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guess I took it out on you." She stared at him a minute longer, then turned back to her roll.
    "May I sit? " he asked, suddenly wanting it badly.
    "Misery-lovescompany kind of thing? Any friend of Rachel's is a friend of mine? " It seemed an eternity of pending refusal before she gestured toward the table's free chair. She sipped her tea while he settled, then put the cup down. Staring at it, she said a quiet "For the record, you are not my friend. Rachel is. She's earned that right. I don't take people to heart readily, and you're starting at a deficit. You're not the only one around here who's tired and helpless and scared." He could see it then, threads of fatigue behind the neat facade. He hadn't meant to make things worse. He was glad for Rachel, having a close friend like this. No doubt Katherine knew more about who Rachel was today than he did.
    He looked at his watch. It was only four-thirty. They had time to kill.
    He was curious. "Rachel never told me she was in a book group. " "Maybe that's because you're divorced, " Katherine reminded him, then relented and said more gently, "She helped form the group. We organized five years ago."
    "How often do you meet? " "Once a month.
    There are seven of us."
    "Who are the others? " "Local women. One is a travel agent, one sculpts, one owns a bakery, two golf. They were all here earlier.
    Needless to say, we weren't talking books." No, Jack realized. They weren't talking books. They were talking about an accident that shouldn't have happened. Turning to that for lack of anything else to attack, he said, "Who hit her? Was the guy drunk?
    Did the cops get him, at least? " "It wasn't a guy. It was a gal, and she wasn't drunk. She was senile.
    Eighty-some years old, with no business being on any road, least of all that one. The cops got her, all right. She's in the morgue." Jack's breath caught. In the morgue. The fact of death changed things.
    It made reality suddenly more real, made Rachel's situation feel more grave.
    He let out a long, low groan. His anger went with it.
    "She was someone's mother, someone's grandmother, " Katherine said.
    "I'm sure." He sank back in his seat. "Christ."
    "I do agree with you there." THEY actually agreed on another thing�that Jack should be the one to see Rachel first�and he was grateful. Entering a predawn, dim, starkly sterile room whose railed bed held the pale shadow of the woman whose personality had always been brightly colored felt bad enough in private.
    Having his own uncertainties on public display would have made it worse.
    Not that there was total privacy. The fourth wall of the room was a sliding glass door. A curtain that might have covered the glass was pushed back so that medical personnel could see Rachel.
    Quietly, he approached the bed. His mind registered one machine against the wall and multiple IV poles beside the bed, plus Rachel's elevated leg, which, casted, was three times the size of her normally slim one.
    But his eyes found her face fast, and held it. The doctor had warned him well. Even in the low light coming from behind her, he could see that around a raw scrape, the left side was swollen and starting to purple. The color was jarring against the rest of her. Her eyes were closed, her lips pale, her skin ashen, her freckles out of place. Even her hair, which was shoulder length, naturally blond and thick, looked uncharacteristically meek.
    He reached for the hand nearest him, the right one, free of sutures and tubes. Her fingers were limp, her skin cool. Carefully, he folded his own around it.
    "Rachel? " he called softly. "It's me. Jack." She slept on.
    "Rachel? Can you hear me? " He swallowed. "Rachel? " His knees were shaking. He leaned against the bed rail. "Come on, angel. Time to wake up. It isn't any fun talking if you don't talk back." He squeezed her hand. "Your friend Katherine said I was a shit.
    You used to say it, too. Say it now, and I won't even mind." She didn't move.
    "Not even a blink? " He