprints and builder's notes for most of a day and
now could feel the strain at the base of her neck.  The drawings and
blueprints were kept in an archive room, and she was one of the few who
had a key.  As environmental health and safety officer, she had to be
expert on the heating and ventilation systems of the plant, as well as
on the disposal route for all toxic materials.

There were records dating back to the 1920's when the first
construction of the California Battery Company began, and literally
hundreds of sets of drawings and blueprints, many of which were rolled,
held with rubber bands, and carelessly piled in bins.  The newer
drawings, necessary for occupational health and safety, were quite
carefully filed.  Because so many years elapsed between the initial
building and the massive reconstruction by Colstar, Kelly had never
examined the original plant blueprints or the several additions that
were completed before Colstar took over.  But now she had spent much of
the past night and all day scanning those earlier drawings, often
beneath a magnifying lens, and comparing them to more recent ones.

What she was looking for was a staircase or passageway of some sort
that she knew nothing about.

There were dozens of stairways leading down to the basement level where
the power plant and some of the manufacturing units were housed.  But
the basement, she had been told, was built on solid rock.

Now, thanks to Abby Dolan's persistence and her own research, she knew
better.  There were huge, man-made caverns, two of them beneath the
plant at depths of forty and one hundred feet.  And somewhere in the
massive factory there was access to them.  At about one that afternoon
she had found something in a drawing done in 1946þa staircase at the
very back of what would one day become C Concourse.  The area
containing the stairway was eventually partitioned with eightfoot-high
walls that were still four feet short of the ceiling.  The dozen or so
large rooms created by the partitioning were used for warehousing and
storage.  Kelly had patrolled the spaces on any number of occasions
searching for safety violations or potential sources of trouble.  She
did not recall seeing a door or staircase in the spot depicted in this
one drawing.  It was possible the flight had been sealed off, but there
was no such notation as there were for other stairways on other
drawings.  It was as if, sometime between 1946 and the next set of
blueprints in 1968, the staircase had simply disappeared.

It seemed to her that other drawings containing the area around the
staircase might actually be missing, but there was no way to tell for
certain.  The only way she would ever know would be to check out the
area for herself. She carefully put the blueprints back together and
returned them to the archive room, keeping only the ones showing the
warehouse area.  Then she clipped a small, powerful flashlight onto her
belt, locked her office, and slipped behind the wheel of her golf
cart.  If she couldn't find the staircase, it was back to the drawing
board.  But Kelly was betting it was still there.

For whatever reason, no one at Colstar had ever told her about the
caverns left over from the Patience Mineþcaverns that could have been
the source of natural-gas leaks, collapse during earthquakes, or even
collapse from the weight of the plant itself. As she rolled up A
Concourse toward the reception area, careful to maintain a normal
speed, she wondered who in the company might know.  As far as she could
tell, none of the officers had been there for more than ten yearsþnone
except Lyle.  Was it possible that no one knew about the caverns or
about the three ventilation shafts that had been sealed off?  Not
likely.  As environmental health and safety officer, she reported
directly to the president, a keen businessman named Roger Sealy.

Together they had walked through every inch of the plant.  If he knew
there were subterranean spaces, she had to give him credit for being
one hell of an actor.  The same would go for Lyle Quinn.

Kelly felt her heart beating in her chest as she approached the mouth
of C Concourse.  She had never been foolhardy in any sense of the word,
although she did have an adventurous streak that revealed itself in her
love for scuba diving and rafting.  Now she felt a bit frightened, but
also keyed up and not a little angry.  She had left a perfectly decent
job with the Forestry Service to move to Patience and Colstar.  What in
the hell had she been doing here all these years?  Had she really been
just a shillþthe frontman for a lie?  Had her repeated, earnest denials
of the allegations of the Alliance been just what Quinn or some of his
cronies had brought her there to do?  Soon she would have the
answers.

Her plan was to drive along on a routine inspection tour, then to leave
her golf cart inside one of the storage rooms at the end of C Concourse
and make her way on foot to the rear of the area.  Second shift was now
well under way.  Foot traffic was almost nil.  Dan Gibson, a foreman
Kelly knew well, passed by in a golf cart and waved cheerfully.  Kelly
hoped she looked more relaxed than she was feeling.  There was no one
around when she reached the first of the doorways to the warehouse
area.  They were all wide enough to fit a forklift and wooden pallet,
and more than wide enough for the golf cart.  She turned left through
the second one, then immediately right into a room used to store
cleaning supplies.  She could hear men's voices coming over the top of
the walls, but there was no one in sight.  The blueprints with the
partition walls drawn in did not include the staircase, so she was
constantly forced to go from 1945 to 1968 to 1985 and back as she made
her way through the maze of rooms toward the very rear of the
factory.

"Can I help you?  " Kelly whirled, badly startled.

A young man in coveralls confronted her from about ten feet away.  She
had never seen him before.  She took a moment to catch her breath and
forced a smile.  The man did not seem to recognize her, which was
somewhat strange.  There was a two-hour health-and-safety talk she gave
to each shift every four months dealing with various topics including
toxin containment, evacuation procedures, and even first aid.  And
although she had no way of knowing all the twenty-four hundred or so
Colstar employees, they almost all had reason to know her.  She moved
close enough to see the man's ID badge and to give him a look at
hers.

JeffKidd, Warehouseman.

"I'm Kelly Franklin, environmental health and safety, " she said,
steadying herself with one hand against a wall until the rubberiness in
her knees firmed up.  "Just doing a routine walk-through of this
section."  No glimmer of recognition from Kidd.  But he did read her
badge and nodded.

"I'm sorry, " he said.  "I've only been here a couple of months, and
I've never seen you before."  Kelly tried unsuccessfully to remember
when she had last given her talk to the second shift.

"No problem, " she replied.  "I'll be giving a talk to your shift real
soon.  You'll get to know me then.  I'm going to be wandering around
here for the next half hour or so.  I don't need anything, so you might
as well go on about your business."  The man met her gaze
levellyþperhaps more self-assuredly than she might have expected from a
relatively new warehouseman confronting a company VP.

"If you need anything or you get lost, Ms.  Franklin, just holler.

I'll probably hear you over these walls."

"I'll do that."  Kelly moved slowly toward the next area, inspecting
the overhead ventilation ducts.  She sensed that Jeff Kidd was still
watching her.

And, in fact, only when she risked a glance in his direction did he
finally turn and head off.  Unsettled by the encounter, she came close
to going back to her office.  Instead, she wandered slowly from room to
room, feigning an inspection.  Except for Jeff Kidd, no one seemed to
be around, although from somewhere she could hear a forklift whine.

She checked the blueprints again.  Just one more doorway to get
through.

Again, she glanced about.  No one.  She rolled up the blueprints and
stepped into the last room.  It was largeþperhaps forty feet squareþ
broken up by a network of floor-to-ceiling shelves containing boxes of
nonflammable chemicals, packaging supplies, and paint.

Listening carefully for footsteps, Kelly worked her way to the west
wall.  According to the drawings, the staircase should have been almost
at the midpoint.  Right where she expected the door to be, there was a
forklift, facing the wall, piled high with empty pallets.  The ignition
key was in place.  Kelly had to peer between the adjacent shelves to
see beyond the pallets, but the door was thereþmetal, unlabeled, not
unlike hundreds of other doors throughout the plant, except that every
one of those other doors had been opened by her at one time or
another.

If it was locked, she ought to have the key.  She backed away to where
she could view the entire room and separated the appropriate master
from the other keys on her ring.  Then she turned on the forklift and
backed it away from the wall just far enough for her to squeeze in past
the pallets.  If anybody needed to come through that door, they would
have to call someone in the warehouse to move the pallets.  Was that
someone Jeff Kidd?

The master key turned easily, and she pulled the door open an inch.

Beyond it she could see only darkness.  There was no way to get the
pallets back in place.  If anyone checked, they would know someone had
gone down the stairs.  The part of her that was urging a retreat until
she could return with someoneþperhaps Abbyþwho could stand guard, was
outflanked by the part that was desperate to know what lay beyond the
door.  With a final check of the room, Kelly slipped inside, stepped
onto the first of a flight of stairs, and closed the door behind her.

The darkness and the silence were total.  The air was musty and damp.

Kelly leaned against the wall, which seemed to be a mix of solid stone
and cement.  She felt air hungry.  Her pulse refused to slow.  It was
the same panicky sensation she had experienced one hundred feet down on
her first deep dive.  Finally, a few slow, deep breaths helped her
regain control.  She clicked on her flashlight and panned down the
concrete steps.  There were thirty or more of them, steep and straight,
ending at another door.  Almost certainly they went beyond the basement
floor of the factory.

Kelly walked halfway down the narrow flight, then shone her light back
up at the door.  There was still a chance to retreatþto try another
time with more preparation and some help.  She hesitated for a few
anxious seconds, then headed down to the lower door.

The lower door was unlocked.  She opened it a crack.  Beyond it, as
with the other, was only stygian darkness.  But there was also a waft
of cool, damp air.  She opened the door a foot, slipped inside, and let
it close silently behind her.  Even in the dark she knew she was in a
vast, open spaceþthe uppermost cavern of the Patience Mine.

Cautiously, she panned her beam about.  The space was rectangular,
about 50 feet wide by 150 long, and only 7 feet or so from floor to
ceiling.

The walls were irregular rock as far as she could see.  Ancient timber
pilings, the size and shape of railroad ties, gave some added strength
to the ceiling.  Engineers must have determined that the rock could
hold the massive weight of the factory, forty feet above.  There were
lightbulbs connected by metal tubing spaced out all along the ceiling,
but nothing else that she could see.

Immediately Kelly began searching for the stairway to the deeper
level.

It took just a few minutes to find itþan open doorway, about twenty
yards in the direction of the cliff face.  The staircase, narrow and
circular, seemed to be hewn into the rock.  It was much longer than the
upper flight and reminded her one moment of the stairways in medieval
castles, and the next of a childhood trip she had taken up and down the
stairs of the Statue of Liberty.  But this stairway was pitchblack.

Reluctant to switch on the flashlight, she kept one hand on the damp
rock wall and cautiously worked her way down.

The air coming up from below seemed cool now, and clean.  There was a
hum that she at first thought was the response of her ears to the dense
silence.  Now, she realized, it was a machinery noise.  Once again her
pulse began to accelerate, this time as much from the excitement of
imminent discovery as from any sense of danger.  The machinery drone
grew louder, and she knew she was reaching the lower cavern.  According
to the drawings in the Patience Mine book, she was-nearly one hundred
feet beneath the factoryþlevel with the floor of Patience Valley, or
even a bit below that.

As she rounded a bend in the spiraling stairs, she spotted light,
spreading out from under a door.  Six more steps and she was there.

Suddenly she sensed movement behind her.  She started to whirl, but a
man's powerful hand clamped roughly over her mouth and pulled her
tightly against his broad body.  There was a sensation of cold metal
pressing against her neck, followed almost immediately by a soft pop
and a sharp sting at the spot.  In seconds the world began to dissolve
into a swirling haze.  Her panic exploded, then vanished, as her vision
blurred.  Inexorably, her eyes closed.  The single word she heard
before unconsciousness swept over her was growled by a voice she knew
well.

"Stupid, " was all it said.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

yellow rings.  Josh had examined his face in the
bathroom mirror a dozen times over the last day alone.  Granted, he
looked like hell.  But if there was anything wrong with his eyes, he'd
damn well have seen it.

His fury growing with every step, he stalked out of the Ghost Ranch
Saloon and across the busy road without checking for cars.  Horns
blasted at him, but he didn't notice.

The sparkling lights had begun again.

Josh raced back to the motel.  There was still time, he was thinking.

Time to do what God had been telling him to do.  Time to end the pain
once and for all.  The shimmering diamonds of multicolored light
snapped against the inside of his eyes like hailstones.  He fumbled
with the lock, then threw the door open and snatched the rucksack out
from beneath the bed.

"Not this time, " he said out loud.

This time there would be no headaches.  There would be no begging God
to take him.  This time there would be only vengeance.

"Bricker.  . . Golden .  . . Gentry.  . . Forrester .  . . " He recited
the names in a litany as he once again checked the two weapons.

Ever so slightly the flickering lights began to dim.  It was a sign.

The path he had chosen was the right one.  He grabbed the rucksack and
ran from the room.  It was three or four blocks to the main entrance of
the company.  Five minutes, if that.

Josh started out the front door of the Fremont Motel, then stopped
short as a police cruiser glided slowly past.  He moved back into the
entryway and waited.  Minutes later a second cruiser drove by in the
other direction, just as slowly and deliberately as the first.  They
were trying to look routine, but he knew they were searching for
someoneþ almost certainly for him.  How could they know?  The only
possible answer was Abby.  She had been worried about him all along.

Now she had broken into the house on Orchard, scanned through his
computer, and found the letter he had written to her but never sent.

Why hadn't he just erased the damn thing?  Now Bricker and the rest
would be on alert, and the police must have the description and plate
number of his Wrangler.

He pressed himself deeper into the shadows.  Abby had been wrong to try
to stop him.  As always, she probably meant well.  But once again they
were pushing against one another.  He wondered how in the hell they had
gotten so messed up.  When did he make her the villain in his life?

When did she stop giving him the unconditional love that she had always
claimed meant everything to her?

He found himself wondering, too, about her relationship with Dr. Lew
Alvarez.  Frightened of the consequences of his nearly striking her, he
had followed her to Alvarez's farm one night.  Then he parked by the
road, walked up the long, unpaved driveway, and spied on the two of
them, sitting with two other people in Alvarez's den.  After a time he
had returned to his car and waited until Abby drove out and headed
home.

Alvarez was movie-star handsome and had impressed her with his work in
the E.R.  Were they lovers?  He felt his jaws clench.  Was that why she
was trying to get him caught here in Fremont?

Once Bricker and his cronies were taken care of, he would have to
confront her and demand some answers to those questions.  She
wouldn't lie.  Lying just wasn't in her.  Her fidelity would be
rewarded with the life they had always dreamed about.  Desertion?  .

He glanced down at the rucksack and feared that he would be spotted if
he tried to lug it to Seradyne.  One semiautomatic under his
windbreakerþthat's all he would be able to get away with.  But, then
again, that was all he would need.  Reentering the motel, he exited
through the rear to the lot where the Jeep was parked.  The early
evening was quite dark, and a fine rain had begun falling.  He tossed
the rucksack onto the floor and took a screwdriver from the tool kit.

In seconds he had changed license plates with a van from Colorado.  His
headache was steady, but much less severe than he would have expected
at this point.

He tucked the MAK-90 beneath his arm, zipped his windbreaker up, and
headed away from the main drag.  There were back streets and an alley
he could take to get to the Seradyne building.  Security there was
always fairly tightþprobably more so now.  But he had no intention of
entering the building.  The parking garage made much more sense.  He
might get only Bricker, but that would be a hell of a start.

A cruiser passed by on the street ahead.  He sensed they might have
noticed him.  He cut down a narrow alley.  When he hit the street
again, he was just a block from the garage.  The Seradyne executives
all had assigned parking slots there.  One more year, maybe less, and
he would have had one himself.  His attitude and performance had gotten
consistently superior ratings.  But in the end superior ratings didn't
matter.

What mattered was that Nancy Golden was sleeping with Pete Gentry.

Some corporate restructuring.

Bricker's Infiniti would be in his designated spot.  A sexmobile, he
had once called the car.  With Bricker everything came down to sex.  It
would be relatively easy to make it up the back stairs and wait behind
a nearby car.  If the Infiniti was gone, he would search out Pete
Gentry's Land Rover.

The lights were still flickering inside Josh's eyes as he approached
the Seradyne garage from the rear.  He dashed along a concrete wall and
flattened himself behind a row of seven-foot-high shrubs.  He stayed
there for a time, breathless from the short sprint.  Not too long ago
he had run a half marathon with ease.  It appeared his body was rotting
as rapidly as his soul.

Please be patient with me, Abby, he thought.  Please understand that I
have to do this.

But there was no way she would understand, not until she saw him
finally free of the headaches and the confusion.  Not until she saw him
as a whole man again.  He waited until his breathing was normal and the
street was deserted, then rolled over the concrete wall and dropped
onto the first level.  Bricker's parking space was on the second.

Staying low, he worked his way between cars and the three-foot wall
until he reached the second level.  At the sight of Bricker's white
Infiniti, his jackhammering pulse increased even more.  Mortar shells
burst behind his eyes.

He chose a spot just in front of the Grand Cherokee parked next to
Bricker and was just about to sprint across to it when a sports car
screeched around the corner and sped past him to the next level.  Had
he taken one more step, he would have been as dead as Steve Bricker was
about to be.

Careful to listen for oncoming traffic this time, he hunched very low
and sprinted across to the spot between the grill of the Grand Cherokee
and the wall.  Again, he was gasping for breath.  It felt as if his
heart was just going to stop.

He checked to be sure he was concealed from the stairway door and the
elevator, although he expected that Bricker would use the stairs.  Then
he brought the MAK-90 out and set it on his lap.  He had practiced
firing the gun in several different dumps.  He wouldn't win any
marksmanship prizes, but he wouldn't need to.  All he had to do was aim
at the right height, pull the trigger, and spray.

It was almost five.  He would give Bricker until five-twenty, and then
go looking for Pete Gentry's car, just in case.  His headache was
continuing unabated, though it was still manageable.  If he had a major
explosion like the two he had endured already today, he was cooked.

Bricker would be able to walk right up and step on him, and he would be
powerless to do a damn thing.  But so far, so good.

Then, with no awareness that he had even opened his wallet, he realized
that he was holding the laminated photo of Abby he kept there.  God, he
had loved her.  She had given him everythingþgiven up a life she was
totally content with so that they could be together.  What had he given
her in return?  Pain and confusion.  Anger and anguish.  What in the
hell had happened to him?  Was this insanity?  Was this what it was
like to be crazy?  .  . .

Footsteps echoed through the concrete cavern.  His hand tensed on the
semiautomatic.  A couple, chatting and laughing, emerged from the
stairwell and headed toward him.  Kate Alston from the reception desk
and a guy from the design office.  Did they know, too?  He glanced
down at the MAK-90.  If they saw him like this, what difference did it
make whether they knew why he was there or not?  If they spotted him,
he would do what he had to do.  He tightened his finger on the trigger
and pressed himself against the bumper of the Grand Cherokee.  They
were about thirty feet away.  Now twenty.  If either of them owned this
car or the one next to it, it was all over for them.

Josh held his breath.  What in the hell was he going to do if they saw
him?  Just gun them down?  Bricker was his target, not these people.

Kate Alston, probably only twenty-three or -four, had always been great
to him.

Help me, Abby.  For God's sake tell me what to do.

Suddenly the footsteps stopped.  A car door opened, then closed.  Josh
risked a look.  Both of them had gotten into a white coupeþa Camaro or
Firebird.  The engine rumbled to life, and the car eased out of the
spot two spaces down and across from Bricker's.

Abby, I didn't want to kill them.  I just wanted things to be like they
were for us.  Bricker and the others did this to us.  They've got to
pay.

Isn't that right?  .  . . Isn't it?

He slipped Abby's picture into the pocket of his windbreaker.  The
headache seemed to be getting worse again, and he was beginning to feel
queasy.

Come on, dammit .  . . Come on.  . . .

The stairway door opened again.  Again there were voicesþtwo men.  He
recognized one of them immediately.  Bricker!  He worked himself into a
low crouch and tightened his grip on the MAK-90.  Then he peered
cautiously through the windows of Bricker's Infiniti.  The other man
was Pete Gentry!  It was more than he could have hoped forþa true
sign.

Almost over, Abby, he thought.  The end for them.  A new beginning for
us.

He ducked down and tried to gauge their distance from him by the sound
of their shoes on the pavement.  Twenty feet.  Maybe fifteen.  And.

now!

He stood up, took three quick steps to the rear of the Infiniti, and
confronted the two startled men from a distance of no more than fifteen
feet.  Point blank.

"Josh, no!  " Bricker cried out.

Pete Gentry dropped to his knees, head down, but Bricker was fumbling
inside his coat.  A gun!

"Abby, forgive me!  " Josh bellowed.

He brought the MAK-90 to his shoulder and fired.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

The call came in at six, just as Abby was leaving
for the hospital to see Lew.

"Dr. Dolan, please."  Even though it had been years since she had
attended Graham DeShield's presentation at St. John's, she recognized
the society psychiatrist's voiceþaffected and nasalþimmediately.

"This is Dr.  Abby Dolan."

"DeShield here.  Dr. Graham DeShield."  She remembered the therapist
as tall and slim with wire-rimmed glasses and a receding hairline.  Now
she pictured him sitting in the paneled study of an opulent hillside
home somewhere in Marin County.

"Thank you for calling me back so promptly, Dr.  DeShield."

"My service said it was an emergency regarding Ethan Black, although
how someone who's deceased could constitute an emergency is beyond
me.

" "Believe me, it is an emergency.  Dr. DeShield, you have no reason
to remember me, but I was on the staff at St. John's for a number of
years before I moved here to Patience a few months ago.  We met briefly
some years back, after you gave very impressive grand rounds at our
hospital."

"Yes, yes, I remember that particular lecture well.

Narcissism and the Stars, I called it.  I very much enjoy teaching.  "
"It was an excellent presentation.  One of the best on the subject I've
ever heard."

"Are you a psychiatrist?  " "Ah, no, actually.  I'm an emergency
specialist."

"I see."  It was clear to Abby that he didn't, but she doubted Graham
DeShield ever admitted to not understanding anything.

"Dr.  DeShield, earlier today I had a meeting with Ezra Black."

"Ah, yes, my good friend Ezra."

"He told me how angry he is with you about his son's suicide.  He's
desperate to blame someone for itþanyone except himself."

"My feeling exactly.  He's already begun to spread rumors about me."

"I would bet your reputation can withstand most of the dirt he could
dish out."

"It's very kind of you to say so.  What hospital were you at?  " Abby
smiled.  DeShield's hearing was dearly limited to facts that involved
him.

"St. John's.  I was there for ten years.  I met with Mr. Black today
to try to convince him that Colstar International, the company his son
was working at, one of the companies he owns, was actually responsible
for Ethan's death."  Abby could sense the heightened interest at the
other end of the line.

"Continue, " DeShield said.

"There have been a number of cases hereþfour, not counting Ethan
Blackþof Colstar employees who have exhibited psychotic, violent
behavior.  A small group of us here in Patience is dedicated to getting
at the truth about them.  We believe that all four cases were toxic
from a massive cadmium exposure, and that a large number of patients
with lesser illnesses had proportionately less exposure.  All four have
been involved in violent incidents or have shown violent tendencies.

One has now been charged with murder.  He is the only one whose blood
we have been able to test so far, but it showed an extremely high level
of cadmium.  We've sent off a level on one of the others, but it's not
back.  We wanted Ezra Black to close his plant down until he and the
people there could determine what happened and assure everyone that the
problem has been corrected."

"And?  " "At first Mr.  Black seemed receptive to listening to me.

Then he did a sudden about-face and as much as threw me out of his
place."

"Sounds like Ezra."

"It's been very frustrating.  No matter what evidence we produce,
Colstar and the people Colstar controls have a response."

"The positive blood tests, too?  " "I'm sure they're going to demand
that an independent lab run the bloods again.  Something like that.  By
the time their data and ours are evaluated and reevaluated, more people
will have come to harm.

We need Ezra Black on our side, or we don't have much chance of
convincing anybody who matters that this is a dire emergency."

"Why call me?  In case you didn't get it today, I'm the last person
Black would listen to."

"That's his mistake."  Abby wondered whether she was laying it on too
thick, even for DeShield.  "As to how you can helpþI think the one
thing I said that initially interested Black was about the four other
employees becoming violent.  Then, when it was clear I knew almost
nothing about Ethan other than what I read in the papers, he suddenly
became totally uninterested in me, cold as block ice.  I left Feather
Ridge with the feeling that if I had known that Ethan had been
violentþif I had known precisely what he did under the influence of
cadmium poisoningþEzra Black would at least have heard me out.  I was
even going to suggest that he have his son's body exhumed and tested,
but I never got that far."

