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though, the disconcerting woman behind them stepped forward and extended her hand.
    “Dr. Iverson, I’m Dr. Suzanne Cole,” she said simply.
    Her expression was totally professional, but there was an unmistakable playfulness in her eyes.
    Zack felt the flush in his cheeks as he reached out and shook her hand.
    “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “It was sort of dumb for me to assume … what I mean is, you weren’t exactly …”
    “I know,” she said. Her tone sugested an apology for having allowed him to dig such a hole for himself. “I’m sure it was this outfit that confused you”—she indicated the blue scrubsuit—“but I just finished putting in a pacemaker.” She nodded toward Annie, who was now fully awake and beginning to look around. “You seem to have done quite a job bringing this woman back, Dr. Iverson. Congratulations.”
    It was nearing midnight. Zack Iverson sat alone in the staff lounge at the back of the emergency ward, sipping tepid coffee, sorting through what had been, perhaps, the most remarkable June the thirtieth of them all, and trying to slow down his runaway fantasies concerning Suzanne Cole.
    It had taken several hours to ready a bed for Annie in the coronary care unit and to effect her transfer there. During that time, Zack had stayed in the background, watching Suzanne as she managed one dangerous cardiac arrhythmia after another in the woman, balancing complex treatments against their side effects, checking monitor readouts, reviewing lab results, then, suddenly, stopping to mop Annie’s brow, or to smooth errant wisps of gray hair from her forehead, or simply to bend down and whisper encouragement in her ear.
    Unlike what Zack had imagined from her cool composure during their initial meeting, she was actually quite tense and frenetic during critical moments, moving from one side of the bed to the other then back, checking and rechecking to ensure that her orders were being carried out correctly. Still, while she seemed frequently on edge, she was never out of control and it was clear that the nurses were comfortable with her ways, and even more important, trusted in them.
    Who are you?
his mind asked over and over as he watched her work.
What are you doing up here in the boondocks?
    The Judge and Cinnie had checked in twice by phone, and around ten, Frank had stopped by. He seemed restless and irritable, and although he mentioned nothing of the episode, Zack sensed that he was still quite upset by the Judge’s outburst and thinly veiled threat. Citing the need to be near the twins during the violent thunderstorm that had just erupted, he had left for home after only half an hour. But before he left, Zack had managed, in what he hoped was anoffhanded way, to pump a bit of information from him regarding Suzanne Cole.
    Dartmouth-trained and a member of the Ultramed-Davis staff for almost two years, she was thirty-three or thirty-four, divorced, and the mother of a six-year-old girl. In addition, she was co-owner, along with another divorcée in town, of a small art gallery and crafts shop.
    Zack had tried, with little success, for a more subjective assessment of the woman, but Frank, distracted and anxious to leave, had completely missed the point.
    Now, as he sat alone, Zack wondered if it was worth waiting any longer for the woman to finish her work in the unit and, as she had promised, stop by for “a hit of decaf.” The nurses had told him that it was not that uncommon for Suzanne, as they called her, to spend the night in the hospital if she had a particularly sick patient, and this night—with Annie and her pacemaker case—she had two.
    Who are you? What are you doing up here?
    The state of infatuation with a woman was not something with which Zack was all that familiar or comfortable. A bookworm throughout his college years, and a virgin until his junior year, he had had a reasonable number of dates, and a few short-lived romances after Lisette, but no prolonged