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dock onto Thirtieth Street. She didn't want to take the risk of running into anyone in the reception area. Befitting her mood, it was still raining as she walked south on First Avenue. If anything, the city looked worse than it had that morning, with a pall of acrid exhaust fumes suspended between the buildings lining the street. Laurie kept her head down to avoid the oily puddles, the litter, and the stares of the homeless. Even her apartment building seemed dirtier than usual, and as she waited for the elevator, she was aware of the smell of a century of fried onions and fatty meat. Getting off on the fifth floor, she glared at Debra Engler's bloodshot eye, daring her to say anything. Once inside her apartment, she slammed the door with enough force to tilt a framed Klimt print she'd gotten from the Metropolitan. Even feisty Tom couldn't elevate her spirits as he rubbed back and forth across her shins as she hung up her coat and stashed her umbrella in her narrow hall closet. Going into her living room, she collapsed into her armchair.
Refusing to be ignored, Tom leaped to the back of the chair and purred directly into Laurie's right ear. When that didn't work, he began to paw Laurie's shoulder repeatedly. Finally Laurie responded by reaching up and lifting the cat into her lap where she began absently to stroke him.
As the rain tapped against her window like grains of sand, Laurie lamented her life. For the second time that day she thought about not being married. Her mother's criticism seemed more deserved than usual. She wondered anew if she'd made the right career choices. What about ten years from now? Could she see herself caught in the same quagmire of lonely daily life, struggling to stay ahead of the paperwork associated with the autopsies, or would she assume more administrative duties like Bingham? With a sense of shock, Laurie realized for the first time that she had no desire to be chief. Up until that moment, she'd always tried to excel whether it was college or medical school, and aspiring to be the chief would have fit into that mold. Excelling for Laurie had been a kind of rebellion, an attempt to make her father, the great cardiac surgeon, finally acknowledge her. But it had never worked. She knew that as far as her father was concerned she'd never be able to replace her older brother who'd died at the

tender age of nineteen.
Laurie sighed. It wasn't like her to be depressed, and the fact that she was depressed depressed her. She never would have guessed that she'd be quite so sensitive to criticism. Maybe she'd been unhappy and hadn't even realized it with her workload. Laurie noticed that the red light on her answering machine was blinking. At first she ignored it, but the darker the room got, the more insistent the blinking became. After watching the light for another ten minutes, curiosity got the best of her, and she listened to the tape. The call was from her mother, Dorothy Montgomery, asking her to call the moment she got home. "Oh, great!" Laurie said out loud. She debated about calling, knowing her mother's capacity to grate on her nerves in the best of circumstances. She wasn't feeling up to another dose of her mother's negativity and unsolicited advice just then.
Laurie listened to the message a second time and, after convincing herself that her mother sounded genuinely concerned, she made the call. Dorothy answered on the first ring. "Thank God you called," she said breathlessly. "I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't. I was thinking of sending a telegram. We're having a dinner party tomorrow night, and I want you to come. We're having someone here I want you to meet." "Mother!" Laurie said with exasperation. "I'm not sure I'm up for a dinner party. I've had a bad day." "Nonsense," Dorothy exclaimed. "All the more reason to get out of that dreadful apartment of yours. You'll have a wonderful time. It will be good for you. The person I want you to meet is Dr. Jordan Scheffield.