'It does seem to work out that way, but some of our ninety-year-olds are still in full control.' He led the way to a broad window from which in their last days the patients could see a handsome spread of nature: 'The row of palm trees that impressed you so much, the channel with the lively boats passing back and forth and that magnificent stretch of savanna. You could be at an oasis in Africa.'

'Savanna?'

'Yes. I believe that's the scientific name for extended grassland that contains a scattering of low trees. Anyway, that's what somebody called it before we got here, and we like it.'

'Am I free to walk through it?'

'Oh yes! It's one of the features our residents appreciate most. There's a footpath beside the channel. It's marked by the palm trees, and you can walk for maybe a mile. Some do.'

'Do we own it?'

'A decent portion, but most is owned by a church. It's not worth much as land, farming and the like, but it does face the water, so it's really invaluable. Our adventurous residents consider it one of the most valuable features of the Palms.'

'Could you show me how to reach the footpath?'

'Walk to the far end of the main building, go out the door and turn left. You'll enjoy it.'

When Zorn left Gateways and headed south toward the savanna, he saw instantly what a remarkable place the Palms was, for to his left-that is, to the east-lay the swimming pool while to the west stood that row of glorious palms, eighty and ninety feet high. In the open space between the trunks he had a fine view of the channel and its rich bird life. He could see pelicans dive for fish or long-legged birds he could not name, some black, some white, that seemed also to be fishing but in their own motionless way, waiting for the fish to come to them. Nature surrounded him and he felt at ease.

He had proceeded about two hundred yards from the Palms when he came upon an elderly black man perched on a four-legged stool and maneuvering a long fishing pole whose baited hook he kept far out in the water. 'Any luck?' Andy asked, and the man turned on his stool. 'About like always. I usually get one or two small ones.'

'What do you do with them. Fry them?'

'Oh no! I live at the Palms back there. Their cooks wouldn't know what to do with fish that wasn't frozen. All meat and potatoes is their specialty.'

'I'm going to be at the Palms too. New member of the staff. Name's Andy Zorn.'

The fisherman propped his rod with the aid of two big stones, rose and extended his hand: 'I'm Lincoln Noble, federal judge from the St. Louis district, retired of course.'

As he spoke, four of the long-legged birds Andy had passed flew boldly in to cluster about the old gentleman. They had learned he was their friend and that when he ended his day of fishing he would throw his catch, one by one, to them. He was their supply ship along the channel and they now jockeyed for favorable positions, two very tall blackish birds and two reasonably tall slender birds with snow-white feathers. 'Those are my herons,' he said of the first pair. 'Victor and Victoria. And the white ones, the egrets, I call my princesses. Are they not exquisite?' When Zorn studied the birds more closely he noted their incredibly thin legs, long as reeds in a windy marsh, their lovely feathers and their graceful necks that seemed three feet long and realized that he had not fully appreciated their beauty when he first saw them.

The four birds had learned from generations of experience how to maintain a safe distance from any other living thing, a separation that would permit them to take instant flight if menaced, and they observed the rule until the moment they saw Judge Noble unfasten his reel to reach for the day's catch. Then, abandoning caution, they crowded in till he could almost touch them, and as he threw his fish one by one onto the ground nearby, they thrust forth their long necks and amazingly long bills to snap up the morsels.

'Oh!' the judge cried as the birds came closer. 'Are they not a delectable foursome?' But Zorn did not answer, for one of the white egrets in search of a fish had come almost to his shoetips, and for a moment, until the delicacy had been safely taken, the egret looked up into the doctor's eyes and seemed to smile in companionship as he prepared to gulp the fish.

'What were the names again?' Zorn asked, and the judge repeated: 'Blue heron, white egret.'

'Which are your special friends?'

'Whichever comes closest on that day. But don't I have a wonderful richness from which to choose?' Before Zorn could reply, the judge, who was facing the channel, cried: 'Here he comes! The best of all.' And onto the water at the fisherman's feet crash-landed a huge bird built like a truck in comparison to the egrets, who had the sleekness of racing cars. It was a pelican, ungainly, almost ferociously ugly, all out of proportion with an enormous feathered bottom and a gigantic beak hinged so far back into its head that when opened it looked as if he could admit a small motorcycle.