"In other words, you want me to violate patient-physician
confidentiality involving the son of one of the wealthiest, most
powerful men in the world."

"I know from the sort of man, the sort of physician, you are, that
speaking to someone about a patient would not be at all easy for you.

It wouldn't be easy for me either if I were in your position.  But we
believe lives are very much at stake.  And the truth is, we really have
no one else to turn to."

"If Black learned that I did such a thing, his lawyers would hound me
until .  . . until I jumped out of my office window myself."  That the
therapist didn't flatly say no was all that mattered.  He was holding
out to hear what Graham DeShield had to gain.

And Abby had that argument ready and waiting.

"You have my word that I would never tell Mr. Black we spoke.  And, in
addition, it would seem that if we can prove it was the cadmium in
Ethan's brain that caused him to kill himself, that would certainly
absolve you of the responsibility Ezra Black is trying to stick you
with."  During the extended silence that followed, Abby picked up a pen
and readied it over a notepad.

Come on, Graham.  Come on.  . . .

"We haven't met since that conference, Abby, but somehow I feel I can
trust you."

"You can, Dr. DeShield, " she said, adding in a voice that was as
close as she could get to seductive, "and, perhaps soon, we could meet
again in person."

"It's Graham.  And I think I should like that very much.  The truth is,
Abby, Ethan Black almost bludgeoned a man to death with a baseball
bat.

A farmer.  It was in a parking lot after a fight in a bar.  Ezra saw to
it that every witness said the farmer started it.  Then he made certain
the victim got cared for at the Stoneleigh Head Injury Center.  You
know that place?  " "Of course.  The best."

"I believe the man will be there indefinitely.  His injuries were that
severe."

"What about Ethan's headaches?  " Black Ezra had said nothing about
headaches, but Abby no longer doubted his son had them.

"They started following his accident, " DeShield said.  "Horrible,
debilitating headaches that I felt were postconcussive.  Were they
caused by the cadmium, too?  " "I believe so.  Tell me, were there any
preceding sensory warnings?

Strange tastes?  Lights?  " "Funny you should mention that.  Actually,
he did complain of a smell.

He said it was like .  . . like rotten eggs."  Bingo!

"Dr. DeShieldþGrahamþdid Ethan harm anyone else besides the farmer?  "
"A number of people, actually, although the farmer got it the worst of
all.  Ethan seemed to have a smoldering anger against almost everyone,
and periodically he would just blow.  He beat up a prostitute last
month.

Broke her arm."  Abby was writing furiously.

"Daddy took care of her, too?  " "Of course."

"Graham, you won't regret having done this."

"I hope not, Abby.  Just remember your promise to keep my name out of
it, and be sure to give me a call to let me know what happens.  Having
Ezra Black bad-mouthing me from pillar to post is not going to be good
for business."

"One last thing."

"Yes?

" "Do you by any chance have the phone number at Feather Ridge?  " "As
a matter of fact, I do.  Why?  " "I don't think Ezra Black is likely to
say yes to another operator with an emergency call from me."  Despite a
steady rain, the early evening was mild and quite bright.

Driving to the hospital, Abby even caught a brief glimpse of the sun.

There was still forty minutes before her meeting with Kelly.  She
couldn't wait to see Lew and share the two major developments of the
dayþher visit to Feather Ridge and Kelly's discovery of a secret
staircase somewhere in Colstar.

She felt buoyed by her success with Graham DeShield.  The real trick
would be to honor her promise to keep his name out of the conversation
when she called Ezra Black.  She had decided to hold off on that call
until she had learned what Kelly had found.  Even if it turned out to
be nothingþand she strongly doubted that would be the caseþthere was
still the information she now had about Ethan.  Black would have to be
devoid of a conscience not to take action against the company that had
contributed to his son's deathþeven if that company was his own.

As she pulled up the hospital drive, Abby mulled over the explanation
she had given DeShield and Black for what had happened to Ethan and the
four others, as well as to the 150 or so NIWWs.  She strongly
sensedþno, no, she kneesomething was wrong with her reasoning.  At
first glance her logic held together reasonably well, a little cadmium
exposure, especially when stimulated by an MRI, caused a variety of
symptoms, depending on the patient, a heavy exposure, with or without
the MRI, caused headaches, violent behavior, and eventual death.  The
theory certainly did what theories were supposed to do, integrated the
facts.

But each time she verbalized itþ first to Lew, then to Black, and
finally to DeShieldþshe felt uneasy.

There was an ambulance parked at the receiving platform, but Abby's
highly developed sixth sense told her that things inside were
reasonably calm.  In fact, there was very little going on.  In bay one,
two nurses were checking in the elderly man from the ambulance.  The
only other action was in bay four, where Lew was listening to a young
boy's chest.

He noticed Abby the moment she came through the door and motioned
toward the on-call room.  She nodded that she would see him there and
made her way inconspicuously along the outside corridor.  During the
few minutes she was alone in the room, she dialed her answering machine
to check for a message from Kelly, or perhaps even Josh.  Nothing.

She glanced about, wondering if, as Lew had warned, the room was
bugged.  Given the bogus autopsy report Joe Henderson had produced, a
little electronic eavesdropping would hardly be a surprise.  There was
no reason she should have had any pangs about having to leave a
hospital controlled by a corporation like Colstar and run by men like
Henderson and George Oleander, but she did.  She was angered beyond
words at being squeezed out by lies and treachery.  She was furious
about having to leave a job that had taught her so much about herself
and her capabilities.  And she was upset about being forced to make
decisions about her relationship with Lew Alvarez before she was "Damn
you, Henderson, " she muttered, "damn you."  At that moment the door
opened and Lew stepped in.  The instant the door clicked shut, her arms
were around him, her lips pressed against his.  He tensed with
surprise.  Then, with a soft sound of pleasure, he brought his hands
up, buried them in her hair, and brought her mouth even more tightly
against his.  Even after she gently broke off their kiss, she held him
against her.

"I feel like I just won the lottery, " he whispered.

"Maybe you did."  He sat down and guided her onto his lap.  She buried
her face in the curve of his neck and savored the taste of his skin and
the feel of his hardness against her thigh.

"Careful, " he whispered.  "Big Brother may be watching."

"Let em."

"Well said."

"Lew, I can't stay long."  He moved her away and kissed her lightly on
the mouth.

"Why did I know you were going to say that?  Is everything all right
with you?  " "Better than all right, except that I haven't heard
anything from Josh."

"I've been saying prayers for him."

"Thanks, " she whispered.  "Lew, do you think it's safe to talk in
here?  " He shrugged no idea and motioned her to the bathroom, where he
turned on the sink and the shower.

"I still think we ought to keep our voices down."

"Okay.  Lew, I think something's breaking at Colstar.  Kelly Franklin's
found a staircase that she thinks might lead to the underground caverns
I told you about."

"You really trust her?  " "I do.  I never thought she was hiding
anything.  Now she's angry as hell that they've kept the underground
spaces and ventilation windows beneath Colstar secret from her.  We
both feel there's got to be a damn good reason why they did.

I'm meeting her at a park near her house in twenty minutes to hear what
she found."

"And your visit to Ezra?  " "Went poorly, but there's still hope.  He
wanted nothing to do with me, but I think it's because he doesn't want
anyone to know his kid beat a man senseless with a baseball bat and
broke a prostitute's arm.  And those are just samples of his
cadmium-induced violence.  Once Ezra knows there's nothing left to
hide, maybe he'll relent and at least order some sort of
investigation."

"Unless he already knows what Colstar is doing."

"It's possible.  I just can't get a decent read on the man."

"I'll tell you one thing, if that company is responsible for those
shootings in Las Vegas and the Wheaton woman's death, once the lawyers
begin to gnaw at them, there's no way they're going to be able to stay
in business.  I'll be anxious to hear what Kelly finds."

"Soon."  Abby turned off the shower and sink and returned to the study
for her jacket.

"You know, " she said, "the one thing that keeps bothering me is all
those MRIs I told you about."

"You don't think it's just some sort of agreement between the family
docs and the radiology department to run up as many MRI charges as
possible?  It is a hell of an expensive test.

" "If that were the case, we'd be saying that it was a coincidence that
something like ninety percent or more of the NIWWs have had one.

I'm not much good at biostatistics, so I didn't even know if there was
a formula that could be applied to all the data I gathered.  But if
there is, I bet it says all those MRIs done on our cases are
statistically significant."

"You may be right, but I certainly can't come up with an explanation
that makes sense."

"The MRI machine's an electromagnet, and cadmium's a heavy metal.  It
wouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine the two interacting in some
way."

"I guess."  Abby slipped on her windbreaker.

"Gotta go."

"I'll be off by midnight.  Maybe a little earlier, " he said
hopefully.

"Hey, listen, I'll be back here as soon as I learn what Kelly's
discovered."

"Abby, for God's sake, be careful.  Be very, very careful."  Abby held
his face in her hands and kissed him lightly.

"In case you hadn't noticed, " she said, "I'm not exactly the biggest
risk taker in the world."  The park Kelly had designated as their
meeting spot was a rarity for public places in Patienceþa space that
was poorly maintained.  It was a postage-stamp-sized play area at the
end of a rather long drive.  There were homes visible from the small
gravel parking lot, but none that was close.  The grass, much of which
had yielded to weeds, was badly in need of cutting.  And the swings,
slide, and wooden seesaw were begging for repair.  The playground was
certainly private enough, but viewed in the rainy, late-evening gloom,
it was also somewhat forbidding.  To Abby it was something of a
metaphor for the whole town.

She arrived at the parking area several minutes early, cut her lights
and windshield wipers, and slid in one of the three Beethovensymphony
tapes in her case.  She listened to them frequently but had never
concentrated on the music enough to be able to distinguish one symphony
from another.  There was a third of a Heath Bar resting in the
compartment by the gear shift.  The rest of the bar was all she had
eaten since her trip back from Feather Ridge.  Minimal exercise, lousy
eating habits, even worse sleeping habits, unstable emotional lifeþ
what a wonderful example she was for the patients of the world.

Someday, she told herself. Someday it would all settle down.  She
polished off the remaining Heath morsel and glanced in the direction of
the drive.  No one.  It was just seven.  The steady, fine rain
continued, warm and cleansing.  Abby glanced about once again and
instinctively locked her doors.  The windows began to fog.  Beethoven
filled the Mazdaþhis Eighth, she guessed, although for no particular
reason.  Her thoughts floated free for a time, then came to rest, once
again, on the most irregular of the shapes she had been trying to force
into the Colstar puzzle, the MRIs.

Nearly every one of the NIWW patients had had the test done.  In many,
if not all of them, the date of the MRI actually preceded the onset of
the symptoms that placed the patients in the NIWW group.  Her theory
was that these patients had already been exposed to cadmium and that
somehow the combination of the heavy-metal poisoning and magnetic
resonance imaging triggered the rashes, fatigue, susceptibility to
infection, headaches, and other complaints.

Combination.  That was the key, the most disturbing word.  First the
cadmium exposure, then the MRI.  That combination was the concept she
was having trouble withþthe square peg that kept refusing to be jammed
into the round hole.  Her explanation required a pairing of events in
150 or so patientsþwhat amounted to 150 coincidences.  It simply didn't
wash.

She glanced at her watch.  Seven-ten.

Come on, Kelly.  Where the hell are you?

The windows of the Mazda were fogged too much to see outside.  She
opened the front ones an inch, started the motor, and turned on the
defogger.  Then she ejected Beethoven and listened to the deep silence,
broken only by the brush of rain on the hood and roof.

Something had gone wrong.

Five more minutes, she decided.  No, ten.  She'd give her until
seventwenty, and then go lookingþfirst at Kelly's house, then at
Colstar.

Dammit, where are you?

A car's headlights at the end of the drive flickered off the trees, and
for the briefest second Abby felt a flood of relief Then the lights
swung away and continued down the road.

She tried to make the minutes pass by focusing, once again, on the
possible significance of all the MRIs.  Never postulate two diagnoses
to explain a patient's symptoms when one will suffice.  The maxim was
at the very heart of sound medical case synthesis, right next to the
venerable adage warning young doctors, fascinated with the obscure,
that when they hear hoofbeats on the plains of Arizona, they would do
well not to look for zebras.  Never two diagnoses when one will do.

Abby wrote Cd in the condensation on the left side of her window and
MRI on the right.  Then she fingered a circle around each one.  Cadmium
exposure alone might explain each and every symptom in the NIWWs.  But
it would not explain the MRIs.  Never two when one will do.

There was only one other option she could think ofþthat the NIWWs were
not cadmium toxic but were somehow actually getting sick from the MRI
test itself.  Did that make any sense at all?  Not from anything she
had ever learned about the procedure.  And what about the high levels
in Willie Cardoza?

Perhaps the machine was defective in some way.  But how would that
explain the hundreds of MRI cases who weren't among the NIWWs?  Her
mind was tying itself in knots.

The ten minutes were up.  She turned on the high beams and swung back
so they shone down the drive.  Nothing.  Kelly's map was on the seat
beside her.  Abby checked it to get her bearings and drove to the
house, just three blocks away.  The rain continuedþsteady, gentle.  The
house was a prim stucco ranch with a neat shrub-lined lawn and an
attached garage.

Several lights were on inside.  Abby snapped her windbreaker, then felt
around the rear floor until she located her Giants baseball cap and
pulled it on.  She walked up the flagstone path to the kitchen door and
peered in the window.  Nothing seemed out of place.  To her right was
half a small barrel, planted with a yucca, some geraniums, and ferns.

Abby lifted the planter on edge with both hands, braced it against her
leg, and was about to reach underneath for the key when she heard the
dull rumble of an automobile engine.  She lowered the planter back down
and listened.  The street was deserted.  Suddenly, she knew.  Her heart
in her throat, she raced around to the garage and pulled up the door.

A dense haze of automobile exhaust billowed out.  Abby stepped back and
turned to get a lungful of fresh air, then pulled her shirt up over her
nose and mouth and charged into the lethal fog.  Kelly was lying
motionless across the front seat of a small white convertible.

Abby snatched open the door, shut off the key, pulled her out by the
waist, and dragged her out of the garage into the rain by her wrists.

She didn't stop pulling until they were halfway down the drive.  Then
she sank down on one knee, gasping.  Her breath was visible in the
cool, rainy air.  Kelly had a reasonable pulse although there were
several skipped beats, but her breathing was exceedingly shallow.  Abby
slapped her face once, then again, and called her name.  There was no
reaction.

She gave her several effective mouth-to-mouth breaths and repeated the
attempts to rouse her.  Then she checked her pupils, fearing the
worstþfixed and dilated.  Instead, she was able to make out that they
were pinpoint smallþthe pupils of a narcotics overdose.

"Help!  " she screamed as loud as she could.  "Someone help!  " Her
voice was swallowed by the dense night.

The house across the street had lights on, and Abby could actually see
someone inside.  She bent over one more time and gave Kelly three deep
breaths.  Next she stripped off her own windbreaker and bunched it
beneath Kelly's neck to keep her airway straight.  "Hang in there,
Kelly, " she said.  Then she whirled and sprinted down the rain-slicked
drive.

Chapter THIRTY FOUR.

By the time the rescue squad arrived, Abby and the man across the
street had lifted Kelly, carried her into his house, and placed her on
the living-room rug.  She remained unconscious.  Her pupils were
pinpoint and her respiratory rate still depressed.  Neither of those
were classic signs of carbon-monoxide poisoning.  Almost certainly
Kelly had been drugged before being placed in her garage.

Tears mixed with the rainwater on Abby's face as she did what little
she could to help Kelly get air into her lungs.  The rescue squad was
just five minutes away.  Carbon-monoxide poisoning even a mild
exposureþwas one of the most challenging crises in emergency
medicine.

The monoxide literally forced oxygen off the hemoglobin molecules that
normally carried it to the tissues of the body.  The effect of the
poisoning was extremely difficult to reverse, and the newly formed
carboxyhemoglobin prevented vital structures, especially the brain and
heart, from getting enough oxygen.  In addition, the monoxide caused a
dangerous buildup of acids in the blood, and a drop in blood pH, making
the heart dangerously prone to life-threatening arrhythmias.

There were half a dozen neighbors standing around the living room.

None of them had seen anything unusual around Kelly's house.  In fact,
none of them had even seen her come home.  There was going to be no way
to fix the length of exposure.  Abby knew they all expected her to do
something heroic.  But without oxygen and some way to deliver it in
high concentrations, there wasn't much she could do except continually
monitor Kelly's pulse and be prepared to institute CPR at the first
sign of a loss of blood pressure.  She did have the presence of mind to
send one of the men over to Kelly's car and house to look for pills.

"Open the car door carefully and don't touch anything except with a
cloth, " she warned.

"You mean you don't think this was an attempted suicide?  " he asked.

"I don't know, " she lied.  "But let's not assume anything."  Abby
wiped the rain from her cheeks with the back of her hand.  Thank God it
was Lew waiting there in the E.R and not McCabe or Jill Anderson.

Together they would do what they could do.  She looked down at Kelly,
who was laboring to breathe once again, and adjusted the jacket beneath
her neck.  The woman was a few years older than Abby, but without her
tortoiseshell glasses it was easy to appreciate her youthful skin and
fine, somehow innocent, little-girl's face.

You shouldn't have done it, Kelly, Abby was thinking.  You shouldn't
have gone down there alone.

Abby forced herself to stay focused.  She was angry, shocked, and
frightened, but determined not to be distracted by any emotion.  This
was the time to do things precisely right.

The immediate goal would be to get a breathing tube in and get Kelly
onto a cardiac monitor.  Next would be to deliver 100 percent oxygen
and treat any cardiac irregularities.  Once in the E.R, they would
measure the amount of circulating carboxyhemoglobin, as well as Kelly's
blood pH.

The low pH could be corrected, but the dissociation of oxygen from
hemoglobin was another story.  The oxygen concentration of room air was
about 20 percent.  In a hospital setting they could deliver pure
oxygenþ100 percent.  Unfortunately, even pure oxygen was often not
enough to break apart the carboxyhemoglobin in time to prevent serious
brain damage.  There was, however, a way to deliver more than 100
percent, and that was by giving 100 percent oxygen under increased
atmospheric pressure.  Hypersaturation, it was called.  The technique
would require transporting Kelly to a hyperbaric decompression
chamber.

Somebody at the hospital would know where the nearest ones were.

There she would undergo a series of what amounted to deep dives into a
sea of pure oxygen.  The carboxyhemoglobin would yield to the technique
much more quickly than it would to oxygen delivered at sea-level
pressures, or worse, at the atmospheric pressure in Patience, which was
located several hundred feet above sea level.

The key was remembering that carbon-monoxide poisoning was insidious.

Patients could look fine, and even test fine in some respects.  But
until the oxygen-hemoglobin balance was restored to normal,
irreversible brain-cell damage would continue to progress.  Hundreds of
fire fighters and victims of fires had had life as they knew it
preserved by tenacious E.R docs who got them into chambers despite no
clinical evidence that they were in danger.  They were breathing, their
heart was generating a blood pressure, and they were awake and alert.

Why push?

Abby knew why.  She reached down and cradled Kelly's head in her
hand.

The woman remained motionless.  From somewhere in the distance she
heard the first siren.

"Okay, " she said to the neighbors.  "If you could all move away to
give us room to work, that would be a help."  The man whom she had sent
back to Kelly's car and house rushed in, carefully holding a pill
bottle with a washcloth.

"I couldn't find anything in the house except Tylenol.  But this was on
the floor of the car, " he said, breathless.

There were two pills in the rust-colored clear-plastic vial.  Two pills
and no label.  Abby had no doubt the carefully placed tablets would
coincide perfectly with whatever was depressing Kelly's respirations
and constricting her pupils.  And, of course, no one in the crack,
unbiased Patience police department would question why a woman bent on
suicide would bother to swallow the entire contents of a bottle of
pills .  . .

except two.

The siren grew louder, and at least one more could now be heard.  In
seconds the strobes of the ambulance flashed through the windows.

Abby remained kneeling beside Kelly until the three-person rescue squad
rushed in.  One of the paramedics was Tom Webb, whose feelings she had
hurt during the resuscitation of the insurance man, Bill Tracy.  She
had gone out of her way that day to apologize for anything she might
have done or said in the heat of battle.  And since that time even
after the Peggy Wheaton debacle, there seemed to be a decent
relationship between the two of them.  Now, seeing him was a boost.

"We need to intubate her, Tom, " she said.  "I have no idea how long
she was in that garage.  Maybe we should get her right on a monitor,
too.  The monoxide and the acidosis can wreak havoc on her cardiac
rhythm.  Also, she looks like a possible narcotics overdose.  We're
going to need an IV and oh-point-four of Narcan to reverse that.  Have
someone remember to repeat the dose in two minutes if she's no better,
even if I forget to ask for it."  The young man just nodded and relayed
her orders to the other two.

Despite the minor clash over the technique used in pumping Bill Tracy's
heart, the squad was damn good.  In less than a minute one of themþa
slight woman old enough to be Tom's motherþhad a good IV line in place
and the narcotic antagonist injected.  A second paramedic worked on
hooking up the portable monitor/defibrillator.

Tom Webb set out the equipment for tracheal intubation.  All the
paramedics were trained in performing the procedure, and every one Abby
had ever known took great pride in being able to do it in the field.

But after anesthesiologists, who intubated almost every surgical
patient in the operating room, E.R doctors were generally the nextmost
skilled.  Abby had always had confidence in her ability to intubate
anyone in any situation.

"Here you are, Doctor, " Webb said, handing her the laryngoscope and a
tube.

Abby looked over at the young man.  Kelly was still breathing on her
own, which made the situation a bit less critical.  Several weeks ago
she had inadvertently embarrassed Tom in front of a number of his
coworkers.

She was The Professor then, still operating on university mean time.

Now she really was becoming someone else.  And one of many lessons she
was learning at PRH was how important reputations were in a closed
community, and how fragile.

"Go for it, Tom, " she said.  "I'll assist.  She's still moving air, so
we have time to get her up onto the stretcher if it would be easier for
you."  She hoped he would know that she was telling him not to try to
intubate Kelly while stretching himself out on the rug.  If he
attempted to do it that way and missed, she would have to step in and
take over.  If he missed while Kelly was up on the stretcher, she would
have to decide whether or not Kelly's condition allowed him a second
pass.

"Help me get her on the stretcher, " Tom ordered.

With Abby holding Kelly's neck steady at just the right angle, the
paramedic knelt at the head of the stretcher and got his body in
perfect position.  Then he slid the lighted, curved laryngoscope blade
along Kelly's tongue and applied just enough upward pressure to lift
her epiglottis away from the opening of her trachea.  Abby could tell
from his position and technique that he had given himself an excellent
view of Kelly's vocal cords.  She placed the breathing tube in his
hand.

"Steady on, " she whispered.  "You're doing great."  The paramedic
slipped the tube smoothly into place between the cords.

The woman who had inserted the IV had a breathing bag in hand with
portable oxygen already attached.

"Nice shot, Tom, " she said.  Then she looked over at Abby and mouthed
the word, Thanks.

By the time they wheeled Kelly out of the house and hoisted her into
the ambulance, her pupils seemed a bit less constricted and her color
was a tad better.  But she still had not regained consciousness.

Abby knew that was a bad sign.

The moment Kelly's stretcher was pulled from the ambulance and into the
E.R, the dam that had been holding back Abby's emotions burst.  Nearly
consumed by fury, she paced behind the nurses' station.  Lew stood
nearby, keeping a constant eye on the E.R.  It was considerably busier
than it had been just two hours ago.

"She found something, " Abby said.  "She found something in those
caverns beneath Colstar, and that bastard Quinn tried to kill her.  "
Across from the nurses' station, in major medical, almost lost among
the wires and the tubes, Kelly Franklin's profile was just visible.

