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Boston Common."
    "I think that was a little before our time," Deborah said.
    "Suppose you're right there," the proprietor agreed.
    "Could you tell us how to get to the Cabot?" Deborah asked.
    "Sure as shooting," the proprietor said. "Which way you headed?"
    "North," Deborah said.
    "Perfect," the proprietor said. "Head up to the next traffic light and hang a right. That's Pierce Street with the public library on the corner. From the intersection you can see the Cabot's brick tower. It's about two miles east of town, off Pierce Street. You can't miss it."
    The women thanked the pharmacist and retreated back to their vehicle.
    "Sounds like a charming environment for an infertility clinic," Joanna said as she buckled her seat belt.
    "At least it's no longer a TB sanitarium-cum-mental institution," Deborah said as she backed out into the street. "For a moment there I was ready to head back to Cambridge."
    "Maybe we should," Joanna said.
    "You're not serious, are you?"
    "No, not really," Joanna said. "But a place having a history like that gives me the willies. Can you imagine the horrors it's witnessed?"
    "I can't," Deborah said.
    PAUL SAUNDERS PUT DOWN THE MEMORANDUM SHEILA Donaldson had prepared for him and forcefully rubbed his eyes with the fingers of both hands, keeping his elbows on his desk. He'd repaired to his fourth-floor tower office after spending several hours in the lab checking his embryo cultures. For the most part they were doing reasonably well although not perfectly. He feared it was due to the age and quality of the eggs, a problem that he hoped to remedy shortly.
    Paul was an early riser. His usual schedule was to get out of bed before five and be in the lab before six. That way he could get a significant amount of work done prior to the patients' arrival which generally began at nine. That morning he was starting his clinical day early because two egg retrieval procedures were scheduled. He liked to do retrievals as early as possible to ensure that the donors would have adequate time to recover from anesthesia to be discharged the same day. In-patient accommodations were for emergencies only, and even then, Paul preferred to refer them to the nearest acute-care hospital.
    Picking up the memorandum again and pushing back from the desk, Paul ambled over to the windows. They were triple-hung monsters that were considerably taller than Paul's diminutive five-foot-six stature. The view was the extensive lawn in front of the clinic that stretched down to the cast-iron, razor-wire-topped fence that encircled the entire grounds. Slightly to Paul's left was the stone gatehouse from whence came the macadam drive. It swept up toward Paul and then curved away before disappearing from view to the left where there was parking on the south side of the building. In the middle distance Paul could see the spire of Bookford's Presbyterian church as well as the chimneys of a few of the town's taller buildings poking up through the fall colors. In the far distance the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains were arranged along the horizon in the form of purple blips.
    Paul reread the memorandum, pondered it for a moment, then looked back out at the view. He had every reason to be content. Things couldn't have been going better, and the thought brought a smile to his doughy face. It seemed incredible that only six years previously he'd been essentially run out of Illinois, having lost his hospital privileges and barely keeping his medical license. His lawyer at the time had told him it didn't look good, so he'd left, and migrated east, all because of a stupid fracas over his Medicare and Medicaid billing. He had, of course, pushed the envelope, but so had his ob-gyn colleagues. In fact, he'd merely copied and then refined a practice that another group that occupied the same medical building was using. Why the government came after him was still a mystery - one that could make him furious if he thought about it. But he didn't need to,