'His name is Rowdy,' the judge said, 'and if I hadn't saved him a fish, he'd have cursed me roundly.' Even though it looked as if the pelican was assured of at least one fish, he made rude grunting sounds as he approached his friend. He was almost a caricature of a bird, and as Zorn watched him waddle about like some pompous official monitoring a parade, he intuitively liked him. The pelican opened his cavernous mouth into which the judge popped his last catch of the day, and after performing a postprandial dance, Rowdy rose a few feet in the air and glided back to the channel, where he landed with a splash that might have been made by a hippopotamus who had fallen into the water.

Judge Noble, his day's work done, folded his chair under one arm, propped his fishing rod over the other shoulder, bade Dr. Zorn good-bye, and marched back to his quarters in the Palms, leaving Andy free to continue his exploration of the savanna. Some distance beyond the fishing scene, he came upon a slight opening through the matted grass, low shrubs and intertwined tree limbs, and recklessly he plunged into the heart of the wilderness.

Surrounded by luxuriant gray-green shrubbery and tough grass with here and there a low tree, he had one of the strangest sensations of his life. Suddenly he was a boy again in a suburb of Denver and his father had come home with exciting news: 'Andy, that movie house off Larimer Street is showing a wonderful old film, especially for children, and you must come with me. I saw it years ago and it has more wild animals in it than any other film ever made.' When Andy wanted to know what the movie was called, for he was suspicious of his father's recommendations-usually the films were too complex for him to understand-his father replied: 'Trader Horn. It's about an adventure in Africa, with lots of lions, crocodiles, giraffes, zebras. I saw it years ago and never forgot.' Now, years later, Andy could still see the poster he had studied while his father bought the tickets. It was a gorgeous affair, big and in bright color showing an African woodland scene full of exotic wild animals: TRADER HORN, THE EPIC OF THE WILD. And he could still see those thrilling names of the leading actors Harry Carey and Edwina Booth. On the poster she wore very little, was menaced by lions and was unbelievably beautiful.

He could not remember much about the movie-there was the bounteous supply of animals, as promised-but Edwina Booth still echoed in his memory. She had been an effective heroine, but what had captured his imagination was what happened after the film had been shot. News reports said that during her heroic work in Africa she had either suffered a terrible case of sunstroke or contracted some debilitating disease, which would prevent her from ever making another film, and she never did. For years thereafter he would catch himself brooding about Edwina Booth: 'Why couldn't some doctor have saved her? Why didn't they get her to a proper hospital where the nurses-' Often he speculated about how he would have handled her case and could see himself dressed in white as he gave a series of orders to his admiring assistants and nurses. It was not preposterous to claim that he had become a doctor in order to be on hand to save the life of some future Edwina Booth were she to be brought into the hospital where he worked.

So now, on this fading afternoon as he explored, he was examining not an untamed corner of western Florida but the jungles of Africa, on the trail of lions, and behind that clump of bushes he might very well come upon Harry Carey and Edwina Booth and be of service to them. On and on he went, past the baby Washingtonia palms, past the scattered Brazilian pepper trees with their bright berries, and into a land as rough as if it were indeed in the heart of Africa. And he was mesmerized.

The sun had sunk low in the January sky when he came upon an enchanting sight: a small oval pond-filled with water of a character he had never before seen or heard of. It was green, but not a stagnant or weed-covered green. It was bright emerald, the most beautiful green he had ever seen, scintillating, resplendent, a green that one might see in a magical dream. When he bent down to inspect it more closely he saw it was composed of a million tiny specks of something-buds perhaps, tips of submarine plants, but whatever they were, in the mass they presented a magnificent sight.

He was unaware, as he knelt beside the emerald pool, that he was not alone. Off some yards to the west, toward the channel and deep within the low bushes, lay a huge rattlesnake some eight or nine feet long and as thick through the middle as a big softball that children play with before they can manage a real baseball. The snake had lived close to his assured supply of water and careless mice and squirrels for more than a score of years, during which he had occasionally watched some huge and unfamiliar animal like Dr. Zorn come to the pool. Since he had never attacked them, they could not have been aware of his presence, but whenever they did move near, he coiled in preparation to activate the hornlike buttons on his tail, sending a warning that he was prepared to defend himself. Fortunately for the explorers, this had never been necessary.

One morning many years ago, when dew was on the foliage near the pool, a young woman in shorts and heavy boots had lost her way in the savanna and had beaten her way noisily through the brush trying to find some path that would lead her back to the waterway and its footpath that would lead her to safety. The Palms did not exist then, so she could not use it as a guide, but she did have a useful sense of direction that told her roughly where west and the channel would be.

