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checking for a heart attack or stroke. But he also said they run tests looking for every possibility.”
    â€œI’m on my way,” I said.

CHAPTER 7
    Kate hadn’t been exaggerating about the press. I had to push, shove, even kidney punch my way through the pack to get to the ER registration desk, where a surly nurse said, after I’d introduced myself, “You better be who you say you are. Two of them—” Her eyes took in the phalanx of reporters, videocams, recorders, and still cameras that I’d just escaped. The only thing that stopped them from overrunning and sacking the ER was the lone and nervous-looking uniformed security guard. “Two of them tried to pass themselves off as interns. They were so stupid they couldn’t answer the first question I asked them.”
    Now I understood why she was so surly. The press can be a juggernaut that can unhinge the strongest of people. They’d descended on this poor woman and undone her. Her face gleamed with sweat and her gaze was jittery and bitter.
    Billy rescued me. He’d wandered here from somewhere down the hall. When he saw me he came over. The nurse looked relieved. “So he is who he says he is?”

    â€œYes. He sure is.” Billy looked at the press mob now calling his name. They knew who he was. I guess they thought he was going to say, Aw, let them come back and hang with the senator awhile. Instead, he said to the nurse, “You’ll have nightmares for six months about this.”
    She managed a smile. “This isn’t quite as bad as when that alderman got shot. But close.”
    As we walked down the corridor to the room where Warren was, the hospital smells began to bring out my Irish fatalism. Irishmen (I wonder about Irish women) have two obsessions, sex and death, and not necessarily in that order. Maybe it’s because we spring from the loins of certifiable maniacs, the Celts, those merry fellows who painted themselves with blood before charging naked into battle. Their war cries, this being documented by historical accounts, were said to be so terrifying that the Celts could take villages without lifting a sword. Their screams alone sent villagers running into the forest.
    The hospital smells didn’t create images of the Celts, but they did create images of what lay behind all those ER curtains. And the sounds augmented the aromas. The little girl whose temperature had soared to a dangerous number, crying out now in sweaty delirium, and her tormented parents standing next to her gurney, imploring the young ER doc to save her. The old man lifting spidery fingers to receive the hand of his middle-aged daughter, who knew he would never leave the hospital alive. The teenage boy sobbing through the fog of drugs and drink, not knowing yet that his reckless driving had killed his best friend.
    Sharp stench of meds. Muffled words of nurses. The stray cry, piercing as a bullet. The quick ratcheting clamor of curtains being ripped back along metal rods.
    Two security guards stood outside Warren’s door. They’d already dealt with Billy, so all they did was nod as we went into the room.
    Warren lay, eyes closed, pale and damp on a gurney. He was hooked up to two different monitors that beeped quietly and frequently. His wife, Teresa, leaned over the bed, gently touching the back of her hand
to his cheek. On the other side stood Kate and Laura. Kate’s lips moved in silent prayer. Gabe sat alone in a corner, his eyes downcast.
    When Teresa saw me, she offered me her free hand. I took it and moved closer to her. “So far the tests they’ve given him don’t indicate a heart attack or a stroke. They’re doing more tests. But one of the older doctors stopped in and asked if he’d been throwing up. Which Warren did twice in the ambulance.”
    A young doc came into the room just then. Indian, almost delicate, pretty. She walked toward Teresa. I stood aside. She