She had not moved voluntarily for the forty-five minutes since their
arrival in the E.R.  Above Kelly a monitor scanned out a heartbeat that
had been in nightmarish irregularity.  To make matters much worse, they
were having a hell of a time finding an accessible decompression
chamber where the staff was willing to handle a patient as unstable and
unresponsive as Kelly.  And because of the low cloud ceiling and poor
visibility, it was uncertain whether or not MedFlight would even be
able to fly.

Abby felt tense, frantic, and absolutely helpless to alter the scenario
that was unfolding around them.  If she hadn't been so aggressive about
condemning Colstar to Kelly .  . . if she had tracked Kelly down and
insisted that she not take any chances .  . . if she had simply left
town .  . . if.  . . if .  . . if.  . .

"Is there any chance she actually could have done this to herself?  "
Lew asked.

Abby whirled like a startled cat and nearly leaped at him.

"You sound like that policeman who just took a statement from me.  Lew,
she was supposed to meet me at seven.  She was anxious, yes, but she
was angry and excited, not depressed.  She did not do this to
herself.

Something's going on in that place."  He quickly squeezed her hand.

"Sorry.  I was just asking."  The physician whom Lew had called in to
take over Kelly's care was a brilliant young cardiologist named Harvey
Shulman.  It had been a titanic struggle to tame Kelly's irregular
heart rhythms, but Shulman seemed to be prevailing.  Now he emerged
from her room and approached them, studying some lab slips.  His thick
black brows were knit almost together.  Abby sensed trouble.

"Her pH is up from six-point-nine to seven-three, " he said.  "That's
the good news.  The bad news is we just got her carboxyhemoglobin level
back.

It's thirty-five percent."  Abby and Lew exchanged concerned glances.

They had both been programmed with the same carboxyhemoglobin
numbers.

Guru living on an isolated Tibetan mountain, 0 percent.  Average person
exposed to secondhand cigarette smoke, o 2. Heavy smoker,

Threshold for admission and serious consideration for hyperbaric
treatment, 18.  Potentially lethal, 30 percent and up.

"She needs a chamber, " Lew said.

"Any luck with that?  " I l Shulman's question was directed at Abby,
who had been working with the charge nurse to find something.  Now Abby
found herself too choked up to speak.  Instead, she shook her head.

Lew patted her gently on the back.

"Abby, you're doing everything you can, " he said.

Shulman passed over the lab reports, all of which looked reasonable
except for the 35 percent.

"Her depressed consciousness is almost as disturbing as those numbers,
" he said.  "I've got her on steroids to reduce any brain swelling.  If
we can't line up a chamber and transportation in another ten or fifteen
minutes, the nurses want her transferred out of the E.R and up to the
unit.  We can't keep them tied up like this."

"No!  " Abby said, far too vehemently.  "Let us try again.  We'll find
something."  From behind his glasses Shulman's dark eyes appraised
her.

"Abby, I don't think MedFlight will fly on a night like this.  The last
thing we want is to push them into flying and have something happen.

Besides, Kelly needs a chamber in a well-staffed hospital setting.  Her
cardiac situation is still too unstable for anything less."  Helpless
to argue, Abby could only turn and head for the charge nurse's office
to make more calls.  Ten minutes later she returned, shaking her
head.

Her eyes were red from fatigue, strain, and tears.  She motioned Lew
into the glass-enclosed dictation cubicle, where they could speak in
private while he kept an eye on the E.R.

"The best MedFlight can do is remain on standby until morning, " she
said.  "Sooner, if the weather breaks.  The people at Eden Medical
Center in Castro Valley say they might be able to handle her in their
chamber by five or six tomorrow morning if we can transfer her
safely.

Patience can't spare an ambulance and crew for an eight-to-ten-hour
round trip.

I just can't believe this."

"They're coming down from the unit to get her in just a few minutes."

"Lew, she's not going to make it."

"You don't know that."

"With that thirty-five-percent level, if she lives, we all might wish
she hadn't."

"We've been able to reach her ex-husband.  He's driving up from San
Francisco with her daughters."  "Damn!  I'd like to get my hands
around Lyle Quinn's throat.

Right now."

"Just don't let anyone provoke you, Abby.  We're playing on their field
with their ball and their referee.  The only way we're going to win is
if we play that much smarter and more determined than they do."

"I understand."  Hidden from anyone's view, Lew reached over and took
her hand.

"Win or lose, I'm glad you're with me, " he said.

"Don't talk like that, Lew.  We're going to bring them down.  I'm not
going to have her end up like this for nothing."

"Maybe when the results of Angela Cristoforo's blood tests come back,
we'll be able to attract someone's attention.  Meanwhile, I don't know
what else we can do."

"There is one thing.  While I was waiting out in that park for Kelly, I
tried to go over everything we've learned so far.  One piece just
wouldn't fit."

"Namely?  " "The MRIs."

"What do you mean?  " "Lew, most of the cases on the Alliance's list
had an MRI before their symptoms developed.  The reasons for ordering
the tests in the first place were pretty damn thin in a lot of
instances.  From what you know, is there any way the MRI itself could
be causing people to get sick?  " "I thought you were postulating some
sort of interaction between the cadmium in the patient's system and the
MRI."

"I was.  But that requires a coincidenceþfirst the exposure, then the
test.  The truth is, except for Willie Cardoza, we have no definitive
lab proof of anyone being cadmium toxic."

"Colstar rigged the testing.  You know that."

"I know they're capable of it, that's for sure."

"And what about the rings in Angela's eyes?  And the other cases of
violent behavior?  " "I don't know, Lew.  But I do know I want to take
a look at that MRI machine.  And if I don't find anything, I'd like one
of my radiologist friends from St. John's to come up here and check it
out.

" "When are you going to try to look at it?  " "As soon as I see that
Kelly is settled in upstairs."

"I think you're barking up the wrong tree."

"Maybe.  But ever since I started accumulating data on our cases,
something's been bugging me.  I think this is what."

"I'll be here."

"Do you have a good penlight I can borrow?  " "I do.

Lew unclipped it from his pocket and passed it over.

"Courtesy of Coulter Pharmaceuticals, " he said, reading the printing
embossed on the side.

Abby laughed sardonically.

"Believe it or not, that's one of Ezra Black's companies.  Listen, as
soon as I'm ready to go to the MRI unit, I'll need you to occupy the
X-ray tech for twenty minutes or so."

"No problem.  Hector Ortega's on tonight.  He was born and raised in
the Napa Valley, and he's sick of people thinking he should know
Spanish.  He loves it when I take a few minutes to speak it with
him."

"Excellent."  Abby motioned out the glass to where the nurses and a
transportation worker were loading Kelly onto a gurney for transfer to
the unit.  "I'm going to go up with them and then I'll call.  She
shouldn't have gone down there by herself, Lew.  I shouldn't have let
her."  He turned her by her shoulders to face him.  His dark eyes were
deadly serious.

"Abby, we told you at the Alliance meeting that this was a war against
corporate killers.  We meant it.  David Brooks was a casualty.  So were
Peggy Wheaton and Ezra Black's kid, and those people in the casino in
Las Vegas.  And possibly even Josh.  And now, maybe, so is Kelly.  I'm
sorry it's happened this way.  But at least you and I are still here to
fight back."  Abby wiped at the tears that had suddenly materialized at
the corners of her eyes.

"You're right, " she said.  "I have to stay focused on that.  One more
thing just occurred to me."

"Yes?  " "If, as I think, Kelly discovered something beneath Colstar,
she may be in danger even now.

Shouldn't someone be guarding her?  " "I hadn't thought of that.

Listen, I'm sure that once she understands what's at stake, Barbara
Torres from the Alliance will do some special duty.  She's the
associate head of the VNA.  I'll call her right now.  After Jill
Anderson relieves me tonight, I can make some excuse for relieving
Barbara.  We'll try to have someone watching her continuously.  "
"Great.  I'll do a shift, too, although I hope that by morning Kelly
will be out of here."

"Just give me a call when you want me to start Hector's Spanish
lesson.

And in the meantime, buena suerte."

"Quinn shouldn't have done this, " Abby said, balling up a blank
progress note sheet and snapping it into the trash.  "And I promise you
he's going to regret it."  .

CHAPTER THIRTY- FIVE

Unwilling to leave, Abby stood beside Kelly
Franklin's bed in the ICU.

Kelly's condition remained essentially unchanged in that she was
unresponsive even to painful stimuli.  But a slightly more hopeful sign
was her pupils, which were not excessively dilated and were slightly
reactive to light.  Her cardiac status had largely stabilized, although
high doses of antiarrhythmic medications were still needed, and her
blood pH was up to 7. 42þnormal.  The cardiologist's opinion was
essentially the same as Abby'sþpersistent central-nervous and
cardiac-oxygen deprivation due to carbon monoxide clogging the
hemoglobin-carrying sites.  The most likely explanation for her
depressed consciousness was increased pressure within her skull caused
by swelling of her brain.  The high doses of intravenous steroids
seemed to be helping to reduce the swelling some, but how much
permanent brain damage she had already sustained was impossible to
know.

Abby found herself praying that there hadn't been time for Kelly to
experience much terror before the narcotics knocked her out.  In the
report she had given to the police a short while ago, she had strongly
suggested that Kelly's blood would reveal a drug overdose.  But she
hadn't shared her belief that this was attempted murder.  And she
certainly hadn't mentioned anything about Colstar or Quinn.  By doing
so all she would have accomplished was to place herself in danger at a
time when she needed, above all, to be mobile.

Quinn was going to pay for this, she vowed.  She had never felt
strongly enough about any cause to believe she was ready to die for
it.

But if Quinn and Colstar were responsible for this tragedy, as well as
for Josh and the others, she would do whatever she had toþtake whatever
chances were necessaryþin order to bring them down, along with anyone
else who was involved.  She checked the time.  Just nine.  It seemed a
lifetime ago that she was sitting by the dilapidated park, waiting.

She looked about helplessly.  She could stick around to be sure no one
came in bent on finishing the job that was started somewhere in or
beneath Colstar.  But, otherwise, there wasn't much she could doþ
except take a close look at the MRI machine.  She paced to the nurses'
station and back, then pulled the blinds apart and checked the
weather.

The rain and the blackness seemed as before.  There was no way Kelly
was going to get to a decompression chamber before morning.

She went to the phone beside the central monitoring station to call
Lew, hoping he had been able to reach Barbara Torres.  If she had
agreed to come in, Abby would wait until she arrived before going to
inspect the MRI unit, provided that the E.R was still slow enough for
Lew to divert the night X-ray tech.

At that moment, as if in answer to a prayer, Barbara Torres marched
into the unit.  She was wearing her blue VNA uniform and carrying a
clipboard and stethoscope.  Her expression and nod to Abby said that
she knew everything and was ready to insert her not inconsiderable bulk
and determination between Kelly and any threat.  She walked right past
Abby to the charge nurse and greeted the woman warmly.

"Kelly Franklin's an old friend, " Abby heard her say.  "It would mean
a great deal to me to special her."

"No problem, Barb, " the unit nurse replied.  "We never turn down good
help.  I'll clear it with the supervisor and be in to give you the
lowdown in ten or fifteen minutes.

Meanwhile, just keep an eye on her vitals and urine output, and do a
neuro check every fifteen minutes."  Barbara met Abby by the door to
Kelly's cubicle.

"I came in as soon as Lew called, " she whispered.  "It doesn't look
good in there."

"It isn't."

"Well, my husband's got a virus, so I may or may not stay the night
depending on how he is and how Lew feels after his shift is done."

"I can special her, but I'm on the schedule for tomorrow at eight A.M.
, " Abby said.  "A sixteen-hour shift, no less."  Abby had started her
day with the visit to Dotty Schumacher and her strudel.  She'd been
sleep deprived when she'd gone to bed late the previous evening, and
not much less sleep deprived when she awoke.

Now, with all that had happened today, she was operating on raw,
nervous energy.  There was no way to guess how much fuel remained in
her tank.

But it was a safe bet that without five or six hours of decent sleep,
she would never make it through her shift tomorrow without crashing.

"Don't you worry, " Torres said.  "Lew or I will handle things here.  I
stopped by the E.R.  He said for you to call as soon as you're ready to
go down to the MRI unit.  What's that all about?  " "Maybe nothing.

I'll tell you as soon as I get back.  Meanwhile, don't let anyone near
her who doesn't have an ID tag."

"I used to do some per them, and before that I was a med/surg nurse on
two.  I know a lot of the staff here."

"Any doubts about anyone, just bring them over to be eyeballed by one
of the unit nurses."

"Done."  Barbara Torres moved into Kelly's room and set to work.  Abby
called Lew in the E.R.  Spanish class for Hector Ortega would commence in
three minutes.

The air seemed heavy, like it was liquid or something.  It even had a
weird taste.

Claire Buchanan's words played over and over in Abby's head as she made
her way cautiously down the back stairs to the radiology unit.

The lights in the main corridor were dim, and the place seemed totally
deserted.  Several years ago she had bought herself a running watch as
part of a pledge to jog more.  The pledge lasted only a few weeks, if
that, but the twenty-three-dollar watch was like Old Man River.  Now,
as she entered the blackened MRI unit, she put the watch in countdown
mode, set it for twenty minutes, and began.

She first entered the control room, which was connected by a door to
MRI radiologist Del Marshall's office.  The area, housing the huge,
complex electronic console and monitoring screens, was the purview of
the imaging technologist.  Beyond it, in a room the size of a large
closet, was the integrating computer itself.  The control area was
separated by a heavy glass wall from the room housing the MRI
machine.

The entire unit, including Marshall's office, was totally dark.  Abby
flipped on the lights in the main room and pulled the print curtains
closed on the control-room side of the glass, cutting down on much of
the glare.  Then she stepped inside the pitch-black radiologist's
office and closed the door.  There was no light filtering in from the
control room.  As a last precaution she pulled a wastebasket over and
left it by the door from the office to the main hall.  The noise of the
door bumping it might give her a few seconds of advance warning.  Of
course, doing anything beneficial with those seconds would be something
else again.

She closed Marshall's office door behind her and passed through the
control area to the actual MRI unit.  The watch read 18, 43.

As a resident Abby had taken a tour of the MRI unit serviced by the St.
John's radiologists.  Now she wished she had paid more attention.  The
machine was massiveþa seven-foot-long tube, less than two feet in
diameter, set inside the housing of the electromagnet, which was a huge
gleaming cube, seven feet on a side.  Extending from the cylinder was
the track and movable platform on which the patient was placed to glide
electronically into the machine.

Abby examined the track quickly, then peered into the tube.  The
opening was wide enough to admit an average-sized person.  She
suspected that anyone above 250 or so would have a problem even fitting
inside, let alone fitting inside and remaining sane for three-quarters
of an hour with shoulders pressed against the sides and nose just
inches from the top.  Claire Buchanan wasn't large, but she was
claustrophobic.

Abby's estimation of the woman's determination went up several
notches.

Claire had wanted so much to be well again that she was willing to
enter the lair of her dragon.

"What went wrong, Claire?  What went wrong?  " Abby sang the words
softly, tunelessly as she crawled around the base of the machine,
looking for something, anything, out of place.  At the rear of the unit
the track extended several feet so that patients could be positioned
with their torso and head outside and their lower body inside.  In that
way the pelvis and legs were easily scanned.  Below the opening were
the hydraulics that helped move the sled along the track.

Nothing among the cables seemed unusual.  Abby cursed herself for
having absolutely no idea what she was looking for.

Suddenly, from beyond the control room, she heard the soft sound of the
office door striking the waste can.  She was as far away from the door
to the waiting room and hallway as she could possibly be.  There was no
chance she could make it.  She huddled behind the scanner and peered
over the track, through the long cylinder.  The door from the office to
the control room opened, backlighting the curtains she had drawn.

Seconds later they were pulled apart.  From her position it was
impossible to see who was there.  She glanced at her watch.  Fifteen
minutes left.  Unless Lew had failed miserably, it wasn't the X-ray
technician.

She held her breath as the door from the control room slowly opened.

She could see who the intruder was only if he or she passed directly
beyond the cylinder opening.  Abby sensed the footsteps moving around
toward where she was crouched.  Silently, she pulled herself facedown
onto the track and then into the narrow cylinder.  The footsteps
continued around to where she would surely have been seen had she
stayed crouched next to the hydraulics.  Then they turned and headed
back toward the front of the room.  Abby pushed herself backward again
until only her upper half was in the cylinder.  She extended her neck,
lifting her head so that she could see in front of her.

Suddenly, a man's broad back appeared to the left of the track.  He was
wearing white.  Abby's mind was swirling.  Was this a radiologist?  If
so, what was he there for?  An emergency MRI?  The man stepped away.

He was wearing bright white coveralls, not a clinic coat.  He began
singing a woeful rendition of the "Folsom Prison Blues" as he dusted
the floor.  Abby barely took a breath as the janitor sang and dusted
around her.  She watched the time flash down on her watch.  Eleven
minutes.  Ten.

The singing stopped.  Moments later the lights went out.  The doors
opened and closed.  Soon the silence and the darkness were total.

Abby waited an extra thirty seconds, then managed to roll over so that
she was facing upward.  How on earth had claustrophobic Claire allowed
herself to be scanned even once, let alone a second time?

The air seemed heavy, like it was liquid or something.  . . .

She took Lew's penlight from her breast pocket and ran the beam over
the white enamel inside the tube.  Inch by inch, she worked her way out
of the cylinder in the direction she had entered, keeping her body
extended by keeping her feet on the track.  She was about eighteen
inches from the opening when she saw themþa single row of minuscule
pores in the enamel, extending in an arc directly over where a typical
patient's nose or mouth would be.  She held the light inches away from
the openingsþa row of, perhaps, thirty holes that were little more than
pinpricks.  Were they standard in an MRI?  If so, what would they be
for?

Abby's pulse was racing as she pulled herself out of the cylinder and
turned on the overheads.  There were eight minutes left by her watch.

She took a step back and ran her gaze around the margin of the
opening.

At the twelve o'clock position there was a small fan that was used, she
assumed, to keep air circulating over the patient during the test.

At three o'dock there was a clear Plexiglas disc attached to the
housing by a rivet and hinge in such a way that it could be swung over
the opening and fixed in place, effectively sealing the cylinder at
that end.  Abby went around and checked the other end.  There was no
similar piece there.

Was that a standard part of the equipment?

Six minutes.

Abby hurried to the phone on the wall by the door and called Lew.  "Is
the X-ray tech still there?  " she asked.

"He's busy conjugating the verb ir.  To go."

"Well, menos prisa, por favor."

"Go slow.  Where did you learnþ?  " "Lew, I've found something, but I
need more time."

"Tell me."

"Can you see Hector right now?  We can't let him come back here yet."

"He's right over there at the nurses' station, wondering how so many
people in the world who are not as smart as he is can speak Spanish so
well.  But a guy's just been brought in with a fractured hand from
punching a tree instead of his girlfriend.  Hector knows him and knows
he's got work to do."

"Fifteen minutes.  Can you give me that much?

" "What have you found?

" "Lew, there are tiny holes inside the cylinder just above where the
patient's nose and mouth would be.  Do you know if they're supposed to
be there?  " "No idea."

"There's more.  There's a Plexiglas plate that can be swung over the
opening at that end, sealing it off and creating an enclosed space."

"But what for?  " "I don't know.

Listen, Lew, I need to look some more, and I want to call the radiology
resident on duty at St. John's.  Can you give me fifteen minutes?  "
"I can try.  Maybe I'll have him conjugate hacer el amor."

" To make love.  From what I know of Hector, that might do it.  I'm at
extension three-three-eight-four.  Call if you lose him.  I'm going to
check with St. John's, then I'm going to try to figure out what comes
out of those little holes."

"Just be careful and keep me informed.  Kelly underestimated those
people."

"So did I. " Abby hung up, reset her watch for a thirteen-minute
countdown, and used the switchboard operator to call St. John's.  It
took just a one minute conversation for her to confirm what she
intuitively suspected, there are no holes inside the standard MRI, and
no technical reason ever to close off one end of the cylinder.

. . . It even had a weird taste.  . . .

She returned to the massive housing and first examined the cables and
tubes making up the hydraulic system for the sled, then the base of the
machine.  Nothing.

Nine minutes.

Feeling just a bit panicky from the press of time, she stepped back
again, searching for something, anything, that looked out of place.  It
was fully half a minute before she realized she had not inspected the
top of the unit.  She pulled over a wooden straight-backed chair and
stood on it.  The missing piece was thereþa small bundle of clear
plastic tubes, each slightly smaller than IV tubing, rising from the
floor next to the hydraulics, and running around the outside of the
housing to a spot just above the ventilation fan.  From there the
bundle dropped into the machine through a black-rubber gasket.

Seven minutes.

Abby traced the bundle of tubes back down to the floor at the base of
the unit, where they disappeared into a white enamel shield.  Using the
penlight, she tried peering down behind the shield.  As far as she
could tell, the tubes seemed to come right out of the tiled floor.

Lying prone on the floor and using the penlight for an up-close
examination, she studied the foot-square beige tiles, and the gray
grout between them.

Six minutes.

Five.

Just as she was about to give up, she saw itþa thin space, less than a
millimeter, through the grout bordering a two-foot square of tile.  It
was virtually invisible except at almost microscopic range and had to
be a trapdoor of some sort.  At that moment the wall phone began
ringing.

Abby sprang up and dashed to it.

"Hector's just gotten a call, " Lew said.  "One of the floors is
sending someone down for an emergency belly film.  He's meeting them in
two minutes."

"Damn!  " "I really can't keep him here without having it look terribly
suspicious."

"Lew, I've found it!  The MRI machine is rigged to function as some
sort of inhalation chamber.  That was why Claire experienced what she
did.  The gas, whatever it is, comes up through the floor in six small
tubes and enters the cylinder at the top, right by those little ports I
told you about.  If that Plexiglas panel is in place, it would be
possible to deliver a very closely controlled dose."

"An inhalation chamber.  God, as if that thing didn't feel enough like
being pushed into a tomb."

"There's more.  I traced the tubes down, and they seem to go straight
into the floor.

Lew, I think there's a trapdoor in the tile right near where they go
in.  I want to find a way to open it."

"What about Hector?  " "If all he's doing is a standard set of
abdominal films, there's no reason why he should come in here.  I'm
going to chance it."

"I don't know if that's wise."

"I'll be back in the E.R in ten minutes."

"Justþ" "I know.  I know.  It seems that be careful' is all you've been
saying to me lately."

"I'm crazy about you.  How's that?  " "That's much better, " she
said.

"I'll see you in ten."  She went out and closed the curtain in the
control room.  Next she returned and checked the walls in the main room
for any switch that might unlock the panel in the floor.  Then she
stopped, calmed herself, and struggled to overcome her limited
mechanical aptitude.  She began by reasoning the situation out piece by
piece, the way she did in the E.R when her first rapid-fire treatment of
a crisis failed to work.  Whatever was going on in the MRI scanner, it
was unlikely that more than a very few people were in on it.  Dozens of
explanations could be given to any technician or physician who
questioned the tubes or the Plexiglas.  And the patients, many of whom
wore coverings on their eyes to help them relax, were unlikely even to
notice the pores in the cylinder, or to think them abnormal.  A switch
on the wall would be too prone to being thrown by mistake.  Instead,
she concluded, it had to be a lever, most likely concealed beneath the
electromagnet housing itself.  Something mechanical, not electric.

Abby got down on her hands and knees once again, feeling up underneath
the cylinder where the track came out.  It took several careful
minutes, but finally her hand closed on a smooth curved handle hidden
high up behind the housing, well away from any place it could be
accidentally pulled.  It was metal of some sort, although if so, it
certainly had to be nonferromagnetic.  She composed herself with a deep
breath, curled her fingers around the handle, and pulled.  With a soft
pop the latch released.  The four-tile segment of floor opened half an
inch at one side.  Abby's pulse was hammering again as she crawled
over, lifted the hatch, and peered inside.  Below her was a ladder, set
in concrete, dropping six feet or so to the start of a concrete
tunnel.

