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barely met. Now I felt the thin fabric of her blouse under my hands, felt the resilient softness of her skin, smelled the lush flowers of her perfume....
    I did not hear the paramedics come. At some point strong hands grasped my shoulders and pulled me away.
    A man’s voice spoke, but at first I didn’t register the meaning of his words. Gradually the adrenaline released me from its grip and I saw the room as if for the first time.
    On the floor in front of Dagny’s desk a half-dozen blue-uniformed emergency medical technicians swarmed around the still-motionless body of her secretary. One of the paramedics, a woman who wore her glossy hair in a French braid that made me suddenly think of horses, began asking me questions: What was her name? When did I find her? How was she lying? Did I move her? How long did it take me before I started CPR? Did I know whether she had any history of heart disease? Diabetes? Drag use?
    As I stammered out my replies another paramedic, a black man with a bald head, slid some sort of tube down the unconscious woman’s throat. Another EMT took a thick needle and started an IV drip.
    “Pupils dilated and unresponsive,” said one voice. “Blood pressure is zero.”
    “Defib?” demanded another.
    “We’re so close to the hospital, let’s just keep her ventilated and get her in,” replied the black paramedic, who seemed to be in charge.
    The woman with the French braid turned to me. “You can ride with her in the ambulance. Let’s see if somebody can find her purse.”
    I sputtered an incoherent protest, but no one paid any attention. They were already bent over the stretcher. I looked around the room desperately for Dagny, but she "as nowhere to be seen. As we were walking out the door someone shoved Cecilia’s battered black shoulder bag into my hands.
     
    * * *
     
    The siren wailed and throbbed above us as we navigated the narrow city streets. I wondered which hospital was nearest and decided it was probably Michael Reese. Cecilia, still unconscious, lay strapped to the stretcher while the black paramedic kept up his ministrations— shining a penlight into her eyes, taking her blood pressure, checking the IV line.
    I sat on a narrow bench, crouching thigh to thigh with a second paramedic, one I hadn’t noticed back in Dagny’s office. He was good-looking in a beefy sort of way, with a lantern jaw and what I knew instinctively must be a quick eye for the ladies.
    “Nice work in there,” he said.
    “Thanks.”
    “Did she do drugs, do you know?”
    “I have no idea. I’ve never seen her before.”
    “So you don’t work with her or nothin’.”
    “No. I just had an appointment with her boss.”
    “What kind of place is that back there where she works? It’s some sort of factory, isn’t it?”
    “They do metal plating.”
    “So you don’t work there?”
    “I have an office downtown.”
    “Whadya do?”
    “I’m an attorney,” I replied uncomfortably. The circumstances, I felt, were not ideal for small talk.
    “You’re kidding. I would never’ve taken you for a lawyer, on account of you being so young and good-looking and all.”
    We hit the bump of the curb and made a sharp turn into what I prayed was the entrance to the emergency room.
    “Save it, Frank,” snapped the black paramedic. “It’s show time.”
     
    I hate everything about hospitals—the smell of suffering mingled with disinfectant, the constant drone of unwatched TVs and babies crying, the way that tiny acts of compassion are overshadowed by the monumental cruelty of bureaucratic indifference. It is the same in every hospital I have ever been in. And I have been in my share.
    My husband died of brain cancer the year we both graduated from law school. The months that preceded his death were filled with painful tests and poisonous medications. They were months of bitterness, stoicism, and despair. By the time I came through them, I had used up a lifetime’s allotment of patience with