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life, if that was really what was at stake here. He could satisfy them all. It would be easy enough.
    But I cannot do it, he thought. I would never do such a thing.
    “So—” he said. “You are refusing to seek my help in trying to conceive? Is that what you mean?”
    “I’ve come to say good-bye to you,” Erika said.
    He felt alarm pulse in his wrists. I am at my best in times of trouble, he thought. At moments of greatest emergency . Others depended on his ability to rush into a dark room where a dire scene was unfolding and react as if by instinct. It was a gift he had: he could decide a thing quickly, in a flash of light from an opening door. In this way he had pulled forth babies from wombs that might soon have become graves; he had revived half-conscious mothers and staved off more deaths than he could remember.
    A doctor is supposed to save lives, he thought, by any possible means. Erika has been tortured by this situation long enough, he decided. His leg muscles flexed; he prepared to rise from his chair. Above all, he must keep her from walking through the door and disappearing.
    “Erika,” he said, and leaned across the desk. “Are you depressed?”
    She stared at him. “Of course,” she said. “About all this? What else am I supposed to feel?”
    “Peter has left frozen samples of his semen,” he reminded her. “We’ve all agreed to work on this in his absence.”
    She twisted her neck to one side, as if to relieve a crick.
    “This is hardly fair to Peter,” Ravell argued. “I made a promise to him, and I feel a certain loyalty to the agreement, not only as a physician but as a friend. When Peter returns—if we haven’t had any good fortune by then—maybe we can discuss the situation and reconsider matters then.
    “I’ve already thawed the sample for today,” Ravell added. “It wouldn’t be right to waste it.”
    At first Erika appeared unmoved, and then a quake of exasperation went through her. “All right,” she said, sighing. “But it’s futile. And this is going to be the last time.”
    A radiance carried him then, and his heart beat hard, knowing that he was about to take a terrible chance. Whatever happens, he decided, I’ll cope with any unpleasantness that arises. He ushered her to the examination room where she began, with a few resentful mutters, to undress. Her chest thrust forward as she arched her back and shrugged off her jacket with its velvet lapels.
    “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Ravell said. He hurried to the closet-like chamber where he kept his microscope and locked the door. The dish containing Peter’s specimen waited on the counter. Ravell turned on the tap and carefully washed away every trace of Peter’s semen. Then Ravell shut off the light and loosened his suspenders, unfastened his trousers and underwear, and let everything drop to the floor. He took himself in his own hand. Madness! He would never have condoned such a thing before, but now he had no time for self-doubt. He had to hurry. When Peter stood in this space, he’d been given a book illustrated with Parisian prostitutes, but he, the doctor, had no such luxury. He kept the chamber dark, and remembered how her breasts had moved, loose, unleashed under peach silk.
    The nurse rapped sharply on every closed door in the corridor, searching, calling his name in a bewildered tone. “Doctor Ravell?”
    “Yes!” he managed to answer.
    “We’re ready for you.”
    He groped in the darkness and found a dish he knew would be lying on the counter, and replaced Peter’s seed with his own. He flicked on a light and buttoned his trousers. His tongue felt swollen in his mouth.
    Dutifully the nurse remained in the exam room, a reassuring, motherly presence. Ravell took the dish and suctioned the pale substance into a long instrument. He lifted the drape covering Erika’s lower body.
    The nurse stood by, a sentry in a corner. She was supposed to serve as a guard of sorts—but what, she and Erika