The | narrow plastic tubes, extending through the tunnel wall,
appeared to run along the length of ceiling.  The floor of the tunnel
was slatted wood, like the floor of a sauna.

It took a few seconds for Abby to re-create the orientation of the
hospital and the radiology suite and to get her bearings.  But when she
did, she became certain of what she already suspectedþthe tunnel was
headed straight toward the Colstar cliff.  From outside the unit,
voices became audible.  People were closer than she would have expected
given the room where Hector would have been working.  She hurried
across and killed the overhead lights.  Then she returned to the
trapdoor, using the penlight.  Suddenly there was a scraping, as if
someone's shoe had brushed against the hallway door.

Quickly, she dropped onto the ladder and lowered herself into the
tunnel.  Then she checked that she could open the hatch from underneath
before pulling it down over her.

She crouched at the base of the ladder and waited.  A minute passed.

Two.  There was no sound from above.  The tunnel was almost exactly her
heightþperhaps an inch or so more.  The air was stagnant and dusty, the
darkness total.  Abby shined the penlight into the blackness.  It
illuminated a few feet, no more.  Again she listened for sounds from
above.  Again there was nothing.

She had come too far, learned too much, to turn back now.  Moving
inches at a time, hunching her shoulders, and keeping the weak light
trained on the floorboards, she took her first tentative steps toward
what she knew was the man-made cavern within the Colstar cliff.

CHAPTER THIRTY- SIX

The concrete tunnel sloped downward and seemed to
make a gradual bend to the right.  As she moved through it, Abby tried
to estimate where she might be relative to what she remembered of the
terrain and the layout of PRH.  Under the service parking lot behind
the hospital.  . . . Under the long gravel-and-dirt lot, staked out
with flag sticks for some future addition.  . . . Under the high
chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.  . . .

Under the broad meadow of boulders, jagged rock, and wildflowers that
led to the Colstar cliff.  . . . And, finally, somewhere near or under
the cliff itself.

Progress was slow.  There was a row of bare incandescent lightbulbs,
set about ten feet apart along the center of the ceiling, but none of
them was lit.  Abby cursed herself for not thinking to look for a
switch somewhere around the ladder, although it was doubtful she would
have felt safe turning it on.  Running parallel to the row of lights
was the bundle of six narrow plastic tubes, each color-coded by bands
of tape spaced along its length, yellow, red, blue, green, pink, and
black.

The small penlight succeeded a little in piercing the dark, but the
blackness was consuming when Abby turned it off.  Gradually, the damp,
musty taste to the air began to subside.  Her estimate put her well
beyond the base of the Colstar cliff now, but there was absolutely no
way to know her position with any certainty.  From somewhere up ahead,
she could feel a faint breeze and hear the low hum of
air-conditioning.

Then, as she continued the gentle curve to the right, she saw a faint
light.

Her heart was pounding in her throat as she moved forward.  Twice she
had to stop and brace herself against the wall just to allow her pulse
to slow down.  With each step the light grew larger and brighter, until
finally she could make out the outlines of a doorway.  Her best guess
was that she had traveled a quarter of a mile from the hospital.  Maybe
more.

Except for the faint hum of the air-conditioning unit, the silence was
absolute.  Abby turned off the penlight and inched her way along the
wall.  Her fight and flight reflexes were turned up to the maximum, but
she knew that nothing was going to override her anger and her
overwhelming curiosity.  The light flowing through the doorway was
fluorescent.  As she moved to the end of the passageway, she realized
that it was coming from around the side of a whitewashed concrete wall
twenty feet away.  She stepped around the doorway and was standing
within a dimly lit space that rose into the rock as far as she could
see.  At the center of the space was an elevator, enclosed in a
concrete shaft.

A metal staircase wound around it like a serpent.  At the base of the
stairs, riveted to the stone wall, was a professionally painted sign,
WARNING IN THE EVENT OF FIRE OR GAS LEAK DO NOT USE ELEVATOR.  BE
CERTAIN SPRINKLER SYSTEM IS ON.

IF NOT, THROW LEVER BEFORE LEAVING.  TAKE STAIRWAY TO 1ST OR 2ND LEVEL
EMERGENCY EXIT.

Beside the sign, encased in glass, were the fire alarm and the manual
lever controlling the emergency sprinkler system.  In a rack on the
floor were half a dozen hand-held state-of-the-art fire
extinguishers.

And hanging on the wall were three rubberized exposure suits and an
equal number of gas masks.

Abby flattened herself against the wall and listened for any hint that
others were around.  All was quiet.  From her hours of reviewing
Kelly's research in the registry of deeds office and the library, she
knew exactly where she wasþat the bottom of the main shaft of the
Patience Mine.  Unless she was badly off base, the emergency exits
referred to on the sign were two of the three old ventilation shafts
that were so carefully camouflaged on the rock face.

Grateful that she was wearing sneakers, Abby stepped cautiously onto
the first metal step, waited there a few seconds, then quietly made her
way upward.  Lighting along the rock wall beside the staircase was
minimalþwidely spaced low-wattage incandescent bulbs covered by opaque
plastic clip-on shades.  She could look over the black iron-pipe
railing and see straight down alongside the concrete elevator shaft.

The first ventilation tunnel was twenty-five feet up the rock wall,
exactly where she anticipated.  However, the opening was sealed with a
locked accordion-type metal gate.  Just beyond the gate were tools,
bags of concrete, and hand-held drilling equipment indicating that the
shaft was undergoing some sort of repair.

USE 2ND EMERGENCY EXIT, the sign wired to the gate read.  Abby tiptoed
up to the next landing and was now looking a dizzying fifty feet
straight down along the shaft.  To her right was the emergency-escape
passageway, beginning with an opening in the rock similar to the one at
the end of the tunnel from the hospital.  To her left was a concrete
landing and a short flight of stairs going up.  She tried the stairs
first.  At the top of the flight was the pitch-black space Abby knew
from A Brief History of the Patience Mine.  Although the soft glow from
the stairway didn't allow her to see beyond ten or twelve feet, she
strongly sensed that the entire cavernous area, called "The Upper Dig"
in the monograph, was empty.  According to the book, she was now about
forty feet below the plant and sixty feet or so above "The Lower Dig.

" Abby returned to the emergency-exit tunnel.  It was totally unlit,
about a foot lower than her height, and no more than two and a half
feet from side to side.  Once again she paused to listen to the deep
silence.  She had no sense that anyone was nearby, but her fight/flight
| mechanism remained on red alert.  Cautiously, she made her way down
the tunnel, clicking on the penlight every few steps.  Ninety or a
hundred feet, the diagrams in the mine book indicated.  It took quite
some time to reach the end of the passageway, because she was forced to
move uncomfortably hunched over.  She wondered if Kelly had made it
this far.

The thought of the woman, the image of what she looked like now, added
a few more degrees to Abby's anger.  Her boiling point wasn't too far
off.  The door, which she knew blended so well into the rock face on
the other side, was plywood.  It was painted black on this side, and
fixed to holes in the rock walls by six sliding bolts, three on a
side.

DOOR IS ALARMED, the sign affixed to it read.  USE ONLY FOR ABSOLUTE
EMERGENCY.

Abby shined the penlight carefully around the margin of the door.  Then
she turned around with no little difficulty and retraced her steps to
the staircase in the main shaft.  She had started down, and was ten
feet or so from the lowest level, when the elevator gears engaged with
a dank that echoed off the rock and startled her into several missed
heartbeats.  The vestibule at the foot of the staircase was dimly lit
and deserted.  Uncertain whether the car was moving down or up, she
raced to the bottom of the stairs and hid in the shadows of the
hospital tunnel.

In moments the grinding of the descending car stopped and the door
swung open.  A slight man with Coke-bottle glasses emerged.  He was
wearing a lab coat and studying a clipboard.  Abby crouched farther back
into the shadows, but still, had the man turned to look, he would have
been staring right at her.  Instead, totally engrossed in whatever was
on the clipboard, he passed no more than six feet from her and headed
toward the source of the fluorescent light.

Although a retreat back to the hospital seemed like a prudent course,
Abby knew that she had come too far not to follow him.  She crossed the
vestibule, flattened herself against the concrete wall, and inched
along it until she could peer around the corner.  The space in front of
her was vast and gleaming beneath a drop ceiling and brilliant
fluorescent lighting.  It was separated from the rock by a three-foot
tarmac path and an encircling thick glass wall that reached the
ceiling.

Within the enclosed space were a number of rooms, partitioned by other
walls of glass.  The man with the lab coat was about twenty feet away,
working at a computer in a well-equipped office with four desks.  No
one else was around.  On one wall of the office was a large cork board
with an assortment of newspaper and magazine articles pinned up, as
well as a number of documents.  On the opposite glass wall, hanging
from a metal strip, was an American flag.

Still in a crouch, she inched her way along the outside glass wall.

Looking through the transparent walls at the various rooms, she could
see that one sectionþa square perhaps twenty feet on a sideþwas sealed
across the ceiling with painted plaster.  In addition, it was equipped
with four sets of closed ports along with thick gloves that were
attached on the inner side to manipulate robot arms.  Seated at one of
the ports, working on the contents of a small brass vat, was another
scientistþa large black man, also wearing a knee-length lab coat.  Abby
moved back into the shadows, though, as before, she would have been
seen easily had the man's attention not been fixed on the mechanical
arms.

To her left, in a small area marked with the black-on-yellow universal
symbol for dangerous materials, were two dozen or more gas tanks of
varying sizes painted in colors identical to markings on the six tubes
entering the MRI scanner.  They were secured in metal racks and labeled
with stenciled lettering.  From where she was, it was impossible to
read any of the names.  But moving much closerþmoving at all, for that
matterþwould greatly increase her risk of being spotted by the man at
the computer, who was facing almost in her direction.

Her choices seemed limited, stay partially secluded and risk the arrival
of more people and almost certain discovery, or chance moving nearer to
the storage area to learn what she could about the contents of the
tanks and get back to the hospital.  She flattened out on the gray tile
floor and moved in a crawl toward the glass outer wall.  She was
shielded in part by some equipment and was at an angle where the man at
the computer would have to turn thirty or forty degrees to spot her.

Within ten feet she had moved directly behind the scientist working the
robotics.  The tanks were no more than fifteen feet away now, the
stenciling almost legible.  She crawled a few feet closer before
risking another look.  The word stenciled in black on the red tube made
her blood freeze, SARIN.

Following the disaster in the Tokyo subway system, when a radical
religious cult had exposed hundreds to the gas, Abby had attended an
E.R-department briefing on sarin and other chemical weapons.

Ironically, the presentation had been made by her friend, toxicologist
Sandra Stuart.  Sandra was assisted by a physician/researcher from the
U. S.
Army Chemical School at Fort Something-or-other in Alabama, who spiced
up his portion of the talk with a number of terrifying slides dating
back to World War I.

Sarin was in the organophosphate class of chemicals and, as such, had a
modestly effective antidote.  But the molecule-for-molecule potency of
the neuroparalytic agent was so intense that even a small exposure
would often cause death by suffocation before any treatment could be
administered.  Suddenly Abby remembered the patient of George
Oleander's whose blood had lit up for small amounts of
organophosphate.

Exposure to fertilizer, Oleander had said.  A yearly event for the
careless farmer.

Nothing to worry about.  Bullshit, George!

Abby peered through the legs of a table and between two workbenches in
time to see the man with the thick glasses push back from his computer
and head toward the robotics room.  For one paralyzing moment he was
directly facing her.  She forced herself down and tried to make her
body melt into the floor.  Then, after half a minute, she risked a
peek, half expecting to see him standing right there on the other side
of the glass wall staring down at her.  Instead, his back was to her as
he spoke with the other scientist.  The larger man had pulled his arms
out of the protective gloves and was laughing.  He had a jovial face
and wonderfully animated hands when he spoke.  Abby wondered how he
felt, knowing that he was working every day with a substance so lethal
that the contents of a single tank, properly released, could probably
wipe out a large city.

After a conversation that lasted only a few minutes, the myopic
researcher patted the other man on the shoulder and headed for the
elevator.  Moments later Abby heard the gears engage.  She had dodged a
good-sized bullet.  And for the moment, at least, it was just Abby and
one very absorbed scientist.  Immediately, her game plan changed.  She
was still going to identify the contents of the gas cylinders.  But
before she retreated through the tunnel to the hospital, she was now
intent on getting into the office and seeing exactly what items were
tacked on the cork board.

On her hands and knees she moved a few feet closer to the gasstorage
room.  The stenciling on the yellow tanks became discernible
firstþTRICHOTHECENE.  The chemicalþan irritant better known as TTCþwas
another of the weapons described at the St. John's toxicology
lecture.

Along with mustard gas, which she then noticed was in the blue
cylinders, TTC was one of the most debilitating of the so-called
blistering agents.

The pink tanks held something called mycotoxin, and the black ones were
labeled VX in white.  Neither name rang any bells.  The last set of
cylinders, green labeled in white, contained phosgene oxime, which the
expert from Alabama said had been in worldwide use for well over
seventy-five years, most recently by the Soviets against the Afghans
and by the Iraqis against the Kurds.  Now, it appeared, the U. S.
government against Claire Buchanan and others at Patience Regional
Hospital could be added to the list.

Had Claire almost died from an accidental overdose, or was it an
allergic reaction?  If Del Marshall knew this experimentation, or
whatever it was, was going on in his departmentþand it was certainly
hard to imagine he didn'tþno wonder he looked so pale as Claire was
being resuscitated.

Abby had been inside the lab now for twenty minutes.  It was time to
get out and get back to Lew with what she had found.  There were still
a number of missing pieces, among them the connection between this
subterranean operation and the cadmium exposures in Josh, Willie
Cardoza, and the rest.  But at this point she had seen enough of what
was going on so that the Alliance could try to enlist the intervention
of someone with political influence and a conscience provided, of
course, there was such a person.

Once more in the shadows, she worked her way back toward the tunnel.

A short run and she would be safely there.  Instead, she stopped
opposite the door to the glass-enclosed office, essentially out of
sight of the robotics man.  But once she was inside the office, she
would be fair game again.

She dropped back down to her hands and knees.  Then she moved to the
doorway of the office.  Through the far glass wall she could see what
was almost certainly the gas-delivery areaþa chamber containing tanks
of all six colors, plus two other large gas cylinders, one white and
one orange.  Abby bet herself that one of those tanks contained some
sort of cadmium fumes.  She remembered Kelly's description of the
maximum allowable circulating cadmiumþtwo aspirins pulverized and blown
into the air in the Astrodome.  Impressive.  In vapor form the heavy
metal would be right up there in toxicity with some of these other
gases.

The more Abby thought about the possibility, the more sense it made.

Another puzzle piece might well have fallen into place.  A slipup with
the cadmium fumes had resulted in the exposure of a number of Colstar
employees, including Josh.  Then she remembered that there would have
to have been more than one slipup, since Gus Schumacher would have been
exposed before Josh had even arrived in Patience.  Postulating two
accidental exposures didn't feel that comfortable as a theory, though
it did explain the facts.

There was one thing Abby had no doubt about whatsoever.  The array of
cylinders in the dosing room were connected to a complex system of
tubing, gauges, and digital displays.  And at the receiving end of the
tubes were the NIWWs.

From the office doorway she could dearly see the headlines on the
articles tacked to the cork board.

MANY DEAD, HUNDREDS ILL IN TOKYO SUBWAY GAS ATTACK KURDS CHARGE HUSSEIN
WITH USING YELLOW RAIN CHEMICALþ Hundreds Claimed Dead, Thousands Sick
SARIN, DEADLY SARINþ WHO WILL BE NEXT?

VETERANS GROUPS RALLY TO PROTEST INACTION ON GULF WAR SYNDROMEþ "We
Were Gassed, " Vets Proclaim There were at least two dozen articles
dealing with confirmed or suspected chemical attacks on military and
civilian targets around the world.  Crouching low, Abby took a cautious
step into the office.  She was about to cross to the desk when she
caught movement far to her left.

The hulking scientist had left the robotics room and was heading
through the maze of glass doorways toward the office.  She was frozen,
unable to decide whether to flee or try to conceal herself in the
office.  The hesitation cost her the option of running.  Praying that
she hadn't yet been spotted, she dived into the well beneath one of the
desks, drew her knees to her chin, and pulled the chair back in
place.

It had been pure hubris not to leave when she had the chance.  Stupid
and reckless.  And now she was going to payþpossibly with her life.

The scientist entered the office humming and walked directly to the
desk.

Abby breathe slowly through her nose, trying desperately not to make a
movement or a sound.  He stood behind the chair and rummaged through
some papers that were two inches above her head.  If he pushed the
chair under the desk now, it would hit against her almost
immediately.

Still humming, the man moved back from the desk.  Abby watched his
scuffed shoes, the cuffs of his trousers, and the lower edge of his lab
coat as he walked out through the doorway where she had just been
standing.  Then he turned left toward the elevator.  She wondered if he
was planning to leave the area completely unattended.  But with her
heart rate still in the 150 range and her clothes damp from tension,
she knew that even if he did, she was finished there.  Then, from just
around the corner, she heard a door open and close.  The toilet, she
thought, remembering now that she had seen the door near the elevator
with the man and woman symbols on it.

Breathless, she scrambled out from under the desk and sprinted down the
corridor and into the tunnel.  Almost home.  After fifty feet or so she
paused and allowed herself a grim smile.  She had finished what Kelly
had started.  Now it was Lew's turnþhis and the others in the
Alliance.

She started back along the pitch-black passageway, praying that Kelly
had begun to regain consciousness.

Familiar with the terrain, she moved much more quickly than she had
before.  She slowed only when she sensed she was reaching the ladder
and hatchway beneath the MRI scanner.  All that mattered now was making
it to Lew without being spotted.  Quinn and his Colstar cronies would
know that they had been penetrated once, by a woman who was now
unconscious.  But they would have no idea their secrecy had been
pierced a second time.  It would be business as usual as long as Kelly
was in a coma.

When Abby reached the ladder at the end of the tunnel, she used her
penlight for the first time.  Everything was as it had been.  It was
well after ten now.  There was no reason to expect anyone to be around
the scanner or, in fact, the MRI unit.  Still, she slid the latch back
very carefully and pushed the hatch open an inch.  The scanner room was
as dark as the tunnel.  She stepped up a rung and guided the hatch back
silently until it touched the floor.  Then she quietly stepped up
another rung, bringing her waist to the level of the floor.  At that
instant the overhead fluorescent lights winked on.

Abby blinked until her dilated pupils adjusted to the brightness.

Standing a few feet away, legs apart, arms folded across his chest, was
Lyle Quinn.  Behind him were George Oleander, Joe Henderson, Martin
Bartholomew, radiologist Del Marshall, and Police Captain Gould.

"Welcome back, Abby, " Quinn said.  "We've been waiting for you.  "
CHAPTER THIRTY- SEVEN

Abby stared in stunned silence as Lyle Quinn took
a step forward and extended his hand.  His black sports coat fell away
just enough to reveal a shoulder holster and gun.

"Here, let me help you out of there, " he said.

"Don't touch me!  " Abby shrieked the warning.

Quinn retreated.

"Have it your way."  For a few uncomfortable seconds there was total
silence.  From her spot on the ladder Abby surveyed the group.  Only
Del Marshall, perhaps unable to get past her lifesaving performance in
his department, looked uncomfortable at her situation.  He shifted from
one foot to the other and stared off at one wall.  Finally George
Oleander stepped forward.

Quinn, his body tensed, his eyes fixed on her like lasers, took a
single step to the side.

"Abby, nine or so years ago the town of Patienceþthe whole valleyþwas
dying, " Oleander began in his most paternal voice.  "Directly or
indirectly, almost everyone's livelihood dependedþand still doesþ on
Colstar.  And Colstar was going under.  Senator Corman did his best to
send what military contracts he could our way, and for a time the
company looked as if it was going to make it.  As you know, Ezra Black
lives not too far from here.  So even though he owns companies around
the world, he feels a special connection to Colstar and Patience
Valley.  He did his best to hang on while Corman did what he could in
Washington."  Oleander looked around for approval of his story.

Martin Bartholomew and Del Marshall nodded that he was doing well.

Captain Gould and Joe Henderson remained statuelike, their arms folded
across their chests.

Quinn, his silver hair fairly glowing beneath the bright fluorescents,
made no acknowledgment at all.  He appeared ready for action.  His
hands hung loose at his sides, but his fingers were in minute, constant
movement.  His linebacker's shoulders were square to her, his feet
apart.

He looked like a panther, getting set to spring.

The medical chief cleared his throat, shifted uneasily, then knelt so
that he was speaking directly at Abby.  His tone now was somewhere
between pleading and patronizing.

"For a while, with some government contracts coming in, it looked like
things might turn around for us.  Then, about eight years ago, some
terrorists in South America blew up the huge Colstar plant that mined
and refined most of the raw materials used in our manufacturing
operation here on the mesa.  Five Colstar employees were killed in the
blast.  After the explosion no one down there would help the
corporation rebuild.  It looked like that was the death knell for all
of us up here.

That's when Senator Corman stepped forward with a proposition."

"An offer you couldn't refuse, " Abby said, keeping Oleander and the
others in check with her eyes, while her mind evaluated and discarded
one possible move after another.

Run .  . . scream .  . . give in .  . . fight .  . . grovel .  . . try
to win the weak ones over .  . .

"I suppose you could say that, " Oleander responded.  "The truth is, we
didn't want to refuse.  Every other day, in some country or another, a
new chemical weapon was popping up.  Our scientists were working with
animals to develop antidotes to them.  But as often as not, the
treatments that seemed to work all right on some pig or sheep or monkey
ended up making our troops sicker than the chemicals.  The Gulf War
syndrome is a perfect example.  Half the symptoms in our troops were
from chemicals Hussein was exposing them to.  The rest were the result
of the so-called protecting drugs we were feeding them."  The NIWWs,
Abby realized.  The Alliance had been in the right church by suspecting
that an exposure of some sort was what unified the patients on their
list.  But they were mostly in the wrong pew.  Cadmium was only part of
the nasty picture.  The NIWWs' varied symptoms were certainly
consistent with those reported from heavymetal exposure, but they were
positively identical to the myriad complaints issued by returning Gulf
War veterans.

"So Corman wanted a human laboratory, " Abby said.  "A controlled
environment where microscopic amounts of gases could be pitted against
microscopic amounts of antidotes."

"Something like that.  At one time the government worked with
prisoners.

But that just isn't allowed anymore.  Besides, they needed an even more
rigidly controlled situation."

"Like a hospital, " Abby said.

"Initially we used our CT scanner.  Then, when MRIs became available,
we were able to get one when no other hospital our size in the country
could.  Some people have been .  . . inconvenienced.  I won't deny
that.

But in addition to our scanner, what we got in exchange for agreeing to
cooperate with our country's needs was a rebirth of the entire
valleyþthe businesses, the schools, the parks, and especially this
hospital."  And a hefty payday for each of you.

Perhaps sensing from Abby's expression that she had not been moved by
Oleander's explanation, Joe Henderson stepped forward.  The medical
chief got to his feet wearily and moved to one side.

"Abby, I'm sorry about that autopsy thing, " the husky hospital
president began, grinning his superficial Henderson grin, and not
bothering to kneel.  "But you were like a pit bull about this thing.

You had your teeth into our leg, and you wouldn't let up.  We decided
it was best for all concerned if you just left Patience.  Maybe we
should have sat down with you and explained."

"Maybe you should have, " Abby said hollowly, knowing there was no way
that option had ever been considered before the red pickup, fake
autopsy report, and high-powered rifle were rolled out.

The corner of Henderson's mouth twitched.  His plastic smile vanished
for a second.  Then, just as quickly, it returned.

"Well, we're doing that now, aren't we?  " he said in his bogus
drawl.

