Flashback

sure it was this outfit that confused you'-she indicated the blue scrubsuit-'but I just finished putting in a pacemaker.' She nodded toward Annie, who was now fully awake and beginning to look around. 'You seem to have done quite a job bringing this woman back, Dr. Iverson. Congratulations.'

It was nearing midnight. Zack Iverson sat alone in the staff lounge at the back of the emergency ward, sipping tepid coffee, sorting through what had been, perhaps, the most remarkable June the thirtieth of them all, and trying to slow down his runaway fantasies concerning Suzanne Cole. It had taken several hours to ready a bed for Annie in the coronary care unit and to effect her transfer there. During that time, Zack had stayed in the background, watching Suzanne as she managed one dangerous cardiac arrhythmia after another in the woman, balancing complex treatments against their side effects, checking monitor readouts, reviewing lab results, then, suddenly, stopping to mop Annie's brow, or to smooth errant wisps of gray hair from her forehead, or simply to bend down and whisper encouragement in her ear. Unlike what Zack had imagined from her cool composure during their initial meeting, she was actually quite tense and frenetic during critical moments, moving from one side of the bed to the other then back, checking and rechecking to ensure that her orders were being carried out correctly.

Still, while she seemed frequently on edge, she was never out of control and it was clear that the nurses were comfortable with her ways, and even more important, trusted in them Who are you? his mind asked over and over as he watched her work. What are you doing up here in the boondocks?

The Judge and Cinnie had checked in twice by phone, and around ten, Frank had stopped by. He seemed restless and irritable, and although he mentioned nothing of the episode, Zack sensed that he was still quite upset by the Judge's outburst and thinly veiled threat.

Citing the need to be near the twins during the violent thunderstorm that had just erupted, he had left for home after only half an hour. But before he left, Zack had managed, in what he hoped was an offhanded way, to pump a bit of information from him regarding Suzanne Cole.

Dartmouth-trained and a member of the Ultramed-Davis staff for almost two years, she was thirty-three or thirty-four, divorced, and the mother of a six-year-old girl. In addition, she was co-owner, along with another divorcee in town, of a small art gallery and crafts shop Zack had tried, with little success, for a more subjective assessment of the woman, but Frank, distracted and anxious to leave, had completely missed the point. Now, as he sat alone, Zack wondered if it was worth waiting any longer for the woman to finish her work in the unit and, as she had promised, stop by for 'a hit of decaf.' The nurses had told him that it was not that uncommon for Suzanne, as they called her, to spend the night in the hospital if she had a particularly sick patient, and this night — with Annie and her pacemaker case-she had two Who are you? What are you doing up here?

The state of infatuation with a woman was not something with which Zack was all that familiar or comfortable. A bookworm throughout his college years, and a virgin until his junior year, he had had a reasonable number of dates, and a few short-lived romances after Lisette, but no prolonged relationships until Connie. He had once described his social life in college as a succession of calls to women the day after they had met someone special. Connie was five years younger than he, but possessed a worldliness and sophistication that he felt were missing from his life. She had an MBA degree from Northwestern, a management-track position at one of the big downtown companies, a condo in the Back Bay, a silver BMW, friends in the symphony, and an interest in impressionist painters ('Pissarro has more depth, more energy in one brush stroke, than Renoir has in a dozen canvases, don't you think? ') and foreign films ('Zachary, if you would stop insisting on plot all the time, and concentrate more on the universality of the characters and the technical brilliance of the director, this film would mean more to you'). Friends of his spoke to him from time to time of what they perceived might be a mismatch, but he countered by enumerating the new awareness Connie had brought into his life. Whether he truly loved the woman or not, he was never sure, but there was no questioning that he was, for most of their time together, absolutely infatuated with her beauty, her confidence, and her style. Her decision to break off their engagement had hurt him, but not as deeply as he first thought. And over the months that followed, he had spent what free time he had flying the radio-controlled airplane he had built in high school, exercising himself back into rock-climbing shape, hiking with Cheap dog, and horseback riding with friends along the seashore at the Cape-but not one minute at a gallery or locked in combat with a foreign film. 'Hi.'