So after pausing to admire the extraordinary green pool, she continued westward, her heavy boots taking her within a few feet of the coiled rattlesnake. Had she taken one more step in that direction the snake, with its enormous charge of deadly poison due to its exceptional size, would surely have struck at her exposed white leg and she would have died before she could even signal for help. Fortunately her foot fell short of the fatal mark; however, she had moved so close that the snake had to sound a warning. He did not want to attack this strange creature so much bigger than his usual targets, but he was prepared to do so if it came closer. Accordingly its rattling was so loud and insistent that the girl froze, not knowing what the sound was nor where it came from, but aware that it was a warning of some grave danger.

Searching for an explanation, she looked down and saw the monstrous snake, perfectly coiled, its tail vibrating furiously. The snake saw her, and for an agonizing moment each stared into the eyes of the other. Then quietly she withdrew her trespassing foot, which encouraged the snake to cease his signaling. Slowly, her heart beating furiously, she moved away from both the pool and the snake.

When she rejoined her companions she told them breathlessly: 'Oh, what a terror! I looked down among the low bushes and there it was, the biggest rattlesnake anyone ever saw,' and she formed her two thumbs and forefingers into a circle five inches in diameter, the exact girth of the snake she had just seen. The young men in her group derided this claim: 'No snake but a python is ever that big around,' and her listeners concluded that she had probably seen a harmless garter snake and been terrorized. She did not argue back; a girl knew she gained no advantage by contradicting young men who were sure they knew more than she. But she had seen the snake; in that terrible protracted moment when she and it stared at each other, she'd had ample time to form an estimate of its size, and she knew it was still there beside the emerald pool.

When Dr. Zorn made his retreat from the pool he had a good guess as to where the channel lay, and his path carried him well away from the rattler's hideout. The snake made no noise, nor did the doctor through clumsiness disturb the peace. Safely he passed on, worked his way through the savanna that had destroyed Edwina Booth, and came at last to the footpath leading back to the Palms. Retracing his steps when entering the area, he reached his new quarters and was eager to report to Krenek: 'I'm going to like it here. Interesting residents. Responsible health care. Clean buildings, and a fascinating bit of unspoiled savanna right outside the door. Three wonderful birds welcomed me-herons, egrets and a half-drunk pelican.' Unpacking his trailer, he quickly organized his few possessions in the furnished apartment assigned to him, eager to begin confronting the challenges of the Palms.

On his first full day at the Palms, the new director appeared early in his new office and approved its spaciousness and feeling of centrality. He found Kenneth Krenek, nineteen years older than himself, waiting for orders on how the center should be run, but Zorn was not the type of man to be dictatorial: 'Let's make it Ken and Andy, and I need to know most of what you know.'

'All right. In our two offices it'll be Andy and Ken, but before the staff and certainly when visitors come to inspect, it's got to be Dr. Zorn. Impresses the public.'

Without being asked, he drew up a chair and said: 'Andy, the Palms has enjoyed a pretty good reputation thus far, so we must do everything reasonable to enhance it. This is a first-class operation, not top dollar-there are others more expensive-but top service and we've got to keep it that way.'

'That's what I promised Mr. Taggart, but I'll need your counsel if I begin to make mistakes.'

'You understand the basic principle of a place like this? Lure them with a fine residence hall, good service, good food and good lifestyle. That's Gateways here. Then bring in recuperation cases from the local hospitals for Assisted Living. Be very, very nice to the hospitals. Anything they want they get, because their referrals pay our bills. And finally there's the third floor, Extended Care, where they come in the last stages, more than half from outside as their last resort.'

'Is it my responsibility to keep those two parts filled with patients?'

'We all have to work on it. Miss Foxworth will keep you posted on occupancy and the profit-and-loss situation. She's our accountant and a wizard with figures. Trust her, and rely on her to keep you on course.' Andy nodded.

'You know, much of our good name comes from what residents of Gateways say about us. So you've got to keep them happy. There's still one special problem, you'd never guess. Names! Each apartment, it seems to me, has its own preferences as to how the incumbents prefer to be called. With St. Pres it's Mr. Ambassador. I think he'd scowl if you dared call him Richard. And Jimenez, our grandee from South America, would actually faint if you called him Ral. Muley Duggan is Muley to everyone, of course, and Mrs. Elmore actually prefers Duchess. President Armitage is usually given that title though he stopped being one years back. Everyone calls our black jurist Judge Noble and he prefers them to do so. But the Mallorys, Chris and Esther, prefer first names, even though they're both millionaires.