His manner and expression indicated that he was about finished
reasoning with her.

Abby looked up at Lyle Quinn and saw the emptiness in his eyes.  He was
a soldier, but a soldier devoid of conscience.  Welcome to My Lai,
Lieutenant Calley.  She knew there had to be a reason why she wasn't
already deadþand it had nothing to do with Quinn's compassion.

"How did you know where I was just now?  " she asked.

The chorus deferred to Quinn.

"You set off a silent alarm, " he said.  "A photoelectric beam at the
other end of this tunnel.  Unfortunately, it functioned improperly.

The lights went on all over the cliff outside, but there was no alert
to me or the security man on dutyþor I should say, not on duty.  By the
time we picked you up on our monitors, you were crawling around in the
office.

I assumed you were headed back to the hospital and decided it would be
best if we met you here."

"Why?  " "I don't understand."

"Why did you let me get all the way back here?  Why didn't you drug me,
stick me in a car in a garage, and turn on the engine, like you did to
Kelly Franklin?  " As she made the statement, Abby was focused on the
chorus standing to Quinn's right.  Bartholomew, Oleander, and Del
Marshall looked surprised.

Gould and Henderson knew.

"I don't know what you're talking about, " Quinn said vehemently.  "I'm
sorry about Kelly.  I like her very much.  But I certainly had nothing
to do with her suicide attempt.  Abby, we need your cooperation.  We
need to know who else in this hospitalþthis townþknows what about
Colstar.  We need to know how you knew your way into our facility.  And
mostly we need to know whether you will join us in keeping this
program, and with it this whole valley, alive."

"I .  . . I need some time to think about it."

"About what?  " Quinn said, an unmistakable note of impatience in his
voice.

He stared down at her, and Abby could tellþthe Colstar security chief
had decided that he had seen and heard enough.

"There are several others who know where I am and what I'm doing, " she
tried.

Quinn's icy eyes studied her for just a few more seconds.

"This is bullshit, " he snapped suddenly.  "We tried it your way,
George.

Now we'll do it mine.  Out of here, all of you.  Except Gould."  It
seemed as if the four hospital men were glad to be let off the hook.

They left quickly.  Abby knew that their mute departure was her death
sentence.

Quinn's eyes now were menacing.  Standing behind him, the tall police
chief wore an unnerving half smile.  Unconsciously, he wet his lips
with his tongue.  Whatever was about to happen to her he was going to
enjoy.

"Abby, suppose we three go on back to my office in the plant, " Quinn
said, stepping toward her.  "We'll have a talk."  Abby flashed on
Kelly's inert body, stretched across the front seat of her car.  The
men standing above her were remorseless.  Whether with drugs or torture
or both, Quinn would find a way to get his answers.  Then Abby Dolan
would simply vanish.  And in all likelihood Lew Alvarez would end up
missing or dead, as well.  Quinn had done it to David Brooks and
Kelly.

There was no reason to suspect she had anything better in store.

The prospect of Quinn merely touching her was terrifying.  The thought
of being completely helpless before him refused to register at all.

She felt as frightened as she could ever remember, and as
defenseless.

Still, there was no way she was going to allow herself to be taken
without a fight.  It was possible that screaming might have some
effectþpossible, but highly doubtful.  Instead, she slid one foot back
from the rung on which she was standing, and as Quinn moved toward her,
she pushed back with the other and dropped into the tunnel.  Above her,
Quinn quickly issued an order to Gould, then headed down after her.

But Abby, hunched over, arms spread to maintain herself between the
rock walls, was already running awkwardly along the wood-slatted floor,
through the consuming darkness.

"Abby, don't do this, " Quinn called out, his voice flooding the
tunnel.

"It's not necessary.  And it won't help."  At that instant the row of
ceiling bulbs flashed on, stretching out ahead of her like some obscene
carnival attraction.  Momentarily blinded, Abby lurched ahead, losing
her balance and stumbling heavily against the wall.  She cried out, as
much from the surprise as from the jolt to her shoulder.

Now she could hear Quinn's leather soles, snapping down on the wooden
slats like pistol shots.  He was moving quickly.  The darkness and the
low ceiling height had been to her advantage.  Now they had essentially
been neutralized.  Desperately, she reached up her fist and snapped the
next lightbulb offwith a sideways blow.  If the glass cut her hand, it
wasn't bad enough to matter.  Head down, she sprinted ahead, hammering
the fleshy side of her fist against bulb after bulb, spraying herself
and the area around her with glass, but also restoring the blackness.

Behind her the footfalls slowed.

"Abby, give it up!  " Quinn cried.

He tried to sound confident, but Abby sensed he was frustrated.  The
notion brought her a burst of energy and more resolve.  As long as
there was no one coming at her from the other end of the tunnel, she
had a chance.  And if there was someone moving toward her, he had
better be ready.  She had a decent mental picture of the entire
Patience mine and, before, had made it up as far as the Upper Dig.

Somehow the elevator or the circular staircase connected with the main
plant.  They had to.  And there was bound to be at least one more
staircase somewhereþprobably off the cavernous Upper Dig itself.  If
she could only make it to that stairway, she had a chance.

Running with lights ahead of her, Abby knew she had to be moving faster
than Quinn.  She sensed herself making the final, protracted curve to
the right and wished the tunnel were longer.  But at least no one had
intercepted her.  She wondered if Quinn had ordered Gould to call over
to the lab, and the cop had failed to reach anyone.  Whatever had
happened, the end of the tunnel was in sight and unobstructed.  She had
gotten a major lucky break.  The next one she would have to manufacture
for herself.

It would be obvious to Quinn that she had gone up the circular
staircase.  With walls of glass throughout the lab, there was simply no
place else she could go.  For that reason alone she frantically tried
to think of an option.  The bathroom came immediately to mind.  If she
could get in there and Quinn ran up the stairs, she could head back
through the tunnel to the hospital.  But if he spotted her going in, or
thought to look there, it was over.

She wondered if she could outrun him up the stairs by enough of a
margin to give her a shot at finding the stairway in the upper
chamberþif, in fact, there even was one.  She had fifteen years or so
on him, but he looked to be in great shape, and she knew she wasn't.

From a dead-even start she probably couldn't outrun him at all.  That
depressing notion was dominating her thoughts as she reached the end of
the tunnel.

The elevator and staircase were right in front of her.  The bathroom
was about twenty feet away.  But she could hear Quinn coming hard.

Within a few seconds he would be there.  Then she noticed the emergency
fire alarm and manual sprinkler lever, and below them, the row of fire
extinguishers.  With no time left to reason things through, she grabbed
the small hammer suspended on a chain, smashed the glass, and activated
both the alarm and the sprinkler systems.  Instantly there was a
powerful whooping from sirens throughout the lab.  Seconds later dozens
of overhead nozzles erupted in the equivalent of a typhoon rainstorm.

Abby snatched up one of the fire extinguishers, pulled the safety pin,
and stepped back from the tunnel just as Quinn charged through.  He was
only a few feet away when he turned toward her, already sodden from the
downpour.  No longer composed and confident, he was actually
snarling.

She aimed the broad nozzle at the center of his face and fired.

Instantly, his head vanished within a burst of chemical foam.  He cried
out and sank to one knee as he pawed at his eyes.  But the sprinklers,
moments ago her ally, were already rapidly washing away the foam.

Frightened of getting any nearer to the man, and panicked at losing her
advantage so quickly, Abby hoisted the heavy extinguisher to her chin
and hurled it across at him with an awkward chest pass.  It struck him
on the front of his shoulder and the side of his face, bowling him over
backward onto the rapidly flooding tile.  But Abby could tell he was
not badly injured.  She whirled and raced up the stairs, three at a
time.

The lower stairs were dangerously slippery.  Abby's foot skidded out
from under her.  She slammed her shin into the steel edge of the stair
above.  Electric pain shot up her leg, and for the briefest moment she
thought it was broken.  She cried out and stumbled, barely managing to
keep from falling.  But she knew she had been badly gashed.  She
glanced back.  Quinn was on his feet, still pawing at his eyes, but
obviously regaining his vision.  There were no sprinklers past the
ceiling of the Lower Dig, so the stairs were dry.  And although Abby's
lungs were beginning to burn, adrenaline enabled her to continue taking
two or three steps at a time.  Then, just as she passed the locked
accordion gate at the first emergency tunnel, she heard the clanging of
heavy footsteps from the stairway high above her.

It wasn't even worth slowing to look back.  She knew Quinn was
coming.

The vise was closing.  The only hope she hadþa wafer-thin chance, at
thatþwas to make it to the vast Upper Dig and pray she could find a
staircase up to the plant.

No, she realized suddenly.  No, that wasn't her only hope.  There was
another optionþnot much better, but possible.  The landing at the upper
escape tunnel was just a short distance above her.  If she could make
it there without running into the man who was charging down from above,
there would be some confusion between him and Quinn about whether she
had gone left to the short flight of stairs leading to the Upper Dig,
or right, into the old ventilation shaft.  That hesitation might give
her time to reach the emergency exit and throw the six bolts holding
the door.  Once outside, she would just have to improvise.  But she had
been doing that since she had entered the MRI unit in the first
place.

From that point there had to be grips built into the rock to get down
to the meadow or up to the mesa.

The man clanging down from above couldn't have been any farther away
than a single loop of the staircase when Abby hunched down and plunged
to her right, into the tunnel that the Gardner monograph on the
Patience Mine had captioned "Piercing an Imposing Wall of Rock."  The
ceiling of the passageway, a foot or so lower than the tunnel to the
hospital, was worth maybe another ten or fifteen seconds to her.  But
even for her the run along the hundred-foot channel was awkward and
difficult.  What little light penetrated from the main shaft
disappeared within a few feet.  The darkness was stifling.  Again and
again she lurched heavily against the rock walls.  Her shirt, soaked
through from the sprinklers, shredded at the point of her left
shoulder, along with the skin underneath it.  The pain barely
registered.

The burning in her lungs was a wildfire now.  The heavy, stale air
refused to allow her a decent breath.  The hundred feet seemed like a
mile.  Suddenly she hit the doorþa stunning blow off the side of her
forehead.  She fell backward, dazed.  Then, frantically battling
dizziness, pain, and a wave of nausea, she scrambled to her knees and
pulled Lew's penlight from the pocket of her sodden jeans.  Remarkably,
the promotional gift from Ezra Black's pharmaceutical company was still
working.  She pulled one bolt back, then another and another.  Her
knuckles scraped against the rock.  From behind her in the tunnel she
could hear the continued wailing of the emergency sirens.  But now she
could hear footsteps as well.  Then, as she threw the fourth and fifth
bolts, Lyle Quinn's voice filled the darkness.

"Give it up, Abby!  There's an arrest warrant being put together right
now saying that you tried to kill Kelly!  Working with us is your only
hope!  Only we can save you now."  Desperately, Abby clawed at the last
bolt.

"Abby, stay right there!  You'll never get down the rock alive!  " The
bolt wouldn't budge.  There were no hinges, so the door had to be
removable.  But inward or out?  Quinn's footsteps were drawing
closer.

Abby dropped to her back, drew both knees to her chin, and shot her
legs out with all the force she could manage.  The door broke free,
splintering at the bolt, and flew out into the cool night.  Instantly
the tunnel was flooded with fresh air .  . . and light.

Abby peered out.  She was far above the valley and the town.  From
beyond the meadow below, at the base of the fence, widely spaced
spotlights were illuminating much of the cliff.  Steady rainþnow
windblownþwas continuing to fall, making the dark rock glisten.  In the
distance, near the center of town, she could see the blue strobes of
two police cruisers heading toward the plant.  If Quinn was telling the
truthþand on this she had no reason to doubt himþthe drivers of those
cruisers had been dispatched with a warrant for the arrest of one Abby
Dolan.  If Joe Henderson could come up with a bogus but totally legal
autopsy report, and George Oleander could arrange to have toxic
chemicals instilled into his trusting patients, a mere fraudulent
arrest warrant had to be child's play for the men of Patience.

As far as she could see, there were no man-made handholds on the
rock.

But to her relieved surprise, although the cliff was frighteningly
steep, it wasn't perfectly sheer.  There was more slope than she had
appreciated from Lew's slides or even from looking up the rock.  Not
much slope, but some.  Given optimum conditions on a dry day, if she
was in no particular hurry and never looked down, it was likely she
could have found enough purchase and footholds to make the descent.

But no situation could have been further from optimum than the one she
was in now.

She would have done almost anything to keep from stepping out onto the
rock face.  But measured against her fear of being killed on the jagged
boulders at the base of the cliff was the unthinkable prospect of
becoming Lyle Quinn's captive.

Without hesitating she set her feet on a ledge no more than six inches
wide, dug her fingers into a shallow crevice, and pulled herself out
onto the slippery rock.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

Willing herself not to look down, Abby clung to
the wet rock with her fingertips, moving steadily sideways as swirling
gusts threatened, again and again, to tear her away into the
blackness.

The cliff curved gently to her right.  The farther she could move around
the bend, the more difficult it would be for Quinn to shoot at her if,
in fact, that was his intention.  It was hard to imagine that Quinn, or
whoever conceived of the laboratory escape routes, had ever tried
getting down from here.

But, then again, the exit they were probably expecting to use was the
one at twenty-five feet.

Abby focused desperately on the rock to her right.  Each time it seemed
there was no place for her to go, a crack in the rock and foothold
would become apparent, and she could move on.  She uttered a soft
little-girl's cry with each breath, trying her best to ignore burning
pains in her shin and shoulder.  A piece of lightbulb glass, embedded
in the side of her palm, now felt like a deep needle jab every time she
tightened her grip.  Still, she moved laterally, trying to put some
distance between her and the ventilation shaft opening before Quinn
reached it.

She was almost midway between the top of the mesa and the ground.  The
slope of the rock was such that while climbing down was a possibility,
there was absolutely no way to go up.  From far above, the glow from
the giant neon COLSTAR sign reflected obscenely off the rain, staining
the pitch-black sky crimson.

Finally Abby worked herself to a position that was secure enough for
her to pause and look about.  She was some fifty feet from the opening
in the rock.  The spot she had found was in the shadow between two
beams knifing upward from the powerful lights below.  Quinn was still
nowhere to be seen.  Wind-whipped rain continued to make even standing
motionless treacherous.  Abby clung to her hold and scanned the
boulders and meadow below.  The chain-link fence, topped by barbed
wire, was unscalable.  To the north it was built up into the cliff
itselœ No chance there.  But the south end looked possible.  The fence
ended against a high wall of almost sheer rock.  There was dearly no
way over it œfrom the outside.  But the fence had been built to keep
intruders out The rock on this side looked to be sloped.  If she could
get to the fence, it might be possible to climb back up the cliff there
and slide or tumble down the other side.

The prospect of trying that route was only slightly less terrifying
than the notion of giving up.  In the distance the blue strobes of the
police cruisers were moving closer.

Having decided on a course of action, Abby took a single step to her
right.  Still distracted by Quinn's failure to appear at the opening,
she missed her footing and slipped.  Before she could even react, her
feet were out from under her.  Clawing frantically at the wet rock, she
slid downward, scraping her belly, chest, and arms.  Ten feet,
twenty.

Suddenly her feet bounced off a large, jagged spire of rock, slowing
her fall enough for her to twist her body and grab hold of the spire as
she slid past.  Her full weight snapped down, nearly tearing her hands
away.

Her arms were stretched out painfully straight.  Her legs dangled like
a doll's.  She locked her fingers around the spire and peered down over
her shoulder.  Below her stretched thirty feet or more of rainslicked
rock, ending at the boulders.  The glass shard in her right hand was a
stiletto now, sending continuous electric shocks up her arm.  Her
shoulder and chest throbbed unbearably.  Still, she managed to hold her
grip as she searched frantically with her feet for purchase.

At the moment when she felt she could hold on no longer, the toe of her
right sneaker landed on a tiny prominence and held.  Gingerly, she
pushed upward, taking some of the strain off her hands.  Six or eight
inches above her right foot, her left connected with a more substantial
ledgeþtwelve inches wide at least and sloped downward into the cliff.

She planted her full weight on that ledge, released her hands one at a
time, and slowly worked them into cracks in the cliff face.

She clung there, gasping in air until gradually her breathing eased.

Tears mixed with the rainwater cascading over her faceþtears of relief
and anger and pain.  The bruises over the front of her body were
throbbing mercilesslyþworse than what she remembered from the broken
arm she had suffered in a high-school soccer game.  But she was much
closer to the ground now.  The rock below her seemed craggier and may
have even had a bit more slope.  She could almost completely visualize
her path of descent.  If she could stay focused and careful, she could
make it down.

But where in the hell was Quinn?

Suddenly, through the darkness and the downpour, from far to her left,
he hollered out to her.

"That was a close one, Abby!  Good thing you eat your Wheaties!  " He
had unlocked the accordion gate and gone through the lower escape
tunnel.  Now he was out on the rock, about thirty yards to her left.  A
spotlight was directly on him.  He had discarded his black sports
jacket, but his turtleneck and trousers blended in totally with the
cliff face.

The light shimmered eerily off his face, hands, and especially his
hair.

Abby glanced down at the fence.  If she could get to the south corner,
there was the very definite possibility of climbing back up the rock
and vaulting over.  As quickly as she dared, she began moving
diagonally downward.

"I could shoot you, Abby!  Right here, right now!  Wanna see?  " There
was a firecracker snap, and a bullet pinged off the rock three feet
œfrom her face.  A second shot sprayed her with chips.  She cringed and
reflexively slowed, then, helpless and wondering what it felt like to
be shot, she continued lowering herself toward the meadow.

"You're better off up there than down below!  " Quinn called out.

He was moving toward her now, and fairly rapidly.  He paused long
enough to fire twice more, the first time just above her head, and the
second time ricocheting off the rock and actually tearing across the
back of her calf.  The sharp sting was nearly lost among a dozen other,
much deeper, pains.

So now you've been shot, she thought.  The sight of the bastard moving
confidently toward her brought as much anger as terror.  Abby tried to
shut him out of her mind and concentrate on each placement of her feet
and hands.  But she knew she wasn't going to come close to making it.

Once she reached the bottom of the cliff, she would be scrambling over
huge boulders for fifty yards before she reached the corner of the
fence.

Then she would have an almost impossible fifteenfoot climb up the rock
and a drop down the other side at least that far.  She was moving on
adrenaline, but the heavy humidity, plus her gashed leg, multiple
bruises, and mediocre conditioning, were all working against her.

"Abby, you'd better listen to me!  The guards aren't going to like you
invading their turf!  " Abby was no more than ten feet from the ground
and just a few feet from the top of the largest boulder.  For the
moment she was out of Quinn's line of sight.  She squinted up through
the rain.  The Colstar cliff looked like a windowless skyscraper.  Above
it the garish neon sign, hidden by the jutting edge of the mesa,
bloodied the night.  Her best bet, she decided, was to go around the
boulders, not over them.  If Quinn's guards showed up, then that would
be that.  But Quinn wouldn't have warned her to stop if he was
confident they were going to reach her.

When she was six feet above the ground, Abby dropped, landing in some
muddy dirt between a boulder and the cliff.  She huddled there for a few
seconds, catching her breath and listening for Quinn or his guards.

"Abbyþ!  " Quinn's voice still seemed some distance away.  Abby felt
renewed hope that if she could skirt the huge rocks, stay low, and
steer clear of his line of sight, she might actually make it to the end
of the fence.

"Allee, allee in free!  .  . . Come out, come out, wherever you are.

. .

Our guards are going to be very annoyedþ" Abby stayed in a crouch and
moved quickly around the boulder.  There was almost no way that Quinn
could spot her unless he came off the cliff and stepped away from it
into the meadow, toward the fence.  If he did that, and he spotted her,
it would be a race.  There was still no sign of Quinn's guards.

Abby hurried across six feet of wild grass to a series of smaller
rocks.  She had a sense of where Quinn was.  And if she was right,
there was absolutely no way he could see her.  Advantage Dolan.  She
was no more than thirty or forty feet from the end of the fence now.

It was possible she'd get there and find the rock wall on this side too
steep to climb.

But since that horrible moment in the scanner room, each time she
needed a break or a miracle, she had gotten one.

"Hey, Doc, last chance, " Quinn called out coyly.  "I've got the
whistle in my hand.  One blast and the guards are loose in the
meadow.

The good news is that two toots and they'll stop whatever it is they're
doing to you.  At least I think they will.  . . . " Abby moved around
another rock.  The meadow was narrowing as the fence drew nearer to the
cliff.

"Okay, Abby.  Have it your way.  Go ahead, guys.  Soup's on!  " There
was no whistle blast, but in an instant Abby understood why.  The long
fenced-in field was patrolled not by guards, but by guard dogs.  She
looked up the meadow to the north and saw themþtwo ebony torpedoes,
streaking across the undulating terrain, closing on her with terrifying
speed.  Instinctively, she took several steps backward into the open
meadow.  Then, suddenly, just as she was about to turn and run, Quinn
appeared on the top of a large boulder.  He was still twenty-five yards
from herþfar enough away so that she might actually have made it to the
corner of the fence, but close enough now to have a decent shot at her
whenever he wanted to.  Instead, he stood atop the rock, hands at his
sides, legs spread.  The vision of haughtiness.

"Heeeere's Johnny, " he shouted.

Trying to outrun the dogs, Abby knew, was futile.  But there were
really no other options.  She whirled but almost immediately slipped on
the muddy ground, stumbled, and fell.  She could see the dogs flashing
past the boulder where Quinn was standing.  They were huge
Dobermansþblack-and-gold phantoms, streaking through the bright wash
from the spotlights, one slightly ahead of the other.  She could hear
their snarling now.

Oh, my God .  . .

The first dog hit the top of the small rise in front of her at full
stride and leaped, its body stretched outward like a sprint swimmer
leaving the mark.  Abby screamed and instinctively lifted her forearm
up to shield her face.  Suddenly the hurtling shadow changed direction
in midair and landed heavily on the ground beside her face.  The second
Doberman had come over the rise and begun its charge.  This time, just
as it left the ground, moving upward toward her face, there was a
whiplike snapping sound from off to her left.  The animal pitched
toward the cliff and fell to the ground with a heavy thud, a long
hunting arrow through its neck.  Only then did Abby notice the arrow
shaft protruding from the thorax of the first Doberman.

"Ives!  " As she shouted the word, a gunshot rang out from where Quinn
was perched.  She felt a sharp bite through the skin at her right hip
and knew that again she had been hit.  The shot was still echoing
across the meadow, and the pain in her hip was still burning when she
heard the snapping bowstring from her left once more.  Quinn cried out,
fired wildly, and then toppled off the rock.

"Quick, Abby!  Over here!  " Ives was on his knees by the fence,
rapidly snapping through the links with enormous wire shears.  As Abby
hurried to him, she could see Quinn writhing on the sodden ground,
Ives's long arrow through his knee.  Only then did she appreciate that
the hermit had made his three incredible shots through a small opening
he had cut in the chainlink fence.  Ives pulled a corner of the fence
up enough for Abby to scramble through on her belly.  Then, albeit
briefly, he allowed her to throw her arms around his neck.

"You look like you met up with an angry mob, " he said.

"I'm okay, thanks to you."  She glanced back at the meadow.  "Ives, I'm
sorry about the dogs, " she said.  "I know how hard that must have been
for you."  The hermit squeezed her hand.

"We'd better get going.  Two police cruisers just headed up the Colstar
drive."  He gestured to the field and added, "I don't think they're
going to have much trouble figuring out who did this."

"Damn you, Ives!  " Quinn was bellowing now.  "I'm going to get you for
this, you son of a bitch .  . . !  " "Do you think the arrow broke his
leg?  " Abby asked as they scrambled along the fence toward Ives's
mountain.