Startled, Zack knocked over his Styrofoam cup, spilling what remained of his coffee into a small pool on the veneer tabletop. 'Hi, yourself, ' he said as Suzanne Cole plucked a pad of napkins from the nearby counter and dabbed up the spill. Was there to be no end to his ineptitude in front of this woman?

'It would seem you might have reached the limit of your caffeine quota for the day, ' she said. She had changed into street clothes-gray slacks and a bulky fisherman-knit sweater-and she looked as fresh as if she had just started the day. 'Actually, ' he said. 'I use caffeine to override my own inherent hyperness. I think it actually slows me down.'

She smiled. 'I know the syndrome. I'm surprised to find you still here, what with tomorrow being your first day in the office and all.'

'I wanted to be sure Annie was out of the woods. She's been pretty special to me and my family. Besides, I just finished my residency yesterday. It'll probably be months before my internal chemistry demands anything more than a fifteen-minute nap in an institutional, Naugahyde easy chair.'

'I remember those chairs well, ' Suzanne said, leaning against the counter. 'There's an old, ratty, maroon one in the cardiac fellows' room at Hitchcock that I suspect would one day have a sign on it proclaiming, Suzanne Cole slept here-and only here… So, it's a progress report you're after. Well, the news is good. At least for the moment. Your Annie's awake and stable, with no neurologic deficit that I can identify, although you might want to go over her in the morning. In fact, I think I'll make her your first consult, if that's okay. You did say you were going to do neurology as well as neurosurgery, yes?'

'Absolutely. I actually enjoy the puzzles nearly as much as I do the blood and guts.'

Her eyes narrowed. 'You sure don't talk like a surgeon, ' she said. 'The ones I know have signs in their rooms like, To cut is to cure, and All the world is pre-op.'

'Oh, I have those, too. Believe me. Only as an enlightened, Renaissance surgeon, mine say, Almost all the world is pre-op.' He pushed a chair from the table with his foot. 'Here, have a seat.'

'Sorry, but I can't, ' she said. 'I've got to go. Mrs. Doucette was my third critical admission this weekend, and I have a full day tomorrow.

You ought to get some sleep, too, so you'll be sharp for my consult.

Good night, now.' She slipped on her coat and headed for the door.

'Wait, ' Zack said, realizing even as he heard his own voice that the order was coming from somewhere outside his rational self-somewhere within his swirling fantasies. 'Yes?'

She turned back to him. The darkness in her eyes and the set of her face were warning him not to push matters further. He picked up on the message too late. 'I… um… I was wondering if we might have dinner or something together sometime.'

Suzanne sagged visibly. 'I'm sorry, ' she said wearily. 'Thank you, Zack's fantasies stopped swirling and began floating to earth like feathers. 'Oh, ' he said, feeling suddenly very self-conscious. 'I didn't mean to… what I mean is, it seemed like-'

'Zack, I'm sorry for being so abrupt. It's late, and I'm bushed.

I appreciate your asking me, really I do. And I'm flattered. But I…

I just don't go out with people I work with. Besides, I'm involved with someone.'

The last of the feathers touched down. Zack shrugged. 'Well, then, ' he said with forced cheer, 'I guess I should just hope that a lot of folks show up at this hospital with combined cardiac and neurosurgical disease, shouldn't I?'

Suzanne reached out and shook his hand. 'I'm looking forward to working with you, ' she said. 'I know we'll be terrific.'

At that moment, from the far end of the emergency ward, a man began screaming, again and again, 'No! I won't go! I'm going to die. I'm going to die!'

The two of them raced toward the commotion, which centered about an old man-in his seventies, Zack guessed-whom the nurse, the emergency physician, and a uniformed security guard were trying to move from a litter to a wheelchair. The man, with striking, long, silver hair and a gnarled full beard, was struggling to remain where he was. Zack's gaze took in his chino pants and flannel shirt, stained with grit, sweat, and grease, and a pair of tattered, oily work boots. The old man's left arm was bound tightly across his chest with a shoulder immobilizer,