'We do not pry into the financial conditions of our residents, and when I show you the list of people for whom Miss Foxworth has quietly made reductions in their fees because investments went sour or dividends dropped, you'll be surprised. Mr. Taggart's always been generous in that regard. He preaches to us: "If we get ten years of high rent from a husband and wife, when she becomes a widow or her fortunes fail, we can afford to carry her at a lower rate for the last years of her life, but we don't want her to linger on into her late nineties." '

As he said this he started to chuckle: 'I think we'd better bring Miss Foxworth in right now to explain the financial morass in which we operate. All legal, all fair to the residents. But also insanely complicated.'

During the break that followed he explained: 'Miss Foxworth and I have been working here for eleven years. We supervised the construction for Mr. Taggart, and it's our passion to see this place succeed. We'll help you in everything you do.'

When Miss Foxworth appeared, Andy saw a thin, angular woman in her early fifties with a pulled-back hairdo that made her seem austere but an impish smile that enabled her to laugh at the contradictions with which she worked. Thrusting out her right hand she gripped his firmly: 'Welcome to one of the best. It's our job to keep it that way, or even improve our standing. Don't hesitate to experiment, and I'll support you financially every time I can.' Then she growled and said in a husky voice: 'But we won't kid ourselves. The Big Bad Wolf in Chicago, he'll be inspecting the bottom line very carefully. And so will I. And so will you, Doctor, if you're as smart as they say.'

At Krenek's suggestion she explained various aspects of a Florida retirement center: 'On Gateways we break even, but profit from splendid visibility. On Assisted Living we lose money, not excessive but enough to be irritating. And on Extended Care we can earn a bundle if we keep the rooms filled. What we hope from you is to improve each of these balance sheets. And we think it can be done.' She stared at him intently, then said: 'Your predecessor was a grand guy, everybody's friend except mine, because I could see he was running this place into bankruptcy. I'm sure you're not going to be that stupid.'

She then explained the pricing policy for Gateways: 'We're like every other retirement area in the country. We hand-tailor our pricing structure to fit the needs of the individual couple. First option is the one that made the first retirement areas famous. Up front you give us all your assets plus your retirement income, including pensions, and we undertake to care for you for life, at the end of which your estate gets nothing back. An enticing deal in the early years, until places like this found that with good health care, a dietitian's dinner each night and no worries, people lived longer than expected and the centers started going broke. Old people found themselves out on the street. I was employed by one of those places and it was a tragedy. So now we offer three standard deals. In each of them you start by paying two hundred fifty thousand dollars up front for the deluxe suites, less for the one-roomers. Then you pay a substantial monthly sum-say, eighteen hundred dollars every month-till you pass away, when we give back to your estate eighty percent of your original investment. Great for residents with children and grandchildren. Plan two, same initial payment, but a smaller monthly rental and fifty percent return at your passing. Fair all around. Third plan, same quarter of a million deposit, a much lower monthly rate and twenty-five percent back at the end.'

'Which is best for us, best for the client?'

'We never use that word "client." Too legal. Doctor, I assure you they all work out to be dead equal. We're like the insurance company. Unless we conform to the statistics of the American Actuarial Tables, which report the longevity of American men and women, we go broke. How old are you? Thirty-five? You have a predicted longevity of 39.7 more years, so if you entered the Palms today as a paying resident, which we wouldn't allow because you're much too young, we could arrange a very attractive deal for you, because you're going to be paying us for each of those thirty-nine years.'

She looked at Zorn as if weighing whether he was bright enough to understand, then laughed: 'In the old days when it was "Give us everything and we'll take care of you for life," there used to be a saying: "What we're looking for is old folks who enter when they're in their healthy sixties, so their medical bills won't be high, then have the decency to leave us when they're eighty-two so we can sell their room again." '

'What would you say was the optimum now?' Zorn asked, and she had an immediate reply: 'I like to see them come in at age sixty-five so they can enjoy the place and say their farewells at about eighty-eight before they begin to accumulate huge medical bills.'

'Sixty-five seems awfully young,' Zorn said, but she countered: 'Ask our people. Many of them tell me: "Roberta, my husband and I should have come here ten years earlier. The only sensible thing to do." ' She laughed, her bright eyes showing that she was giving only a partial report: 'Of course, I'm forgetting the couples who try us out for a month or two and then flee, with either the husband or the wife vowing: "I'll never again move into one of those jails!"

'But seriously, Doctor,' she concluded, 'I can think of a dozen or more couples who were originally savagely divided on the issues but who now confess that it was the best thing they ever did.'

