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mind.”
    The clerk disappeared into a back room and returned eventually with the proper form. Joanna scrawled her signature, and Walter McFadden witnessed it.
    “Will I be able to see him before the surgery?” Joanna asked.
    “I doubt that,” the clerk replied coldly. “ doubt that very much.”
    Actually, as far as the clerk was concerned, if it had been left up to her, the very fact that Joanna Brady had insisted on signing the prior-consent organ-donor form would have cinched it. No way would she have allowed that woman to see her husband now, not in a million years.
    Women who were that disloyal didn’t deserve to have husbands in the first place.

 
    THREE
     
    Joanna was surprised when, without the slightest hesitation, and without having to check the building directory, Walter Mc-Fadden led the way to the elevators and unerringly pressed the button to the correct surgical floor.
    “Carol had surgery here, too,” he explained. “That’s how come I know my way around.”
    “You don’t have to wait with me,” Joanna said. “I’ll be all right.”
    “No,” Walter McFadden returned. “These waiting rooms are tough, especially in the middle of the night. I’m not going to leave you here alone.”
    “Thank you,” she said.
    ‘The surgical floor waiting room was bleak and impersonal with suitably uncomfortable modern furniture and a collection of outdated, dog-eared magazines. McFadden gathered up the scattered pieces of a newspaper, then he sat down with them on one of the couches, placed his Stetson on one knee, and settled in to read and wait. Joanna hurried to a telephone at the far end of the room.
    Ten o’clock Arizona time was midnight in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and she woke her in-laws out of a sound sleep. “We’ll be there just as soon as we can,” Jim Bob Brady told her once he had assimilated the bad news. “Eva Lou is already packing our bags. We’ll be on our way just as soon as she’s done.”
    The next call was to Joanna’s mother. “I finally got that child of yours in bed,” Eleanor Lathrop grumbled. “She’s almost as stubborn as you are. I don’t know what in the world she was thinking of, sneaking out into the desert at night like that all by herself. And it seems to me that the least you could have done is to stop by here and let me know you were going before you took off for Tucson.”
    “There wasn’t enough time, Mother,” Joanna returned evenly. “I wanted to be here at the hospital before they took Andy into surgery
    “Well, it just doesn’t seem fair that I’m always the last one to know what’s going on.”
    Joanna Brady had spent a lifetime fielding her mother’s chronic complaints. “At least you know now, Mother, and I need your help. Would you please call Milo and let him know I won’t be into work in the morning. And let Reverend Maculyea know as well. I’m too worn out to talk to anyone else.”
    “All right. I can do that. I suppose I’d better pack Jennifer up and bring her to Tucson in the morning.”
    “No,” Joanna replied. “That won’t be necessary. Sheriff McFadden already offered. He’ll bring my suitcase along as well. I don’t have any idea how long I’ll be here.”
    Eleanor Lathrop hadn’t much wanted her husband to be sheriff, but even less had she wanted Walter McFadden to take over in the aftermath of Hank Lathrop’s tragic death.
    “Him?” she squawked. “Why on earth should he be the one to pick up Jennifer? Doesn’t he have anything better to do? It seems to me that if people are going around shooting each other here in Cochise County, he ought to be out doing something about that. He shouldn’t be traipsing around hauling little girls all over the countryside. I’m perfectly capable of bringing her up.”
    Grateful that her mother wasn’t broadcasting on a speaker phone, Joanna put her hand over the mouth piece. “My mother says she can bring Jennifer to Tucson tomorrow if you have other things to do.”
    Walter