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nurses cornered him, and said, “That was amazing, Dr. Carrier.”
     
     
    Angela’s lupus patient was no screamer. A wan, pretty woman named Marian Boehmer, she expressed her terror by going rigid and silent. Dead eyes. Lips folded inward. In the wrong setting, some nincompoop shrink might’ve slapped her with a catatonia label.
    Angela moved away from her and gave Jeremy room to work. Angela’s silky hair was tied back and rubber-banded, her makeup had been eaten up by stress, and her skin bore a library pallor. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in a very long time.
    Here she is at her worst,
thought Jeremy.
The way she looks on a bad morning. And still, pretty good.
    The bone marrow aspiration kit lay unwrapped on a bedside tray. Chrome and glass and dagger points, that horrible grinding thing used to puncture the sternum so that blood-forming cells could be sucked out. In order to gain leverage, the doctor loomed from above and leaned in hard, put some muscle into it. Patients willing to talk about the procedure said it felt like being stabbed to death.
    Marian Boehmer’s cheeks were clear of the wolf-mask rash that signaled her immune system had gone awry. If you got past the fear, she really did look okay. Fair-skinned and fair-haired, a bit underweight, nice features. Wedding band and a diamond chip on her ring finger. Where was the husband? Did that mean something, his not being here?
    Everything means something. At the moment, so what? This woman was going to have her breastbone punctured.
    Jeremy introduced himself. Smiled and talked and smiled and talked and held her hand and felt the familiar pangs of his own anxiety — the tight chest, the empathy sweat, the twinges of vertigo.
    No danger of embarrassing himself — the horror of the first time had been his hazing.
    By now he expected the fear. Welcomed it.
    When he helped, he suffered. The key was to hide it.
    The key to
life
was hiding it.
    He stroked the woman’s hand, chanced a gentle swipe of her brow and, when she didn’t recoil, told her how well she was doing as he lapsed into the singsong seduction of hypnosis.
    Not a formal induction, nothing that theatrically vulgar. Just a subtle, gradual reach for the parasympathetic reaction that combined relaxation and concentration and slowed down mind and body.
    Transport yourself to a good place, Ms. Boehmer — may I call you, Marian, thank you, Marian, that’s good, Marian, excellent, Marian.
    What a great job, Marian — and here’s Dr. Rios and yes, yes, just hold on, good great — terrific, Marian and . . . there you go, you did a great job, it’s over and you did great.
    During the procedure, Marian Boehmer had wet herself, and he pretended not to notice as the nurse wiped her thighs.
    When he took hold of her hand again, she said, “Oh, look at me. I’m such a baby.”
    Jeremy patted her hair gently. “You’re a trouper. If I was in trouble, I’d want you on my team.”
    Marian Boehmer burst into tears. “I have two children,” she said. “I’m a very good
mother
!”
     
     
    Jeremy stayed with her until the orderly came to wheel her back to her room. As he opened the door, he braced himself for a hallway conference with Angela Rios. Clinical chitchat that would inevitably wind its way toward social overture. Rios was lovely but . . .
    He stepped out to the echoes of distant voices, phones, clinical footfalls, page announcements, rattling gurneys. A single nurse sat charting at the nearest station, ten yards away.
    Empty hallway. No sign of Angela.
     
6
     
    O n a rainy Thursday evening, just before seven, on his way out of the hospital, Jeremy encountered the raincoated bulk of Detective Bob Doresh.
    Doresh was hanging by the main elevators, near the candy machines, rubbing his heavy jaw and munching on something. When he saw Jeremy, he pocketed a colorful wrapper and trotted over. “Got a minute, Doc?”
    Jeremy kept walking and motioned for Doresh to accompany