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The girls behind her chirped similar comments in support.

'How can you call me childish when you're only in the third grade?' Tommy retorted. The group assembled behind him echoed their agreement.

'Don't be so immature?' Holly said. Good, word, she thought.

Tommy hesitated. 'Yeah, well, he's still a murderer.'

'He is not.'

'He killed a man, didn't he?'

'Well, yes, but...'

'Then he's a murderer.' Tommy looked around himself for support. 'Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!' The group behind him joined in.

'Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!'

Holly felt her fists clench by her side, felt her collar tighten around her neck. She remembered her father. Be a lady. Got to be a lady.

She spun around, her blonde ponytail flinging around her shoulders. The girls around her were shaking their heads at the taunts of the boys. Holly took a deep breath. She smiled to her friends. Got to be a lady.

Behind her, the boys' chant continued.

'Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!'

Finally, Tommy called out above the chant, 'If her father's a murderer, then Holly Swain will probably grow up to be a murderer, too!'

'Yeah! Yeah, she will!' his group urged.

Holly's smile went flat.

Slowly -- ever so slowly -- she turned back around to face Tommy. A hush fell over the crowd.

Holly stepped closer. Tommy chuckled, glancing around at his friends. Only now his supporters were silent.

'Now I'm upset,' Holly said flatly. 'I think you'd better take back those things you've been saying. Would you, please?'

Tommy smirked and then he leaned forward. 'Nope.'

'Okay, then,' Holly said, smiling politely. She looked down at her uniform, straightened her skirt.

Then she hit him.

Hard.

The clinic had become a battlefield.

Glass exploded everywhere as test tubes exploded against the walls. The nurses leapt clear of the melee, hurriedly moving the multi-million-dollar equipment out of the line of fire.

Dr Stephen Swain burst out of the adjoining observation room and immediately set about calming the source of the storm -- a 57-year-old, 240-pound, big-busted woman named Rosemary Pederman, a guest of St Luke's Hospital, New York City, on account of a small abnormality in her brain known as a cerebral aneurism.

'Mrs Pederman! Mrs Pederman!' Swain called. 'It's okay. It's okay. Just calm down,' he said gently. 'What seems to be the problem?'

'The problem?' Rose Pederman spat. 'The problem, young man, is that I will not put my head in that... that thing... until someone tells me exactly what it does!'

As she spoke, she jerked her chin at the enormous Magnetic Resonance Imaging -- or MRI -- machine which occupied the centre of the room.

'Come on, Mrs Pederman,' Swain said sternly. 'We've been through this before.'

Rose Pederman pouted, child-like.

'The MRI will not harm you in any way--'

'Young man. How does it work?'

Swain pursed his lips tightly.

At 39, he was the youngest ever partner in Borman & White, the radiologist collective, and for a very simple reason -- Swain was good. He could see things in an X-ray or a CAT-scan that no-one else could, and on more than one occasion, had saved lives by doing so.

This fact, however, was difficult to impress upon older patients since Swain -- sandy-haired and clean- shaven, with a lean physique and sky-blue eyes -- looked about ten years younger than his actual age. Except for the fresh red vertical scar that cut down across his lower lip, a feature which seemed to age him, he could have passed for a third-year resident.

'You want to know how it works?' Swain said seriously. He resisted the urge to look at his watch. He had somewhere to be. But then, Rose Pederman had gone through six radiologists already and this had to stop.

'Yes, I do,' she said stubbornly.

'Okay. Mrs Pederman, the process you are about to undertake is called Magnetic Resonance Imaging. It's not unlike a CAT-scan, in that it generates a cross-sectional scan of your skull. Only instead of using photovoltaic methods, we use controlled magnetic energy to re-align the ambient electrostatic conductivity in your head in order to create a three-dimensional composite cross-section of your cranium.'

'What?'

'The magnet in the MRI machine affects the natural electricity in your body, Mrs Pederman, giving us a perfect picture of the inside of your head.'

'Oh, well...' Mrs Pederman's lethal frown instantly transformed itself into a beaming, maternal smile. 'That's quite all right then. That was all you had to tell me, lovey.'

An hour later, Swain burst through the doors of the surgeon's locker room.

'Am I too late?' he said.

Dr James Wilson -- a red-haired paediatrician who, ten years previously, had been the best man at Swain's wedding -- was already moving quickly toward him. He hurled Swain's briefcase to Swain. 'It's 14-13 to the Giants. If we hurry, we can catch the last two quarters at McCafferty's. Come on, this way. We'll go through the ER.'

'Thanks for waiting,' Swain hurried to keep up with his friend's rapid strides.

'Hey, it's your game,' Wilson said as he walked.

The Giants were playing the Redskins and Wilson knew that Swain had been waiting a long time for this game. It had something to do with Swain living in New York and his father who lived back in D.C.

'Say,' Wilson said, 'how's that lip healing up?'

'It's okay.' Swain touched the vertical scar on his lower lip. 'Still a bit tender. Got the stitches out last week.'

Wilson turned as he walked, grinning. 'Makes you look even uglier than you already are.'

'Thanks.'

Wilson arrived at the door to the emergency room, opened it--

--and was immediately met by the pretty face of Emma Johnson, one of the floating nurses at St Luke's.

The two men stopped instantly.

'Hey, Steve, how are you?' Emma looked only at Swain.

'Gettin' there,' he replied. 'How about you?'

A coy cock of the head. 'I'm good.'

'I'm fine, too,' Jim Wilson chimed in. 'Not that anyone seems to care...'

Emma said to Swain: 'You wanted me to remind you about your meeting with Detective Dickson, about the ... incident. Don't forget you have to see him at five.'

'Right,' Swain nodded, absently stroking the cut on his lower lip. 'No problem. I can do that after the game.'

'Oh, I almost forgot,' Emma added. 'You got another message. Norwood Elementary called about ten minutes ago. They want to know if you can come down there right away. Holly's been fighting again.'

Swain sighed. 'Not again. Right away?'

'Right away.'

Swain turned to Wilson. 'Why today?'

'Why not?' Wilson said wryly.