"I don't know.  If it did, it means I'm in need of much practice.  I
wasn't aiming for bone."  a , HAPTER THIRTY NINE With Sam Ives leading
the way, they hurried north along a corridor of shadow just outside the
fence.  Although Abby was battered and exhausted, she had little
trouble keeping up.  Ives's leg was healing well, but the muscles that
had been destroyed by chronic infection were gone for good.

As a result he ran with a stiff, syncopated gait that Abby sensed was
causing him some pain.

She glanced over at the hospital as they passed and realized that
somewhere just a few feet below them was the tunnel from the MRI unit
to the Colstar lab.  She wondered about Kelly Franklinþwhether Barbara
Torres was still standing guard, whether Lew planned to take over when
his relief showed up at the E.R.  Abby had said she'd be back in ten or
fifteen minutes, and that had been a lifetime ago.  He must be frantic,
wondering what had happened to her.

She peered up into the rain.  The ceiling was still too low for a
MedFlight landing and transfer.  If Kelly hadn't regained
consciousness, morning was going to be too late for her.  Hell, the
truth was, it was probably too late for her already.

To her right she could see the two open emergency exits gaping like
wounds on the rock face of the Colstar cliff.  In a few minutes or a
few hours the holes would be sealed and the Colstar spin doctors would
be meeting.  The story they would concoct was sure to do nothing to
slow her plummeting reputation.  She glanced back just as one of the
police cruisers, blue strobe flashing, siren wailing, sped down the
Colstar drive.  It was disgusting, but totally typical of the man, that
before Quinn climbed into the tunnel to pursue her, he would have issued
orders to Gould to get a warrant for her arrest.  Human
experimentation, falsified autopsy report, murder, attempted murder,
fabricated arrest warrant.  The Colstar Golden Rule, we have the gold,
so we make the rules.

Well, you haven't got me yet, she thought angrily.  And later on, when
she connected with Lew, one would be two.  Then there would be
moreþTorres and Gil Brant, and surely others when the word got out.

The dike was leakingþone hole after another.  And soon Colstar was
going to run out of fingers.

By the time they passed the north corner of the fence, Abby was gasping
for breath again.  She stumbled crossing the narrow footbridge over the
Oxbow River and tripped on the gentle slope leading up to the
foothills.

"Ives, I've got to stop, " she begged.

Ives glanced nervously back at the valley.

"Do whatever you have to do, " he replied.  "You've been through a
lot.

Are the police after you, too?  " "I think so."

"Do you have anyplace to go?  " "No place that's safe.  My best bet is
Dr.  Alvarez's farm.

I could hide out there until he gets home."

"I call him Dr.  Lew.  I did some work for him."

"I know."

"Good man.  Where's your car?  " "At the hospital.  But I could never
go there.  Ives, I'm in real trouble."

"I guess you could say we both are.  Are you ready to move?

" "I can handle a fast walk, " she said.

"Fine."

"Where are we going?  " "My place, for starters.  The back wayþthe way
I got down.  There's some climbing involved.  Think you can make it?  "
Abby looked back at the Colstar cliff.

"I can make it."  Ives slipped his longbow onto his back, and they
headed upward at a brisk pace, Ives in front, Abby a few steps
behind.

"Ives, " she said as they neared some very steep terrain, "the police
know where you live, don't they?  " "I imagine they do.  We won't be
able to stay for very long.  But there's some clean, dry clothes for
youþyour clothes, as a matter of fact, at least the clothes you brought
me.  Then I'll head up to where some friends of mine have a place.

None of them is too fond of the police.

Besides, I doubt anyone could follow me up where I'll be going.  You
can head over to Dr.  Lew's."

"His place is a few miles from here.

How'll I get there?  " "Unless you suddenly sprout wings, you'll
walk.

Come on, let's go.  You can explain how you ended up popping out of the
Colstar cliff when we get to my place."

"And you can explain how you managed to show up like you did."

"Deal."  The back way to Ives's camp was an ingenious series of heavy
ropes strung from tree limbs and roots at strategic intervals.  The
ropes, along with some carefully carved toeholds in the rock, enabled
him to make a near-vertical ascent without too much difficulty,
although Abby needed some help.  The hike up to the camp by the usual
way took thirty to forty-five minutes.  By this route they made it up
in not much more than ten.  Having seen the hermit drop down the rope
from his hammock, Abby bet that the descent to the meadow took him five
minutes, if that.

Once they'd reached Ives's compound, he hurried into his hut and came
out with a small knapsack, a dozen more perfectly hewn arrows, an old
sweat suit and black rain slicker of Josh's.  It was strange to see
Ives anxious or rushed.

"Go ahead in there and change, " he said.  "I'll be sitting right here,
so you can tell me what's going on."  Abby did as he asked.  The inside
of his hut was always surprisingly neat.  Tonight it was lit warmly
with a Coleman lantern.  She glanced over at the
cinder-block-and-boards bookcase, filled to overflowing with well-worn
paperbacks.  It made her deeply sad to think about Ives having to leave
his place on her account.  But at the moment there was nothing she
could do about it.  She stripped her sodden clothes off with some
difficulty.  The gash over her shin, and the many other abrasions,
welts, and cuts, were ugly but tolerable.  The bullets that had torn
through the skin of her calf and hip had done no serious damage.

She took some of the dressings she had brought for Ives and bandaged
the most troublesome wounds on her leg, hip, and shoulder.

"Ives, there's a laboratory inside the base of the cliff, " she said as
she worked.  "Colstar's getting hefty government contracts for their
batteries.  In exchange they're testing chemical weapons and the
antidotes for them on patients in the hospital.  I found their lab, but
then Quinn found me."

"Well, you set off the alarms inside the plant, and all the spotlights
went on across the fence line, " Ives replied.

"I had never seen that before, so I got out my field glasses.  Then,
while I was watching the cliff, out you popped.  Right out of one of
those openings you once called to my attention.  I had a sense you
might need some help, so I took the back way down."

"I'm very grateful you did, " Abby said.

"You're a good person.  You do good things for folks like me.  From
time to time we get the chance to do something back."

"Ives, absolutely everyone with any power in this town is involved in
this thing, and they're all after me.  Quinn, the chief of police, the
president of the hospital, the chief of medicine, even that boot who
sewed up your faceþthey made a pact with the devil in the form of
Senator Corman.  In exchange for turning the town over as a lab, and
running the experiments, they get full employment for the region,
beautiful parks, great schools."

"Faustville."

"Exactly."  Abby emerged from the hut wearing Josh's frayed sweat suit,
rubber rain jacket, and even an old green-and-gold Oakland A's baseball
cap that he had given up on for one reason or another.  Wearing his
clothes was something she had always enjoyed.  And although she had
stopped the day he left, it felt strange, but not uncomfortable, to be
doing it again.

"We ought to get cracking, " Ives said.  "You can come with me if you
want."

"I can't put you in even more jeopardy.  My only real hope is to
connect with Lew."

"The trail I'll show you runs along the hillside through the woods.

Use the flashlight I'll give you sparingly, and.  I doubt you'll be
seen from down below."  He took a powerful four-battery flashlight from
his knapsack and handed it to her.

"Ives, I can't take this.  You're going to need it as much as I will.

" Sam Ives looked at her.  From above his thick beard, his eyes
sparkled.

"As I recall, you and I have already had a conversation about the
circumstances in which I can and cannot see.  Don't make me show off.

" Abby tested the flashlight and nodded her acceptance of it.  Then,
after Ives shut off the lantern in his hut, he allowed his gaze to make
one final sweep of the camp before they set off toward the west.

The forest was fully saturated, the branches dripping so steadily, Abby
could not tell how much rain was still falling.  They hiked downward
for a time until she could easily make out the town, perhaps two
hundred feet below them and to their left.  Some distance from Ives's
camp they connected with a partially overgrown trail.

"Get used to the way this path looks, " he said.  "It's like this all
the way along the rim of the valley.  Keep your eyes sharp and you
should be able to stay on it all the way.  If you get lost, just keep
Patience on your left, don't go up and don't go down, and you should
make it okay."  Suddenly he raised his hand and put one finger over his
lips.  Then he pointed down the hill.  Through the dense woods Abby
could see a car approaching down a straight road that appeared to end
right below where they were standing.  Then she recognized the street
as the one she took to visit Ives's camp.

"Police, " he whispered, well before she could make out the unlit
lights on the roof.

"That didn't take long."

"They'll be going the other direction up to my place, but we'd better
keep moving."  For the next fifteen minutes they hiked in silence with
Abby leading the way.  Only once, for just a minute or so, did she
stray from the trail.  She recovered smoothly, backtracked, and found
the trail once more.  Apparently, Ives decided he had seen enough.

"Okay, this is it, " he said.  "From here you go straight and I go
up.

You know the town well enough to tell approximately where you are.

You've got about three miles to go.  When you get near Dr. Lew's
place, you can go up into the hills and come down in the field beyond
the house, or drop down to the road and take your chances going up his
drive."

"I think I'll probably do the hill.  Ives, if the police or any of
Quinn's people catch me, I don't think I'll be allowed to live.

There's no way they can let me get out of Patience.  I've seen too
much.  Before we split up, I want to tell you what I know.

"The lab beneath the Colstar cliff pumps small amounts of toxic gas
through tubes that run along a tunnel into the MRI scanner in the
hospital.  There's a trapdoor in the floor by the MRI machine.  The
lever to open it is beneath the machine in the back.  If an antidote to
the gases is being tested, the patients get it from their doctors.  The
people I know are involved are Quinn, Joe Henderson, the hospital
president, Dr. Bartholomew, Dr. George Oleander, Dr. Del Marshall,
and Captain Gould of the Patience police.  There are almost certainly
others.

Can you remember most of those names?  " "My brain is extremely
uncluttered these days.  There's plenty of room for a few names or
facts."

"Sorry I even asked.  Dr. Sandra Stuart is a friend of mine at St.
John's Hospital in San Francisco.  If you get the chance, call her and
tell her what you know."

"I still have some colleagues at the university who would be interested
in your findings and might have some influence."

"Excellent.  Ives, please be careful."

"And you, Dr.  Abby."

"When I get out of this, I'm coming back to find you and finish working
on that leg.  I'll also make sure everyone who'll listen knows why you
put that arrow through Quinn."  She embraced him, and he awkwardly
responded in kind.  Then he headed up the steep slope to their right.

Abby stood there watching him.

After a few yards the hermit stopped and turned back to her.

"You're a credit to your profession, " he said.

He resumed his climb into the blackness, and within half a minute he
was gone.

Abby remained there in the dark, listening to the noisy silence of the
forest, feeling acutely alone and painfully melancholy.  At least you
have someplace to go, she reminded herself.  She glanced down at the
town in time to see a police strobe flashing in the distance.  They
would be out in force by now, and every road out of the valley would be
blocked.

She risked a few seconds illuminating the trail.  Finally she broke
through her inertia and continued west.  With each step her mood
improved and her resolve deepened.  She hadn't come this farþhadn't
been brought this farþto lose.  Lew was scheduled to stay on at the
hospital after his shift to take over from Barbara Torres.  But perhaps
Barbara's husband was having a turn for the better and she had decided
to stay the night.

It would be wonderful to reach Lew's place and find him waiting
there.

The hike, in sodden sneakers through the sodden forest, seemed
endless.

Dry clothes and the slicker definitely helped, but within half an hour
Abby was soaked from the waist down, chilled to the bone, and shivering
whenever she stopped.  The trail was, as Ives had promised, not that
difficult to follow.  Each time she worried that she might be drifting,
there was a break in the foliage and a vista of the town.

Occasionally, in one part of the valley or another, she could see the
distinctive flashing blue of a cruiser.  She imagined the frantic
goingson at the station and on the roads and wondered whether Lyle
Quinn had been taken to the E.R for treatment of his leg wound.  She
laughed out loud at the irony of Lew being on duty when Quinn was
rolled in.

After more than an hour of walking Abby knew she was close.  She could
see the neon of Five Corners in the distance and gauged that the
driveway up to Lew's place was almost directly below her.  She was
battling exhaustion now, aching in places she didn't even remember
injuring, and working with each breath to get the moisture-laden night
air into her lungs.  And to make matters worse, as Ives had warned her,
the trail took a turn to her right and began a fairly steep upward
incline.  This was where she could bushwhack down to the road and try
walking up the driveway, or go up, around, and down, approaching the
house from across the fields in the back.

She pictured what she remembered of the topography of the farm from her
visits there.  To the southwest there were two broad, flat planted
fields, one of corn and one of wheat or hay.  Bordering them on the
south and east were deeply undulating meadows, and beyond the meadows,
to the east and north, were the hillsþsteep, rocky, and sparsely
forested.

The rain had lessened to a heavy mist, but there was some wind, and the
temperature had fallen below the comfort zone.  Abby drove herself up
the slope with mental images of crackling fires, warm, dry clothes, and
steaming cocoa.  She had no idea what Lew would come up with to get her
out of the valley, but she felt certain he would find a way.  San
Francisco would be best.  St. John's was a safe house for her.  And
once she had made it there, once she had told her story, she would no
longer be the liability for Quinn and his people that she was now.  Of
course, there was the very strong possibility that no one with any clout
would believe her account or dare to go up against Mark Corman and Ezra
Black.

But she couldn't afford to start thinking that way.

The lights of town were no longer visible from where she was, so there
was no easy way to judge her position.  If she started down too soon,
she would waste a great deal of time and energy and end up dangerously
visible on the roadþon the long driveway leading up to the farm.  She
leveled off, now essentially bushwhacking through low brush and wild,
thorny brambles that raked her legs through the sweatpants.  Finally,
she decided, it was time.  She cut to her left and battled her way
downhill, slipping on rocks and stumbling over tree roots hidden
beneath the dense ground cover.

Now, the lights of the town were visible again in the distance.  She
had judged her position perfectlyþanother hopeful sign.  A dozen more
steps and the last of the forest was behind her.  She was on the top of
a broad, smooth ledge.  To her left, a few hundred yards away, were the
house, barn, and outbuildings of the farm.  There was a light on
outside the back door of the house, but otherwise it appeared dark.

Barbara hadn't stayed at the hospital, after all.

Abby slid down the ledge in a sitting position, then made her way
across the meadow.  In addition to the back-door light, there was a
spotlight high up on the side of the barn illuminating the empty
parking area and the top of the driveway.  The silence was pervasive.

She glanced about warily, gave brief thought to breaking a window to
get into the house, and then decided that the barn would be a
satisfactory place for her to hide out until Lew's return.

At that instant she heard an automobile approaching up the drive.  She
flattened herself against the barn by the side door, reached back, and
assured herself that the door was open.  Silently, she prayed to see
Lew's Blazer pop over the top of the drive.  What she saw instead was a
black-and-white police cruiser, rolling slowly with its lights cut.

Quickly, she ducked into the barn.  It was dark inside, but thanks to
the back-door light filtering in through numerous cracks, not totally
so.

Although two of the four horse stalls were covered with straw, the
large old structure was the home to equipment and baled hay, not
animals.

From outside she heard hushed voices but could not make out what they
were saying.  There was a wooden ladder leading up to a hayloft, but
she rejected that option, sensing that they might look up there
first.

Instead, she hurried to the last stall, where a truck or car was
covered by a large vinyl tarp.

She was huddled on the ground between the tarp and the wall when the
huge front door of the barn creaked open.  A powerful flashlight beam
shot from one wall to another, to the loft, and back.  As Abby
predicted, the ladder to the loft was the policeman's first choice.

She heard him walking overhead, at one point directly above her,
scuffing at the hay.

She wondered whether or not he had his gun drawn.  After a few minutes
he came back down and began moving her way.  Abby dropped to her belly,
pulled the tarp over her, and squirmed well under the vehicle, which
was some sort of old truck.  The chassis smelled of dried mud and
oil.

The footsteps shuffled closer.  By holding her breath she could hear the
man breathing.  She sensed him standing not six feet away and buried
her forehead in her hands, expecting any moment to have the tarp
whisked aside and to be skewered by his flashlight beam.

Please no .  . . please no .  . . please .  . .

Suddenly the footsteps retreated.  Abby remained motionless, exhaling
slowly, silently, then filling her lungs the same way.  The barn was
totally quiet now.  Outside, there was a brief hushed exchange.  Then
the cruiser rumbled to life and pulled away.  For five minutes, ten,
Abby remained in her hiding place.  Finally she decided it was safe.

She squirmed out from under the old truck, standing with the creaking,
aching difficulty of the Tin Man.  Another bullet dodged.

As she rose, the vinyl tarp snagged on the bill of her A's cap, and
pulled upward.  Abby turned to free it, and froze.  Her hand shaking,
she drew her flashlight from the waistband of her sweatpants and shined
it on the truck.  Her pulse began to race as a tidal wave of
uncertainty and confusion washed over her.  The truck under which she
had been hiding was a battered red pickup with oversize tires.

No longer worried about whether one of the officers might have stayed
on, she threw a flap of the tarp over the top of the cab.  The black
steel plow frame that had slammed into the rear of her Mazda was still
there, bolted over the grill.

The door to the cab was locked.  Abby shined her flash inside.  On the
floor by the passenger seat was a black ski mask and a box of
bullets.

And on a rack in front of the rear window was a high-powered rifle with
a telescopic sight.

There was a cellular phone on a stand bolted between the two seats.

Get out!  the muffled male voice had demanded just a minute or so
after she had nearly been shot.  Get out now.

CHAPTER FORTY.

Abby pulled the vinyl tarp back into place and leaned against the
barnside, her mind unwilling or unable to wrap itself around the
significance of what she had just discovered.  It was Lew, not Quinn,
who had come at her with the pickupþLew, not Quinn, who had fired at
her outside her house, then called her with a menacing message.  But
why?  Why would he want to frighten her into leaving Patience?

She had sensed that day on the road that the ski-masked assailant in
the battered pickup had passed up the opportunity to force her off the
road and into the trees.  And Gould was right that the sniper who had
shot at her could have killed her had that been his intention.  But why
would Lew want to frighten her?  She hadn't been hurt either time, but
she might have been.  Why was he willing to take that chance just to
scare her out of town?

Why.  . . ?

Bewildered, she wandered out the side door of the barn into the drizzly
night.  The lights of Patience winked through the rain like a Christmas
display.  So charming.  So innocent.  Faustville.  Beyond the lights
was the ebony hole in the night sky that she knew was the Colstar
cliff.

And glowing above the rock were the seven letters that had so changed
her life.

Why.  . . ?

Lew was totally dedicated to proving that Colstar was making people
sick.  That much was indisputable.  And Abby had done much to forward
his cause.  It simply made no sense for him to try to drive her away.

Abby forced herself to reject the obvious conclusion that Lew was out
to intimidate her into leaving Patience.  And the moment she did so,
she knew the truth.

It had never been his intention to frighten herþat least not for
long.

He had made it a point to get to know herþto understand what might make
her recoil, and what was more likely to make her arch her back and take
a stand.  He had done his homework wellþno, not well, masterfully.  His
goal was to anger herþto make her so furious with Lyle Quinn and
Colstar that she would do anything to help bring them down.  Initially,
her commitment to the Alliance had been lukewarm.  She wasn't a fighter
or a crusader, she had told them.  She was apoliticalþput together to
deal with the pain and suffering of others on an intimate, one-to-one
basis.

Yet since that Alliance meeting, thanks in no small measure to Lew's
attacks on her, she had ended up leading the battle against Colstar
while he had remained in the shadows.  All along he had been the one
supplying the information.  She had been the one acting on it.  She was
the catalyst.  It was she who had used her academic connection to get
the definitive blood analysis for cadmium, she who had won Kelly
Franklin over, she who had discovered the Colstar lab, and she who had
almost died as a consequence.  Lew remained as removed from the
spotlight as he had been the day they had met.

Why.  . . ?

Heedless of the rain, Abby paced to the end of the gravel parking area
and back.  A memory kept flashing like neon in her headþa snippet of a
conversation with Lew.

I would suggest part of Garrett Owen's evaluation of your friend should
be a serum-cadmium level.  . . .

He had said that about Josh the night of the Alliance meeting.  He had
seemed so confident.  And although he was completely right about Josh,
he was absolutely off base about all the other NIWWs.  It wasn't
cadmium at the root of most of their symptoms.  It was the gases and,
at times, the antidotes.  Lew blamed Colstar's control of the PRH
laboratory for all the negative cadmium tests.  He was certain of it.

But now Abby knew that the tests for cadmium were negative in all those
patients because the heavy metal simply wasn't there.  How could Lew
have been so insistent, so certain it was going to be present in
Josh?

Unless .

He's the one who sewed up my thigh when I tore it on that nail,
remember?  .

The words were Josh's, speaking about Lew, about the one time the two
of them had met.  Willie Cardoza had fallen off a ladder and gashed his
scalp.  Ethan Black's father and his shrink dated his violence problem
from an auto accident in which he suffered a head injury and a
laceration.  All along it had seemed as if the three of them, plus
Angela Cristoforo and more recently, Gus Schumacher, had been a group
apart from the rest of the NIWWsþsicker than the others, with probable
or proved evidence of cadmium toxicity, and with no history of having
gotten an MRI before their symptoms began.  And each of them was a
Colstar employee.  Lew had definitely sutured Josh.  Could he have sewn
the others as well?  If so, what had he done at the time he was
treating them?

Abby glanced at her watch.  Assuming Kelly wasn't going to be
MedFlighted out until five or six in the morning, she had several safe
hours to find out if Lew's house held the answers.  Without hesitating
she raced to the kitchen door and snapped her elbow through the
glass.

Then, tensed and ready to flee, she reached in and slowly opened the
door.  No alarm went off.  If there was one that sounded at the police
station, she was cooked.  But she doubted there was.  She wanted to
call the hospital and speak with Lew in the E.R or ICU just to be
certain he would be there for a while.  But if, as he feared, his calls
were monitored, she would be delivering herself into Quinn's hands.

Not at all certain of what she was looking for, she started in the
basement, a damp, confined space, cluttered with tools, boxes, and
gardening implements.  After just a few minutes of rummaging around,
she gave up.  If Lew's secrets were hidden down there, she was never
going to find them.

She went back up to the first floor and pulled open the drawers and
cabinets in the kitchen, sensing this wasn't the spot either.  Next,
she bypassed the dining room and headed to the denþthe room where the
Alliance meeting had been held.  In the hallway she stopped, drawn, as
she had been the first time she saw them, to the dozen or more framed
photographs of a country .  . . and a woman.  Paraguay, Lew had said.

Paraguay and his late wife.  During the many hours Abby had spent with
him, he had not spoken at all of her or, for that matter, of his native
land.  But Abby remembered dearly his deep sadness when responding to
her question about the photos that first night.  Paraguay .  . .

Something about the country began reverberating in her mind.  She
studied the bronze-skinned, dark-eyed beauty.  There was an alluring
gentleness to her and a striking intelligence in her eyes.

The woman in the picture is .  . . was .  . . my wife.  She's dead.

That was all Lew said that night.  In fact, that was all he had ever
said.

She's dead.  . . .

Abby opened a few cupboards in the paneled den.  She was nervous about
using a lamp or the overhead light, for fear that the police would be
making a return trip.  Using her flashlight, she skimmed over shelves
of books, many of them older or more modern classics in Spanish, and a
great number of them books on ecology and the environment.

Paraguay .  . .

What was it about that country?  She pulled out one of the books in
Spanish, a novel by the Nobel laureate, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the
author of one of her favorite books, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The volume in Lew's collection was one she had meant to read but had
never gotten around to.  El amor en lose tiempos del colera.  Love in
the Time of Cholera.  There was an elegant bookplate pasted on the
first pageþa pair of dragons coiled about an open book.  Ex Libris Dr.
Luis Mart'a Galatfn, the ornate printing read.

Luis .

Abby slid the book back in place.  Dr.  Luis Maria Galatin was Lew.

She felt certain of it.  She checked the time and decided to give up on
the den and try the upstairs.  She would give herself another twenty
minutes or so.  If she hadn't found anything by then, her plan was to
get to a pay phone and try calling Ezra Black.  But unless she could
find something more, she would be telling Black only part of the storyþ
and not the part that had much to do with his son.

