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that introduced a whole new worry.
    Apparently agreeing, Katherine added, "She's an artist. Lefthanded. " "Well, this was her left hand, " Bauer said, "but nothing crucial was cut. There won't be any lasting damage there. Her leg is casted and elevated, and we've taped her ribs to prevent damage if she becomes agitated, but that's it."
    "Agitated, " Jack repeated, wondering just how much more there was.
    "As in seizures? " "Sometimes. Sometimes just agitated. We call it posturing. Odd physical movements. Then agcun, she may be perfectly quiet right through waking up. That's what'll scare your daughters most. They'll be as upset by her silence as by anything physical they see." Jack tried to ingest it all, but it was hard. The picture the doctor had painted was the antithesis of the active woman Rachel had always been. "When can I see her? " "Once we make sure she's stable, we'll transfer her to Intensive Care �no, " he explained when Jack's eyes widened, "that doesn't mean she's critical, just that we want her closely watched." He glanced at the clock on the wall. It was four-ten. "Give us an hour." JACK and Katherine weren't alone in the cafeteria. A handful of medical personnel were scattered at tables, some eating an early breakfast, others nursing coffee. Voices were muted. The occasional clink of flatwear on china rose above them.
    Jack had paid for one coffee, one tea, and one thickly coated sticky bun. The coffee was his. The rest was Katherine's. Her polished fingernails glittered under the overhead fluorescents as she pulled the warm bun apart.
    Jack watched her for a distracted minute, then studied his coffee. He needed the caffeine. He was feeling tired all over. But he couldn't eat, not waiting this way. Rachel dead was unthinkable, Rachel braindamaged came in a close second.
    Taking a healthy drink of coffee, he set the cup down and checked his watch. Then he stretched up and back in an attempt to unkink his stomach. He checked his watch again, but the time hadn't changed.
    "I can't picture her here, " he said, absently looking at the others in the cafeteria. "She hates hospitals. When the girls were born, she was in and out. If she'd been a farmhand, she'd have given birth in the fields." Katherine nodded. "I believe it. Rachel's one of the free spirits of the group." The group. Jack had trouble seeing Rachel in any group. During the years of their marriage, she had been a rabid nonjoiner�and that in a city where the slightest cause spawned a gathering. She had rejected it all, had rejected him, had packed up her bags and moved three hours south to Big Sur, apparently to do some of the very things she had refused to do under his roof.
    Stung by that thought, he muttered a snide "Must be some group. " Katherine stopped chewing for an instant, then swallowed. "What do you mean, some group'? " "For you to be here, what, all night? " She returned a piece of the sticky bun to her plate and carefully wiped her hands on a napkin. "Rachel's my friend. It didn't seem right that she should be in the operating room with no one waiting to learn if she lived or died."
    "They were only setting her leg. Besides, I'm here now. You can leave." She looked at him for a minute. With a small, quick head shake, she gathered her cup and plate and picked herself up.
    In a voice just confident enough to drive home her point without announcing it to the world, she said, "You're an insensitive shit, Jack. No wonder she divorced you." By the time she had relocated to the far side of the room, Jack knew she was only partly right. He was insensitive and ungrateful. Topping that off with rude, he could begin to see why the two women were friends. If he had used that tone on Rachel, she would have walked away from him, too.
    Taking his coffee, he went after her. "You're right, " he said quietly.
    "I was being insensitive. You're her friend, and you've been here for hours, and I thank you for that. I'm feeling tired, helpless, and scared. I