As she was about to leave the office with her formidable armful of papers summarizing the finances of the Palms, Zorn interrupted: 'Please stay with me a few minutes longer, Miss Foxworth. And Ken, would you mind giving us a moment alone?' When Ken had stepped outside, Andy smiled and asked: 'Suppose you, with all your figures and knowledge, were in my position with no dumb men telling you what to do? What moves would you make to turn this place around, red deficit into black profits?'

Pleased to have at last been consulted as an equal, she looked down at her hands, leaned back and reflected, then said: 'I'd do everything possible to fill the Gateway apartments, but that's not your real problem. You've got to get more beds filled in Assisted Living. That's where the profits are hiding. Extended fills itself.'

'So how do I get the extras for Assisted?'

'I really don't know. Advertising won't do it. We've tried that. But I do know this. Favorable comment, of any kind, makes an immense difference. So you've got to get this place talked about. You've got to do things that attract attention.'

'Like what?'

'That's your problem.' She smiled: 'That's why Mr. Taggart gave you that sixty-five-thousand-dollar salary.' She smiled a second time when his jaw dropped: 'And hopefully, from what Chicago tells us, you're the man to swing it, Dr. Zorn.'

When Krenek returned to the office after her departure, he deemed it appropriate to let Zorn know that he, Ken, appreciated the accountant: 'She's a wizard with figures. Made a study of our hundred and eighty-six residents one year and calculated how many deaths would occur statistically in each month of the next three years. She kept careful records and told me in October of that year that she was right on target, but November proved an unusually healthy month and at Thanksgiving her figures were badly askew because nobody had died. But several residents apparently overate seriously at our big turkey festival, and on both the twenty-ninth and thirtieth someone died unexpectedly. On the first of December she appeared in my office triumphant with her scorecard: "We made it, just as the figures predicted." But did you notice, she never uses the word "die." They "leave us" or "they pass on" or "God sent his angels for her." ' At this he snapped his fingers and asked Zorn to phone Foxworth's office and tell her to bring her Johnny Carson video with her. 'You'll enjoy this. Superb comedy.' Andy protested: 'I don't have time for a half hour of comedy,' and Krenek explained: 'It's only a few minutes. Extremely relevant to our work in this place. Provides a sense of balance.'

When Foxworth slid her tape into the video machine, Zorn saw on the TV screen a fine image of Johnny Carson in one of his famous skits. He was the editor in chief of a publishing company that specialized in a massive thesaurus containing a prodigious number of synonyms for any word. Dressed in funereal black, Carson was addressing his fellow editors: 'We have come here today to pay our last respects to one of the finest editors we've ever had. Gregory left us last night. He passed over. He expired, drew his last breath, went to his last reward, headed for the last home.' He continued with fifteen other graceful euphemisms and then moved on to the vernacular: 'So good old Gregory croaked, bit the dust, kicked the bucket, cashed in his chips, turned up his toes' and numerous other country phrases. Just as Zorn supposed the litany was ended, Carson moved on to robust jokes his staff of writers must have had a riotous afternoon devising: 'So, as I say, our beloved Gregory has taken his ride in the long black, he is wearing the white satin vest, he is helping to push up the daisies, his toes are digging into the dust, he is paying Charon with a plugged nickel, he's crossing the river where he pays no tax, he is gone from us, he is kerplunk.' It was a bravura performance, one of Carson's best, and Zorn told Miss Foxworth: 'Don't lose that video. We might need it if things get too sticky around here.'

As Miss Foxworth started to leave the office, a huge black woman whom Zorn had not yet met, but whom he could guess to be the head nurse, Nora Varney, arrived. As the two women passed, the nurse edging aside, for she knew that both of them could not pass through the doorway at the same time, Andy had the distinct feeling that these two women actually liked each other and that they were true partners in the Palms enterprise.

She accepted the chair that Dr. Zorn offered her and looked at him with the steady, warm gaze so appreciated by the residents. In that moment Zorn realized that he had as his main associate a woman who was born to be a nurse and comforter: 'They tell me you're the soul of this establishment, Nurse Varney. I'll need your help, because I've been sent down by Mr. Taggart to bring this place up to running speed, and I won't be able to do it without you and Mr. Krenek and Miss Foxworth giving me cooperation and guidance. Tell me a little about yourself. Where did you grow up?'

'Little town in Alabama.'

'And you studied to be a nurse where?'

'Larger town in Alabama.'

'How'd you get down here?'

'We were led to believe the streets were paved with rubies. I got on a bus and came down to see.'

