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which line was ringing. The red light blinked above line two—her hospital line. It had to be important. She groaned.
    “Ignore it,” Brian said.
    “You know I can’t.” She reached for the telephone and spoke into the receiver. “Vanessa Gray.”
    “Van, it’s Darcy.”
    Vanessa rolled onto her back, frowning. This couldn’t be urgent. Darcy Frederick was the executive officer at Lassiter responsible for a variety of tasks, including fund-raising and legislation related to children. She was also Vanessa’s after-work running partner. It was unusual, though, for Darcy to call her at home.
    “What’s up?” she asked. Brian was playing with her hair, lifting it up, letting it fall from his hand. In the candlelight, she could see the strands of gold slipping through his fingers.
    “Bad news, Van,” Darcy said. “Sorry to bother you at home, but I wanted you to hear it from me first.”
    Vanessa braced herself. She knew that Darcy was not talking about a patient; she was talking about the hospital’s purse strings. The administrators had been meeting for days to determine where to make cuts.
    It felt suddenly chilly in the room, and she tugged the sheet up over her shoulders. “Spit it out,” she said.
    “The AMC Program.”
    Adolescents Molested as Children. Vanessa shut her eyes. “What about it?” she asked, although she was certain she knew.
    “I’m so sorry, Van. They cut it.”
    “You mean, completely?” Vanessa opened her eyes to find Brian looking at her, a frown on his face.
    “Yes.”
    “Uh-uh.” Vanessa sat up. “That is absolutely unacceptable.”
    “You talk like you have some say in the matter,” Darcy said.
    “They cannot cut the AMC.” She heard Brian groan as he realized what she and Darcy were talking about.
    “I fought for it, Van,” Darcy said, “but I was alone out there. I know it’s your pet project, but they just don’t get it. ‘Lassiter has bigger fish to fry.’ That’s a direct quote.”
    “But it’s a
preventive
program,” Vanessa argued. That had been the approach she’d taken when she’d initially started the fight for funding not much more than a year ago. The thought of going through that all over again was exhausting. Yet the arguments poured out of her mouth easily. “The kids who try to kill themselves, or starve themselves, or—”
    “I know, I know.” Darcy interrupted her. She sounded tired, and Vanessa pictured her taking off her thick glasses, rubbing her blue eyes. “You don’t have to sell me on it, Van. And you might as well save your breath with the other decision makers as well. The fact is,
    those kids are not the ones who generate a ton of sympathy, you know what I mean?”
    Yes, she knew all too well. If the hospital had a dollar to spend and the choice was between some cute little five-year-old who was currently being abused by a stepfather and some oppositional, self-destructive, nasty-mouthed teenager who’d been abused at some time in the past—well, there was no contest. They couldn’t get it through their heads that both kids were worth saving, that maybe they could prevent that teenager from becoming an oppositional, self-destructive, nasty-mouthed adult.
    “Those idiots need to get their priorities straight.” She felt Brian’s warm hand stroking her back. She had almost forgotten he was there.
    Darcy sighed on her end of the line. “I’m only the messenger,” she said.
    “We’ve barely gotten off the ground.” Vanessa couldn’t seem to stop herself from arguing. “We’ve had no chance to collect statistics, no chance to measure how effective the program is. Just two more years. Tell them that.”
    “They’re firm about this, Vanessa. It was one of the cuts they were in complete agreement on. They think it’s expendable.”
    “Right, and what if it was one of their own kids on the line? How expendable would it be then, huh? Assholes.”
    “Van,” Darcy was losing her patience. “Chill out.”
    Vanessa