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were crazy to be worried about it.”
    “A little loose in the ethics department?”
    “He has no ethics. Sometimes I’m convinced he’s drunk
or on something, but I can’t trip him up on rounds. He’s prepared, always has
the right answer. But he’s still no doctor, just a hippie with a lot of
education.”
    “How’d he get along with the Swopes?” I asked.
    “Maybe too well. He was very chummy with the mother
and seemed to relate to the father as well as anyone could.” He looked into his
empty coffee cup. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to sleep with the
sister—she’s a looker. But that’s not what’s bothering me right now.”
    He narrowed his eyes.
    “I think Dr. August Valcroix has a soft spot in his
heart for quacks. He’s spoken up at staff meetings about how we should be more
tolerant of what he calls alternative health care approaches. He spent
some time on an Indian reservation and was impressed with the medicine men. The
rest of us are discussing the New England Journal and he’s going on
about shamans and snake powders. Unbelievable.”
    He grimaced in disgust.
    “When he told me they were pulling the boy out of
treatment I couldn’t help but feel he was gloating.”
    “Do you think he actually sabotaged you?”
    “The enemy from within?” He considered it. “No, not
overtly. I just don’t think he supported the treatment plan the way he should
have. Dammit, Alex, this isn’t some abstract philosophy seminar. There’s a sick
boy with a nasty disease that I can treat and cure and they want to prevent
that treatment. It’s— murder!”
    “You could,” I suggested, “go to court on it.”
    He nodded sadly.
    “I’ve already broached the subject with the hospital
attorney and he thinks we’d win. But it would be a Pyrrhic victory. You
remember the Chad Green case—the child had leukemia, the parents pulled him out
of Boston Children’s and ran away to Mexico for Laetrile. It turned into a
media circus. The parents became heroes, the doctors and the hospital, big bad
wolves. In the end, with all the court orders, the boy never got treated and
died.”
    He placed an index finger against each temple and
pressed. A pulse quivered under each fingertip. He winced.
    “Migraine?”
    “Just started. I can handle it.” He sucked in his
breath. The paunch rippled.
    “I may have to take them to court. But I want to avoid
it. Which is why I called you, my friend.”
    He leaned forward and placed his hand over mine. His
skin was unusually warm and just a bit moist.
    “Talk to them, Alex. Use any tricks you’ve got up your
sleeve. Empathy, sympathy, whatever. Try to get them to see the consequences of
what they’re doing.”
    “It’s a tall order.”
    He withdrew his hand and smiled.
    “The only kind we have around here.”

4
    THE W ALLS of the ward were covered with sunny yellow
paper patterned with dancing teddy bears and grinning rag dolls. But the
hospital smells that I’d grown used to when I worked there—disinfectant, body
odor, wilting flowers—assaulted my nostrils and reminded me I was a stranger.
Though I’d walked this same corridor a thousand times, I was gripped with the
chilling uneasiness that hospitals inevitably evoke.
    The Laminar Airflow Unit was at the east end of the
ward behind a windowless gray door. As we approached, the door swung open and a
young woman stepped into the hallway. She lit up a cigarette and began to walk
away, but Raoul hailed her and she stopped, turned, bent a knee and froze the
pose, one hand on the cigarette, the other on her hip.
    “The sister,” he whispered.
    He’d called her a looker but it was an understatement.
    The girl was stunning.
    She was tall, five eight or nine, with a body that
managed to be both womanly and boyish. Her legs were long, coltish, and firm,
her breasts high and small. She had a swan’s neck and delicate, slender hands
ending in crimson lacquered nails. She wore a white dress made of