She tiptoed up the narrow farmhouse staircase as if there were someone
home and found herself on a short corridor with two braided rugs on the
floor.  There were four closed walnut-stained doors off the hallway.

The first one she chose to open, just to the right of the stairs, was
Lew's bedroomþwalnut four-poster bed, dresser, TV, freestanding
bookcase, closet.

Possible, she thought.  Especially the closet.

She decided to check the other rooms and then return to the bedroom.

The second door she opened was to Lew's bathroom, and the third to a
neatly kept guest room with two single beds.  The fourth door, at the
end of the hallway to the left, was locked.  Instantly, Abby was
dizzied by a massive adrenaline rush.  This room was what she had been
searching for.  Behind it were the answers she had been missing.  She
tested the door with her shoulder, then with a sharp, thrusting kick
from the sole of her sneaker.  No chance.  Finally she remembered
seeing a crowbar hooked over a nail on the basement wall.  She hurried
down there and returned with the tool and a hammer.

Even with the crowbar, the solid oak door yielded reluctantly.  And by
the time it finally crunched free, wood fragments from it and the jamb
were scattered on the floor.  Abby snapped on her flash.  Then
silently, slowly, she eased open the door.  She was standing in a room
cluttered with stacks of newspapers, scrapbooks, boxes of
correspondence and other papers, books about Paraguay, and old
Paraguayan picture calendars.  The two windows of the room were boarded
over and covered with large tourist-office posters of Paraguay.  On
the floor by the wall opposite where Abby was standing, was a
posterboardmounted, two-foot-high color photo of Lew's late wife.  In
the photoþ a head and shoulders shot against a verdant backgroundþshe
was even more stunning than she was in the pictures downstairsþalmost
mystically alluring.  The notion of the woman's life being cut short
brought a sharp pang.

Even though the room faced the back of the house, Abby checked to
ensure that the plywood on which the window posters were mounted would,
indeed, keep any light from being seen outside.  Then she flicked on
the overhead.  Except for the windows and a large, ornate crucifix, the
walls of the room were bare.  Most of the yellowing newspapers were
from Asuncin and San Juan Bautista.  In one corner of the room, leaning
against the wall, were two full newspaper pages, each one framed in
dark wood and kept under glass.  The pages were both page one from the
Asuncin paper, Diario Hoyþalmost nine years ago and three months
apart.

Abby's Spanish was adequate enough to translate most of the twoheadline
articles.  She sat down, braced herself against a wall, and propped the
heavy frame containing the older page on her lap.  The main article
described a lethal mudslide that had destroyed a neighborhood on the
outskirts of the town of San Ignacio, twenty kilometers from the city
of San Juan Bautista, killing at least eighty people.  Included in the
article was an angry quote from a physician whose clinic was destroyed
and whose wife lost her life in the disaster.  The physician's name was
Luis Maria Galatin.

. . . "This horrible tragedy should never have happened, " Galat{n
said.

"And it is dear who bears the responsibility for it.  For years the
Colstar Mining Company has been raping the mountainside with no regard
for the ground cover or forests.  For years authorities have turned
their backs as they opened their wallets."  It was only then Abby
remembered what George Oleander had said about an incident in South
America.  Terrorists had blown up a huge Colstar refinery, killing a
number of Colstar employees.  The attack was almost the coup de grace
for the company, and eventually led to the deal with Senator Corman and
the military.

Ironic, she thought.  The death of Colstar in Paraguay had essentially
led to the creation of the underground laboratory and to the survival
and renaissance of Patience, California.

The second, more recent, Diario Hoy page only confirmed what Abby
already knew.  A band of terrorists had blown up the Colstar refinery,
killing three security guards and two night-shift workers, and injuring
dozens of others, some seriously.  A nationwide manhunt was under way
for the man believed to be the leader of the terrorists, Dr. Luis
Maria Galatin, and a reward was being offered by Colstar International
for information leading to his capture.  The picture of Galatin,
without a mustache and a decade younger, was Lew, yet it wasn't.

Somewhere along the line, a cosmetic surgical genius had altered his
nose and jaw and narrowed the corners of his eyes, creating a striking
ruggedness in a face that had once been quite boyishþborderline
pretty.

Abby studied the photo for several minutes as one missing piece after
another clicked into place.  Having been through the licensing and
credentialing process herself, she knew it wouldn't have been that hard
for a man with Galatin's intelligence and resourcefulness to become Dr.
Lew Alvarezþespecially having been educated and trained in
California.

But she also knew that no alias was impenetrable.  The last thing Luis
Galatin would ever want to do was to call much attention to himself.

Which was why he had needed her.

Lewis Alvarez got on the medical staff at Patience Regional Hospital.

But he must have quickly realized that he couldn't simply march up the
hill and blow up this plant as well.  Too big, too inaccessible, too
closely guarded.  Alvarez knew that he couldn't physically destroy the
Colstar factory as he had done in San Juan Bautista, so he set about to
find a weakness he could exploitþa soft underbelly.  And Mark Corman,
Lyle Quinn, and all the rest who had sold out the people of the valley
provided Lew with just that in the form of dozens of NIWWs.

You just misinterpreted the data, Lew) Abby thought.  With all those
tons of cadmium being trucked into the place, who wouldn't have?

Cadmium toxicity seemed so logical that there was no reason to search
for an alternative explanation.  Once he recognized that a pattern was
there, all that stood between Lew and a paralyzing, possibly fatal,
series of suits and shutdowns, was the proof.

She set the framed pages back in their place and rummaged through a
small box of correspondenceþperhaps thirty pieces from all over the
world, most of them in Spanish.  One most definitely wasn't.  It was a
handwritten letter, undated, on the stationery of David Brooks, M. D.

Lewþ I am writing this letter in hopes that you will read it, reread
it, and do what is right.  When you first invited me over and presented
your series of unusual cases, along with your theory of a cadmium spill
or persistent leak from Colstar, I was most intrigued.  Indeed, I have
worked on behalf of environmental causes all my life.  I agreed to join
you and the others in the Alliance because I believed there were
serious health issues involved.  I still do.  There are far too many
unusual cases to be coincidental.

But as much as I respect you, I cannot ally myself with a man who I
know has willfully taken human lives, regardless of the justification
of the act While I was at the recent E.R meetings in New York City, I
decided to spend some time doing research on the company that we had
both decided was an enemy of the environment and of the people.  . .

Brooks's letter went on to describe his almost accidental deduction of
Alvarez's identity and the crime for which he was an international
fugitive.  From what Abby had been told by many, her predecessor was as
gentle and kind as he was principled.  Abby set the letter back in the
box.  There was no mention of the underground lab, no hint that Brooks
had discovered anything that might cost him his lifeþanything, that is,
except Lew Alvarez's real identity.

Abby felt sick.  Alvarez had used David Brooks just as he was using her
now.  And when Brooks became a direct threat, Luis Maria Galatin simply
eliminated him.  There was no way she could expect a kinder fate.

Abby knew that there was no one in Patience whom she could trust.

Being caught by the police was a death sentence.  Even escaping to San
Francisco would probably do her no good.  Lyle Quinn was as ruthless as
Alvarez.  His treatment of Kelly Franklin made that quite dear.  In
addition, he possessed almost limitless resources.  The moment Abby
surfaced with her unsubstantiated story, something was certain to
happen to herþa suicide or fatal accident.  Or perhaps she would simply
vanish.

It was doubtful Quinn would even have to bother permanently sealing off
the trapdoor in the MRI room floor or the tunnel.  A little time off, a
little expert PR work, and they would probably be back in business.

No, trying to run wasn't the answer.  Her best bet continued to be Ezra
Black.  She was in the process of proving that his son's "suicide"
death was, for all intents, murder.  That was really her only tangible
bargaining chip.  Even though Black certainly knew about the Colstar
testing program, and somewhere along the line had probably even
authorized it, there had to be limits.  Black impressed her as a tough
businessman, but not a monster.  He had a conscience.  Every fiber of
Abby's intuition told her so.

The Colstar program hadn't directly resulted in the deaths of Peggy
Wheaton, Gus Schumacher and his victims, and Black's son.  But it had
spawned the man who was responsible.  Surely, Ezra Black would be able
to see that.  But before she called him, there was one final piece that
remained unaccounted for.

Abby found it in a shoe box held shut with a rubber band, and
containing several vials of a grayish-white powder from a chemical
supply house in the Midwest.  "Cadmium sulfide, " the labels read.

Beneath the vials was the listþdates, names, and amounts of those whom
Alvarez had infused with intravenous cadmium under the guise of dosing
them with prophylactic antibiotics.  There were nine subjects in all,
including the five Abby already knew about.  The doses Alvarez had
chosen varied somewhat, but Josh, Willie Cardoza, Angela Cristoforo,
Ethan Black, and Gustav Schumacher had received by far the largest
amounts.

Intravenous cadmium.  Toxicity by inhalation, or ingestion, or even
through the skin had been extensively studied and reported.  But she
was certain that nowhere would there be any data on intravenous
injection.

Lew Alvarez had injected those E.R patients with absolutely no knowledge
of the consequences.  And the truth was, he didn't care.  As long as
Abby Dolan pushed the right buttons, Colstar would be exposed for
poisoning its employees and others in the valley.  And that was what
mattered.

Abby hurried to the kitchen and found a box of kitchen-sized white
plastic garbage bags.  She put one bag inside another for strength,
then returned to the upstairs room and placed the cadmium, the letters,
and some of the newspaper articles inside.  What she had ought to be
enough to interest Black.  If she sensed he couldn't be trusted to hear
her out and make some sort of deal, she would try her luck in San
Franciscoþprovided, of course, that she could find some way out of the
valley.

Thanks to Graham DeShield, she had Ezra Black's number at Feather
Ridge.  Now, all she needed was a phone that wasn't tapped and a car.

Then, suddenly, she thought about Alvarez's truck.  She always kept a
spare set of keys to the Mazda in a kitchen drawer.  If there were keys
for the truck somewhere in the house, she had both the transportation
and the phone.

After a brief search of the den and a more extensive search of the
kitchen, she gave up.  Then it occurred to her that although she
couldn't start the truck, she could certainly bludgeon her way inside
it.  And inside it were two things she needed very much at this
pointþthe cellular phone and the rifle that had been fired at her.

She raced upstairs and grabbed the hammer she had used to break into
the locked room.  Then she put her rain slicker on black side out,
cautiously left the house, and jogged painfully toward the barn.  She
had just reached the side door when she sensed someone nearby.

"Freeze!  Right there!  Drop the hammer!  " the hoarse, almost inhuman
voice barked out.

Abby did as she was told and turned slowly.  Bracing himself against
the corner of the barn, the muzzle of his gun pointed shakily at the
center of her chest, was Josh.

CHAPTER Chapter FORTY-ONE.

Through the fine rain, illuminated from the side by the back-door
light, Josh was an apparition.  Abby recoiled a step from the man with
whom she had shared her life and her bed for two years.  This was not
the fire-eyed demon of her nightmareþfar from it.  Josh's face was
drawn and ashen, his eyes little more than black hollows in his
skull.

His speech was strained and halting.  The gun he was pointing at herþ
some kind of military weaponþseemed too heavy for him.  The barrel
would shake, then drift.  Then he would regain control and fix it once
again at the center of her chest.

"Josh, I .  . . I've been really worried about you."

"I can take care of myself."  He was no more than ten feet away.  Abby
strained to get a sense of his angerþof the danger she was in.

"Why are you pointing that at me?  " she said finally.  "Did you come
here to kill me?  " "Yes .  . . no .  . . I mean, I don't know."  She
spoke slowly, evenly, wary of saying anything that might set him off.

"Did you find Bricker and the others?  " "Yes."

"And did you .  . . ?

" She held her breath.

"Kill them?  I should have.  . . . They were right there.  . . .

Bricker and Gentry.  . . . Both of them .  . . I should have blown them
to hell."  Abby felt a flood of relief.

"But you didn't?  " "No.  I .  . . I shot up the ceiling of the garage
and some cars, and then took off.  . . . Abby, why didn't you just let
me do it?  .  . . Bricker deserved to die.  . . . He stole my life.  "
Abby took a tentative step toward him.  Seeing him this way, she felt a
consuming sorrowþand an unbridled fury at Lew Alvarez.

"You did the right thing, Josh."  Once again the muzzle of the gun
sagged toward the ground.  This time Josh made no effort to pull it
back up.  Abby turned her flashlight on, handed it to him, and motioned
to the barn door.

"Come in where it's dry so we can talk, " she said.  "I've been worried
sick about you."  He hesitated, then followed her inside.  His
clothesþsneakers, jeans, and a dark sweatshirtþwere soaked through.

Abby could appreciate now that he had the frightened, bewildered,
wild-eyed look she had seen any number of times in patients who were
dying.  He stood five feet away from her, braced against the wall,
holding the gun now with both hands.  It was almost impossible to
connect him with the loose, graceful man she had watched holding his
own in playground basketball games with youths half his age.

"You should have let me kill them, " he said again.

"I'm glad you didn't.  How did you find me here?  " He squinted at her,
then released the gun with one hand and rubbed at his eyes.  Abby
sensed she could have simply reached out and taken the weapon from
him.

Instead, she stood her ground and waited.

"I drove past the house.  . . . The police are there.  . . . Two
cruisers.

They're looking for me."

"Maybe so, but they're also looking for me.

And if they catch me, they may kill me.  How did you know about this
place?  Have you been here before?  " "Once.  . . . Where's Alvarez?  "
"Josh, why don't you sit down before you fall down?  " "Shut up!  .

. Where's Alvarez?  " "At the hospital."

"Everything would have been all right .  . . if you had just-let me
kill Bricker."

"Killing someone wouldn't have made anything all right.  Josh, you're
sick.

You've been poisonedþwith cadmium.  You need help.  You need
treatment.

" "Are you two lovers?  " "Joshþ" "Are you?  " "No."

"You are!  I can tell."

"Will you please put that gun down?  Josh, we've got to get you to a
hospital."  Josh rubbed at his eyes again and stumbled back a step.

This time, when Abby gently implored him to sit down, he did so.  The
semiautomatic was awkwardly heavy for her.  She set it aside, then
knelt beside him and supported him with her arm around his shoulders.

She could smell alcohol on his breath and clothes.

"Are the headaches bad?  " she asked.

Josh buried his face in his hands, then pressed in at his temples.

"I can't take them anymore.  . . . If I had killed Bricker and Gentry,
they .  . . would be gone.  . . . Why did you stop me?  " "I didn't
want you to kill, that's why.  Josh, where's the Jeep?  " "In the woods
. .

. a mile from here.  . . . It's out of gas."  Abby cursed under her
breath.  There was probably a filled gasoline can somewhere around the
barn or in one of the sheds.  But no doubt the Jeep was a police target
as well.  Whether they ended up trying for San Francisco or Feather
Ridge, their best bet was clearly the truck.  But with no key, that
meant dealing with Alvarez.

Perhaps that's the way it should be, she thought.

She looked down at Josh and wondered how much he could be counted on.

With surprise and Alvarez's rifle or Josh's gun on her side, it was
just possible she wouldn't need him.

She found a coil of clothesline hanging on the wall and some duct tape
on a shelf She set them both beside the truck.  Then she stripped off
the tarp, smashed in the driver's-side window with the hammer, and used
the ski mask to sweep the fragments of glass onto the haystrewn
floor.

Across from her, Josh was now slumped against the wall, asleep or
unconscious.

Abby hefted the high-powered rifle, then pulled open the magazine,
loaded it with three rounds, and used the bolt to thrust one bullet
into the firing chamber.  As a kid, she had done a little riflery in
summer campþstrictly twenty-twos.  But since then, the only time she
had ever pulled the trigger of a gun was in amusement parks.  She
opened the barn door and peered through the telescopic sight at the
rooster weather vane mounted on the roof of the house.  The metal head
of the bird, a dark shadow against the lighter sky, filled the scope.

The O in Stanfordþthat's what Gould had said the sniper could have hit
had he wanted to.  Now she understood.  She took a step through the
door to shield Josh from the noise.  Then she braced herself, set the
crosshairs on where it seemed the rooster's eye might be, and fired.

The recoil was like a heavyweight punch to her shoulder, but she was
balanced for it.

Almost on top of the sharp report from the rifle, there was a muted
clang.  The vane spun like a pinwheel.

Piece of cake.

Abby stepped back inside the barn.  Josh stared at her briefly with
exhausted eyes, then slumped back against the wall.  Abby set a new
shell in the chamber and laid the rifle down by the rope.  Then she
fished out her wallet from the pocket of her slicker, found the slip
with Ezra Black's number on it, and called.  She wondered if, at this
hour, Black would answer his own phone.

"Feather Ridge, " a cultured voice said.

Abby pictured the skeletal houseman.

"This is Dr.  Abby Dolan.  I'd like to speak with Mr.  Black."

"Is this an emergency?  " "It is."

"One moment, please."  In fact, it was almost a minute before Black
came on the line.  There was no hint in his voice that he had been
sleeping.  And Abby sensed from his first words that he was well aware
she had penetrated the lab.

"So, Doctor, did you abuse your degree with the operator again, or do I
have to get this number changed?  " "You can keep it."

"Might I ask how you came by it?  " "We have more important things to
talk about, Mr.  Black."

"Such as?  " "I'm in some trouble here in Patience."

"So I've been told.  Attempted murder is a very serious charge."

"Kelly Franklin and I were on the same side.  We both wanted to get at
the truth.

There's no way I would have hurt her.  It was Lyle Quinn who tried to
kill her."  The momentary silence that followed was telltale.  Black
didn't know!

Quinn might or might not have told him about Abby's finding the lab but
had not been honest about Kelly.

"And just who tried to kill Mr.  Quinn?  " he asked.

This time the silent pause was Abby's.

"A man who was trying to save my life.  What's Quinn's status?  " "His
assistant told me that his knee has been shattered by an arrow from a
high-powered bow.  He's going to require surgery."  In spite of her
situation and her sensibilities, Abby smiled at the news.

"He tried to kill Kelly Franklin.  And I'm certain his men are out
looking to kill me right now."

"Is that what you called to say?  " "No.  I need you to call off
Captain Gould and the rest of the people who are after me."

"If you're wanted by the police, Dr. Dolan, I would suggest the
prudent thing to do would be to give yourself up."

"I don't feel safe doing that.  Mr. Black, you impressed me as being
tough, but not the sort of man who would allow his employees to go out
and murder people."

"I'm not."

"In that case I don't think Lyle Quinn has told you everything.  I'm
calling now because I have a trade to offer."

"Go on."

"Sir, I spoke to you yesterday about my belief that your son was
inadvertently poisoned with cadmium by some sort of accident at the
plant."

"And I told you what I thought of your theory."

"And you were right.  I know now that there was nothing inadvertent
about it, and that it wasn't Colstar's fault.  Ethan was intentionally
poisoned.  I have absolute proof of how, who, and why.

Mr. Black, your son was no more responsible for assaulting that farmer
with a baseball bat than he was for jumping out that window."  Abby
could feel Black dissecting her revelation about the farmer.  It didn't
take him long.

"Dr. DeShield will feel the sting of abusing his relationship with me,
" he said.  "And I will have this number changed."

"Mr.  Black, we're talking about your son and his murderer."

"And exactly what is it you want from me in exchange for your
information?  " "I want the dogs who are chasing me called off.  I want
something done about the laboratory in the old Patience mine.  And I
want justice for Lyle Quinn for whatever happens to Kelly Franklin."

This time the silence was prolonged.

"Have you anything else to say to me?  " Black asked finally.

Abby felt her hopes sink.  She had dearly read the man wrong.

"No, " she said.  "That's it."

"Well, first of all, if the police have a warrant out for your arrest,
it would behoove you to turn yourself in before you get hurt.  Second,
I know nothing about any laboratory in a mine.  And as far as Mr.
Quinn goes, his situation is no different from your own.  If he's
charged with a crime, he will have to answer for it.  In the meantime,
as far as I know, he is not.  I'm his employer, not his judge, jury, or
executioner."

"Good-bye, Mr.  Black."

"If what you're saying about my son is true, Doctor, I promise you that
one way or the other I'll find out."  The thinly veiled threat was
chilling, but Abby's frustration and anger quickly overrode any fear.

"Not before a lot of people find out about Mark Corman and that
underground lab, " she snapped.  "Think over my offer.  I might call
you back later."

"Do what you wish, Dr. Dolan."  Abby slammed the phone down on the
seat.  Black's final words had left the door slightly ajar for her to
call him again.  But her friends in San Francisco were a far safer
bet.

Just then she heard the thumping rotors of a helicopter not far
overhead.  She raced past Josh and through the door.

A good-sized helicopter, landing lights on, was swooping over the
valley toward the hospital.  MedFlight!  Assuming they were coming to
transport Kelly to a decompression chamber, Lew would be home before
long.

Abby knelt beside Josh and assured herself that his carotid pulses were
decent.  Then she checked his pupils.  They were nearly pinpoint.

Almost certainly he had augmented whatever he had been drinking with
narcotic painkillers.

"Josh, " she whispered, shaking him gently.  "Josh, wake up.  I need to
talk to you."  He stirred, then opened his eyes dreamily.

"Leave me alone, " he muttered.

"Josh, listen.  It was Dr. Alvarez who did this to you.  He poisoned
you with the cadmium.  He did it when he sewed up your leg.

Remember?

" Josh's sleepy eyes widened.

"Why?  " "He thought Colstar was trying to cover up a cadmium spill by
faking lab results.  He thought they were succeeding because none of
the exposure cases was terribly sick.  So he decided to create cases
that would be seriously ill enough to indict the company and close it
down."  And of course, she thought, but didn't bother to add, he also
created an ally in one Abby Dolanþa sap who would be certain the blood
work was sent off to the right place and the battle against Colstar
would escalate.

Josh struggled to his feet.

"Where is he now?  " "He'll be home soon.  But we don't want to hurt
him.  The law will do that.  With the proof I have, I promise you they
will.  Understand?  " For the first time Abby felt she saw a spark of
life in Josh's eyes.

"What do you want me to do?  " he asked.

Abby called the E.R and was told that Dr. Alvarez was outside at the
helipad, helping to load Kelly Franklin onto the MedFlight chopper for
a trip to the hyperbaric chamber in Castro Valley.  She insisted that
her call was an emergency and waited until Alvarez came on the line.

"God, but I've been worried about you, " he said in a near whisper.

"The police have been here twice asking about you.  I think they're
still around.  Where are you?  " "I'm at a phone booth at Five
Corners.

" "I'll pick you up there."

"No!  I mean, I told a guy here that my car had broken down.  He's
waiting to take me to your place.  Just meet me there.  I'll wait by
the barn."

"I'll be there in five minutes.

If you wait inside the barn, be careful not to go walking around.

There are rotting floorboards all over the place."  Abby glanced over
at the pickup.

"Thanks for the warning, " she said.

"Abby, the news on Kelly is good.  She's lighter.  Much lighter.  I
think the steroids are kicking in.  MedFlight's just taking off with
her.

Apparently the decompression chamber is ready."

"What about Quinn?  " "Did that hermit Ives do that to his leg?  " "Do
what?  " "He was shot with an arrowþthe same sort of arrow Ives
makes.

His kneecap is shattered.  I mean blown to bits.  The arrow went right
through it, then right through the joint.  It may have severed the
popliteal artery.  Ortho's in with him now.  So's the vascular team.

They may not be able to save the leg."

"Ives did what he had to, to save my life.  Lew, I've got to get
going.

I'll see you at the farm."

"I'm so glad you're all right, darling."

"I know you are, Lew.  Hurry home and I'll tell you what I found."

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO.

Five minutes.  Abby felt wiredþthe same tense anticipation as she had
felt so many times in the E.R.

We are on our way to yourfacility with Priority One traffc.  Repeat,
Priority One traffic Our ETA is five minutes.  . . .

Organize the troops.  Start thinking through treatment protocols.

Check off a mental list of potential problems and responses.  And above
all, no matter how shaky you're feeling, get ready to be composedþ
prepare to be the eye of the storm.

Her mouth unpleasantly dry, Abby swung open the large front doors of
the barn and positioned the rifle just a few feet inside, in the deep
shadow between two rough-hewn supports.  Then she returned to the
truck, set the plastic garbage bag on the floor in the cab, and helped
Josh up onto the cargo bay.  He was definitely too weak, too ill, to
rely upon, except perhaps for helping to tie up Alvarez once she had
the rifle pointed squarely at him.

As a precaution, she tore off several two-foot lengths of duct tape and
hung them on the door of the truck.  Then she made a loop and slipknot
at one end of the clothesline.  If she had to work alone, she would be
ready.

"It's almost over, Josh, " she said, handing him his gun.  "A few more
minutes, and we'll be headed to the city.  We'll go straight to St.
John's.  Once they get you on treatment, you're going to feel much
better."  Josh propped himself up against the metal side wall, steadied
the gun with two hands, and aimed it at a spot in the darkness.

"Ka-pow!  " he whispered.

"Please, honey.  Please don't do anything except wait.  I want to take
him with us and hand him over to the police in San Francisco.  So,
please, just keep out of the way.  . . . Promise?  .  . . Josh, I'm
begging you."

"Promise, " he muttered.

He rubbed at his eyes again and shook his head as if trying to dislodge
claws that were piercing his brain.

Abby hopped down from the truck.  With the front doors open, light
from the outside illuminated most of the barn.  She made certain the
wooden wall of the stall kept the pickup from being spotted from the
doorway.

"Stay still and stay quiet, " she whispered.

She moved to the front of the barn, leaned against the siding, and
waited.  Five minutes went by.  Then another five.  Nothing.  She left
her post and hurried back to check on Josh.  He was still sitting, but
he was asleep, his head lolling to one shoulder.  His hands were still
wrapped around the grip of his gun.  Just as well, she thought.

Abby checked her watch again.  For the first time a knot of panic began
to tighten in her chest.  Something was wrong.  She stepped outside the
barn and peered down the driveway.  Another five minutes passed.

Alvarez had said five minutes.  Now it was more than fifteen.

She had placed the rifle in the shadows for surprise.  Now, suddenly,
she felt as if she needed it for protection.  She turned toward the
back of the barn and gasped.  Alvarez was standing behind her, not five
feet away, grinning at her arrogantly.

"I know you too well, Abby, " he said.  "I've known you inside out
since the day we met.  That's why you've been so easy to control.  You
didn't sound quite like yourself when you called me from the so-called
pay phone.  And there was no traffic noise in the background.  So just
in case, I decided to come up an old logging road and walk across the
fields to the door back there.  I notice you broke the window in my
kitchen door."

"Just to use the phone."

"How I wish I could believe that.  I also noticed my old pickup over
there is uncovered.  Is that the phone you used?  I assume tonight you
stumbled on it by accident and recognized it from that day on the
road.

That's why you broke into the house."  Without taking a step Abby took
a quick, vicious kick at Alvarez's groin.  Before she connected, he
snapped one hand down and caught her ankle.  Then he twisted her foot
until she fell heavily to the floor.

"You know, " he said, "I was going to have that truck painted sometime
before you asked to move in with me.  Now I guess I don't have to
bother."

"I would never have moved in with you."

"As I said, I know you like a book.  Two or three weeks ago, before
your friend Wyler even moved out on you, I circled tomorrow's date on
my calendar.  That was the day we were going to become lovers."

"Go to hell."  Abby forced her eyes to remain locked on his.  The rifle
was just a few feet away, but Alvarez hadn't spotted it.  He hadn't
discovered Josh yet, either.

Perhaps if she could just head him toward the house and make some
noise, she might be able to wake Josh up.

"You hurt a lot of people, " she said.  "A number of them are dead.  "
"You were in my house.  I assume you saw pictures of my village.  This
is war.  In war there are casualties.  I want to know how you got from
the hospital to Colstar, and what you found there that upset Lyle Quinn
so."

"The police have been up here twice looking for me.  They're due again
any minute."  Alvarez snatched her wrist, yanked her to her feet, and
twisted her arm high behind her back.  Abby cried out in pain.  Tears
instantly filled her eyes.

"I asked you a question, " he said, forcing her deeper into the barn.

"Let go of me!  " she screamed.

Alvarez released some of the tension on her arm.  They were moving
closer and closer to the truck.

"Tell me!  " he snapped.

"You were wrong all the time, " she said loudly.  "Wrong!  It was never
cadmium.  They have a lab down there set up for testing sarin,
phosgene, and a bunch of newer chemical weapons, and for trying out
antidotes to them."

"They put the gas in through the MRI?  " "Yes!

Now let me go!  " She shouted the words again.  It was no use.

Apparently Josh was comatose.

"Did you take things from Gabriella's room upstairs?  " He twisted her
arm even more viciously than before.  "Did you?  " "In the truck, " she
sobbed.

Alvarez eased the force on her arm and dragged her several feet closer
to the pickup.  One or two more steps and there was no way he could
avoid spotting Josh sprawled in the back.  All Abby could think about
now was the weapon in Josh's lap.  Which would give her the better
chanceþtrying to rouse him somehow, or trying to pull free and vault
into the cargo bay herself?  She decided to do both.

"Josh!  " She screamed the word at the same instant she yanked her arm
free and dived headfirst over the side wall of the pickup.  The metal
rim caught her at the waist, sending pain screaming from her pelvic
bones.  The cargo bay was empty.  Alvarez whirled, caught her by the
leg, and threw her back to the floor.  She rolled away from him, over
and over, until she was well outside the stall.  Alvarez came after her
quickly, but he was still several feet away when Josh stepped out of
the dimness on the far side of the truck.

"Hold it!  " he ordered.

There was little strength in Josh's voice.  Alvarez stopped short and
turned slowly, his hands open in front of him.  Abby scrambled to her
feet.  She could see that Josh was able to stand only because his back
was braced against the wall.  He was struggling to keep his gun trained
on Alvarez's chest.

His icy smile unwavering, Alvarez slid several paces to his left.  He
was now no more than ten feet from the side doorþabout the same
distance he was from Josh and from Abby.

"Wyler, you don't look well, " he said.

"Don't .  . . move."  The words were barely audible.

Abby could see the pain and confusion in Josh's eyes, and she had no
doubt that Alvarez could see it, too.  If Alvarez dived for the door,
he was almost certain to make it before Josh reacted.  Instead, he
stood his ground.  His expression was bemused, his eyes were riveted on
Josh.

"Josh, give me the gun, " Abby said, taking a tentative step toward him
There was no response.

"Josh?  " she said again.

The barrel of the gun sank toward the floor.  She realized that Josh
was virtually unconscious on his feet.  Alvarez tested the situation
with a slight move toward the door.  Then another.  At that moment a
dreadful gurgling rose from Josh's throat.  His head snapped back and
his body stiffened.  Then he lurched to his left and fell, his back
arched and his limbs pumping in a violent seizure.  The weapon spun out
of his hand and under the truck.  Alvarez had a much better angle on
the stall than did Abby.  He dived headfirst toward the pickup and was
scrambling over Josh when Abby whirled and sprinted for the spot
against the front wall where she had propped the rifle.

She grabbed it just as Alvarez shoved Josh clear of the truck.  He was
on his belly, reaching for the gun, when she dropped to the floor about
twenty feet away and leveled the rifle.

"Stop, Lew!  Right there!  " She punctuated the command with a shot
that splintered the floor beneath the truck, just a foot or so away
from his face.  Then she quickly bolted another round into the
chamber.

Slowly, he wriggled out backward from under the truck.  She could see
that he held the gun.

Behind him, Josh had stopped seizing and was now lying motionless.

"Throw it away, Lew, " she barked.  "Now!  " He slithered around to
face her.  The gun was still in his hand, but turned almost under him
so that it would be impossible to ready it and shoot before she
fired.

He tested her with a tiny movement.

"Okay, that's enough, " she said.

He adjusted his arm another few inches.

"I said enough!  " she snapped.  "You say you know me so well.  What
does your wonderful insight say I'm going to do if you don't throw that
gun away right now?  " He made a show of sizing her up.

"It says you won't fire, " he said finally.

"Good.  I'm glad that's how you feel.  You haven't been wrong about me
yet, so why don't you go ahead?  My intuition tells me you're too much
of an egomaniac to want to chance having the world endure without you
forever.  Let's see who's right."  Fifteen endless seconds passed.

Then, finally, with a flick of his wrist, Dr. Luis Maria Galatin sent
the weapon spinning across the coarse wooden floor.

"Stay on your belly, " Abby barked, advancing to him, her rifle leveled
at the base of his skull.

"How are you going to tie me up without setting that gun down?  " "Put
your hands behind you, Lew.  Now!  " "If I don't?  " "If you don't, I'm
going to shoot you.  Maybe in your leg, maybe in your groin.  Do you
believe that?  .  . . Do you?  " Slowly, Alvarez brought his hands
behind his back.  Abby dropped the loop of clothesline over his wrists
and pulled the knot tight.  Next, she wound the rope several times
around his ankles, and then looped it around his neck.  Only then,
keeping constant tension on the rope, did she risk cradling the rifle
as she reached for the duct tape.

It took more than twenty careful minutes, all of the clothesline, and
most of the roll of duct tape before Abby felt certain she had bound
Alvarez securely.  He was on his belly, hands lashed behind him, ankles
secured.  It was only then that she felt able to tend to Josh.

He was in the condition Abby had observed hundreds of times after
patients' seizuresþconscious, but dazed, moaning softly with each
breath.  In the course of his fit, he had bitten his tongue and the
inside of his lip.  Now a trickle of blood had darkened the corner of
his mouth.  Abby gave passing thought to leaving him there and calling
for an ambulance whenþifþshe got free of the valley.  But she sensed
she would never make it out of the area without his knowledge of the
back roads through the hills.

She checked his pulses, which were strong, and his pupils, which were
somewhat less pinpoint than they had been.  The seizure was probably an
effect of the cadmium, although it could have been alcohol.  Either
way, the narcotic painkillers may have kept it from being worse.  The
expertise to perform chelation therapy, and indeed, the chelating
medication itself, was at St. John's, not here in Patience.  But the
drive to the city could prove disastrous for him.  Even so, Abby knew
they had to take the chance.  She propped him up with-an arm around his
shoulder.  His head lolled at first.  But after a short time he began
to regain some control.

"Josh, can you hear me?  " A faint nod.  "You had a seizure, probably
from the poison in your body.  We need to get out of here and down to
St.  John's.  Do you understand?  " Another nod.

Abby helped him to his feet.  Then she belted him into the passenger
seat of the truck.  She found the key on a ring in Lew's pocket.  Next
she pulled on the clothesline, stretching his arms backward until he
had to stand up.  Then she ordered him to the back of the truck.  He
refused to move.  Abby retrieved Josh's gun and held it against one of
his thumbs.

"I have no patience for this, " she said.  "As far as I'm concerned,
it's high time you were the one doing the suffering.  Once I shoot this
thumb off, I guarantee you, as only a doctor can, that it's not going
to grow back.  What does your precious sixth sense about me have to say
about my willingness to do that?  " Without a word Lew hopped to the
cargo bay and awkwardly rolled onto it.  Abby searched the barn and
found another length of rope.  Then she wrapped him snugly and
completely in the vinyl tarp and lashed him securely in place.

"Don't do this to me, Abby, " he said.  "I'll never survive in here
like this.  I'll suffocate."

"We'll see, " Abby replied, securing the rear gate and taking her place
behind the wheel.  "We'll see."  The engine kicked over on the first
try.  With Lew's meticulous attention to the details of his life, she
had never doubted that it would.

"Josh, I need to get out of the valley without going on any of the
state roads.  Can you do that?  " "Yes.  . . . My head is .  . .

killing me."  He took the vial of pills from his pocket but was unable
to open it.  Abby helped him shake out two.  He swallowed them without
water.

"Which way?  " she asked.

"South and west .  . . toward the house."  The road to which Josh
directed her was steep and rutted.  By the time she was a mile into it,
he was semiconscious again, with a rag doll's control of his body.

Again and again jolts sent his head snapping against the window.  As
much as she could, she drove holding on to the neck of his
sweatshirt.

Once she stopped to check on the bundle in the cargo bay.  Lew was
furious, but uninjured.

There were no forks or turns off the dirt road, so there was no reason
to try to rouse Josh.  For forty-five minutes Abby drove through the
rain-soaked forest.  Suddenly, after a steep, mercilessly jouncing
downhill stretch, she saw headlights flash past ahead.  She slowed and
crept forward, cutting the lights.  Finally she reached the margin of
the woods.  Josh had done it.  The highway was the two-lane state road
through the mountains that she had taken to San Francisco, and then
later to Feather Ridge.

"Josh, we made it!  " she said excitedly.

He did not respond.  His breathing was sonorous, unnatural.

"Josh?  " Abby shook him, but he did not respond.  She turned his face
toward her.

The muscles in his face were twitching.  Another seizureþ this one more
focal than the last.

"Damn, " she said softly.

To the right, with luck, she still faced more than a four-hour drive to
the city.  To the left, half an hour back, was Patienceþa viper-filled
pit for her, without a single ally she could count on.  She bit at her
lower lip and looked again at Josh.  Then she took a single deep
breath, flipped on the headlights, and swung a right onto the road,
headed south.  Ten miles, twenty, fifty.  Josh had long ago stopped
seizing, but he remained in a coma.  She was about five miles from the
cutoff to the town of Feather Falls, and beyond that, Feather Ridge.

Ezra Black had his own helicopter.  With it Josh could be on the roof
at St. John's in forty-five minutes or so.  At the very least it was
worth a call.

Abby was looking down at the floor for the cellular phone when the cab
was lit up by a flashing blue-white strobe.  Her heart froze, The
cruiser was a few car lengths behind her, inching closer as the
officer inside waited for her to pull over.  The town was just
ahead.

Being stopped now might well mean being brought back to whatever
unthinkable fate awaited her in Patience.  It certainly meant delay and
trouble for Josh.  And with no arrest warrants out for Lew Alvarez, it
was quite possible Galatin would be able to talk the police into
setting him free and even into adding kidnapping to the charges against
her.  She was seven miles or so from Feather Ridgeþno more.

"Hang on, baby, " she said, though Josh was far beyond hearing her.

She rammed down on the accelerator and felt the truck surge forward
with surprising power.  Instantly, the siren from the cruiser pierced
the night.  Abby kept her foot tight to the floor.  The cruiser tried
to pull beside her, but the narrow road made it easy to keep it at
bay.

Luckily, at this hour there was little traffic.  She flew over a small
hill, bottoming out the chassis as she hit.  Ahead, she could see Main
Street.

She was doing over eighty now.  Wind was tearing through the open
window, whipping her hair against her face and into her eyes.  Josh was
slumped over almost double, jostling violently from side to side.  The
cruiser pulled alongside her once more.  Again she fought it off.

Then, up ahead, she spotted a second cruiser, parked across the middle
of the road, strobes flashing.  There was room for the truck to the
right of it, but only if the pickup was tougher than a pedestrian bench
and a stop sign.  Eighty-five.  Eighty-eight.  Abby saw the officer
standing by the cruiser realize that she wasn't slowing down, and dive
off to the left.  At the last moment she swung the pickup onto the
sidewalk.  Her head snapped forward as the steel plow frame took out
the wooden bench.

But the stop sign sheared off with just a minor jolt.

Seconds later she was beyond the town, flying up and down the
roller-coaster hills toward Feather Ridge.  Behind her the two cruisers
were gaining.  But now, she knew, they would not be driving with such a
sense of urgency.  She was trapped.  Not a mile ahead was the massive
gate to Feather Ridge.  What they had no way of knowing, though, was
that she had absolutely no intention of stopping.

Apparently, the police had been able to call ahead to the guardhouse.

As Abby approached it, a dark sedan snapped its lights on, and a
security man appeared at the roadside, gun in hand.  Abby got her
bearings, aimed for the center of the gate, gripped the wheel tightly,
and ducked below the level of the dash.  A bullet cracked through her
window and thudded into the roof of the cab.  Then a second shot must
have hit the left front tire.  It exploded with a bass-drum sound,
tearing the wheel from her hands at precisely the moment the pickup
slammed into the gate.  Abby's forehead smacked against the steering
wheel, dazing her and sending blood cascading down into her eyes.  But
the pickup barreled on through the gate, careening to the left into the
orchard.

Abby kept her foot to the floor as she battled to regain control of the
wheel.  The truck flattened several young trees, then lurched to the
right and back onto the pavement.  The smell of burning rubber filled
the cab.  It took all her strength, pulling the wheel to the right, to
keep the pickup on the road.  Blood from her forehead had her nearly
blind.

The cruisers and the third car were pulling alongside again.  But ahead
of her now, sprawled across the side of the mountain, was the estate.

The battered truck careened down the last hill.  Abby could see perhaps
half a dozen guards running to take up positions in front of the
house.

With a final, unspoken prayer, she slammed on the brakes.  There was a
deafening screech as the pickup skidded sideways, spun completely
around, tipped way up onto two wheels, then dropped back heavily onto
four.  The doors were snatched open.  Rough hands pulled her and Josh
out and threw them to the ground.  Instantly, a dozen or more men, guns
drawn, were around her.  Half a dozen powerful flashlights shone on her
face.  One of the men kicked her onto her back with his boot, then
roughly pulled her to a sitting position by the front of her
sweatshirt.

Abby blinked, trying to focus on him, but could hardly see anything
through the blood.  Suddenly the guard let her go and stepped away.

She wiped her eyes with her sleeve.  Through the glare of the lights a
man approached and handed her a handkerchief.  She tied it around her
head, putting pressure on the gash, which she now could appreciate was
not that big.  Then she peered up at him.

"You must have wanted very badly to see me, " Ezra Black said.

Abby waved off help, stood by herself, and rushed around to where Josh
lay.  He was unconscious but crying out softly.  His vital signs seemed
strong, and there were no other indications that he had been injured in
their ordeal.

She retrieved the plastic bag from the truck and motioned Black away
from his men.  Back at the pickup, she could see some of the guards
untying the tarp.  After the violent pounding Galatin must have taken
during the harrowing chase, it was quite possible that there would be a
corpse wrapped inside.  But after a few seconds she heard .  .

. llm moamng.

"That man on the ground needs to get to St. John's in San Francisco, "
she said.  "Could your helicopter take him?  " "What's the matter with
him?  " "He's been poisoned with cadmium.  Just like your son was.

He'll die soon without help."  She reached into the plastic bag and
brought out the box of cadmium and the article about the Colstar
explosion.  Black studied them.  It was clear from his expression that
the name Luis Maria Galatin was one he knew.

"Galatin is responsible for this?  " "He is."

"And where is he now?

" "There."  Abby motioned toward the truck, where Galatin was sitting,
crying out about a pain in his arm.

"And is that all you want from me?  A ride to San Francisco?  " "No.  I
want that lab beneath Colstar closed down for good."  Black eyed her
for several seconds.

"Can I count on your total discretion if I guarantee that?  " "You have
my word."  Abby unfolded the list of cadmium victims.

"This man, Josh Wyler, is the one on the ground.  The next one, Willie
Cardoza, is the one who ran down Peggy Wheaton.  There's Ethan's name,
right there.  Galatin was working in the Patience Regional Hospital E.R
under the name Alvarez.  These people all worked for Colstar.  He gave
the cadmium to all these people when he sewed up their cuts.  He had no
idea that given intravenously, the metal would become concentrated in a
place in the brain where it would cause the sort of insanity that
killed your son.  He didn't care.  He only wanted to get Colstar closed
down."  leg."

"I see.  . . . So, is this a trade?  " Abby glanced over at the
truck.

"I want the best lawyers money can buy for Willie Cardoza and Josh.

And I want something done about Quinn."  Black looked at her
admiringly.

"You're tough, " he said.

"I wasn't before this all happened."

"For what it's worth, I will promise you that Quinn is finished in
Patience.  I also have heard that they will not be able to save his
"I'm not sorry.  I want Kelly Franklin to get the very best medical
care and rehabilitation.  And if she doesn't make it, I'd like to
contact you about having Colstar take care of her two daughters."

"Is that it?  " "Yes."

"You sure, now?

" Abby thought for a moment.

"I'm sure."

"Thank goodness.  . . . Hey, Nick, " he called out to one of the group
of men.  "Get ready to fly.  This lady and her friend need to get to a
hospital in San Francisco."  Abby motioned toward the truck with her
head.

"What about him?  " "I don't recall that my sharing that information
was part of our deal."  Abby hesitated, then said, "It wasn't."

"For what it's worth, I have no intention of killing Galatin, although
at some point he may wish that I had.  I have some good friends and
business associates in the Paraguayan government.  I know for a fact
that they'll be most grateful for this .  . . this scum's return
home.

Most grateful."  Abby held the billionaire's gaze for a time, then she
nodded that their business was completed.  She turned away and followed
the men who were carrying Josh to the helipad.  Minutes later they were
airborne.  Abby sat at one end of a plush, sofalike seat at the rear of
the elegant aircraft.  Josh was stretched out next to her, his head
resting on her lap.  He had regained consciousness only briefly, but
long enough to manage something of a smile.

The chopper banked a graceful arc over Ezra Black's estate and then
headed southwest.  Abby gazed out the window past the battered,
exhausted reflection that looked vaguely like herselœ She reached up
and flicked off the cabin lights.  Far to the north, almost lost in the
pitchblack landscape and sky, she could just barely make out a smudge
of red.

EPILOGUE Three thousand miles away, just to the east of the Tennessee/
North Carolina border, Lally Dorsett lay supine on the stretcher,
watching the ceiling fluorescents flash past.  Forty-five years she had
lived in the town of Gilbert, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and
she had not been sick a day.  Now, because of a little dizziness, she
was in the damn hospital.  Hell, she thought, for most of those four
and a half decades, Gilbert didn't even have a hospital.  Now,
suddenly, it seemed as if there were doctors coming out of the
woodwork.

There was a time, not so long ago, when she would have simply written
off her dizziness and waited it out.  It would have gotten better,
too.

Problems like that always did.  But now, because her children insisted,
and because the hospital was there, here she was getting wheeled down
for a test her doctor couldn't even explain to her.  An MRI, he said.

Well, this was the last time she was going to submit to any test
without a fight.  Her kids meant well, but they just didn't understand
that there was a direct correlation between the number of doctors in a
town and the number of sick people.

The stretcher was wheeled into the place Lally had been told to
expectþa gleaming, bright room with something like a huge spaceship in
the middle, a hollow tube running through its center.  She refused the
technician girl's offer of help and scooted herself from the stretcher
to a sliding bed attached to the hole in the ship.  At her doctor's
recommendation, she consented to the earphones and black eye shield.

Then she allowed herself to be pushed into the cylinder.

"Are you ready?  " the girl asked through the earphones.

"Ready's I'll ever be."  Some George Strait began playing in the
headset.  Beneath the mask, Lally's eyes closed.  The banging and
clanging of the magnet that she had been told to expect was scarcely
blocked at all by the music.  From someplace behind and above her, a
fan started blowing.  The air in the tube began to smell sweet and just
a bit heavy.  Her doctor hadn't said anything at all about that.  Lally
wondered if she should say something to the girl.

Oh, hell, she decided, forcing her muscles to relax.  Let's just get it
over with.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

MICHAEL PALMER, M. D. , is the author of Silent Treatment, Natural
Causes, Extreme Measures, Flashback, Side Effects, and The
Sisterhood.

His books have been translated into twenty-two languages.  He trained
in internal medicine at Boston City and Massachusetts General
hospitals, spent twenty years as a fulltime practitioner of internal
and emergency medicine, and is now involved in the treatment of
alcoholism and chemical dependence.  He lives in Massachusetts.

the end.