'I don't see any rubies on your fingers.'

She laughed easily: 'They're here, but I haven't found them yet.' As they continued to talk Zorn was increasingly impressed by her humor and articulateness. If one looked only at her ample face, one might have expected her to speak in a typical black dialect, but there was no trace of one and he was so interested in her that he dared to ask: 'Did you consciously learn to speak without an accent?' and she explained: 'When I came to work in Florida thirty years ago, white people visiting from the North thought it was colorful when I spoke with a heavy Alabama dialect, and I had one of the best. Still do. But I soon learned that as long as I clung to it, I was accepted only as a back-country servant, colorful but not to be taken seriously. So I taught myself to eliminate the "Yassuh, master" nonsense and converted myself into a real head nurse.' She broke into laughter, her wide face gleaming with mischief: 'Sometimes strangers coming to inspect the place, they speak to me in black dialect, to put me at ease. I never scorn them, but I do answer in complete sentences with an accent just like theirs, and they're smart. They get the point, especially if they're going to live here and discover that much of what they want they will get through me-we get along fine.'

She considered this for some moments, then added: 'But at night when I'm with old friends or family I can talk Alabama with the best of them. And often during the day, to make a point, I'll revert without embarrassment, but I didn't waste those years in night school getting my degree.' Then, apparently aware that she might be talking too much about herself, she added: 'But I still cling to one phrase used in our family of eight. It sounds right to me, because my mother taught me so much about human beings while using it: "Nora, you gots to learn that all peoples gots their own way of doin' things. Respect 'em, don't fight 'em." I continue to preach from that text: "All peoples gots their own way." It's my tie to home.'

'Keep it. Now, what advice can you share with me to make my job easier?'

'In my work I hear the complaints of the residents, and the thing they will not tolerate is bad food or bad service in the dining room. Remember, Dr. Zorn-'

'Mrs. Varney, you're old enough to be my mother. Name's Andy.'

'Remember, they're in the dining room only once a day, most of them, and it's a big occasion. If you allow the cooks and waiters to mess things up, you're going to have a very unhappy group on your hands.'

'And-?'

'The part of the building we call Assisted and Extended, and don't you ever call it the hospital, is my responsibility. It's where we earn our big money, so if I come to you and say "Dr. Zorn, we ought to repaint the hallways in Assisted Living," don't dismiss the request out of hand. I won't be thinking of my own desires. I'll be thinking: "The last two visitors who came here to see if they wanted to put their mother in with us noticed the shabby wainscoting and turned away." I may really need that paint job, but I won't expect you to give in right away. But do study it, take a look for yourself, and try to find the money somewhere.'

He asked her what other friction points he should be aware of, and she surprised him by saying: 'You have to be very diplomatic with our house medical adviser, Dr. Farquhar. The relationship between you two men has never been spelled out neatly, not here or anywhere else. He's tremendously important and extremely helpful, but he is not at your beck and call. He is not to be treated as if he were your paid employee. He's more like a trusted lawyer who is on what they call a retainer. Consult with him, don't try to give him orders, because he won't take them, and if he turns sour on this place, he can destroy us with the rest of the medical community. You don't have to be nice to me or Mr. Krenek, but you must be nice to him, because he can be of terrific help to us, smoothing the way with the hospitals, referring people to us and keeping the place in good running order. Let me put it simply, as head nurse I could exist if you and I despised each other, but I couldn't keep Health prospering if Dr. Farquhar decided it was inferior.'

'Is he the best man possible for the job?'

'He's a saint. Temper as smooth as apple butter. Very good doctor, and a man you can trust.'

When it looked as if the interview was coming to an end, Zorn, unwilling to lose the insight of such an interesting woman, suggested: 'Perhaps I'd better see your domain, with you as my guide,' and they walked together down the hallway connecting to Health. When they reached the second floor, Andy could see that Nurse Varney was in command, but in a benevolent way, for as she passed through the corridors she spoke in a supportive way to the nurses, introducing them to the new manager and encouraging them in their work. At the door to most of the rooms she was able to stop, look in and speak to the occupant, using his or her name. It was obvious that she knew her hall and was well acquainted with its problems.

But when she and Zorn reached the third floor, Extended Care, Andy sensed a much higher level of tension, exemplified by the nurse in charge, a white woman named Edna Grimes who had a combative air as she moved along the corridors almost as if she were a warden in a jail. Zorn whispered: 'She doesn't seem to like her job,' but Nora replied: 'She's extremely capable. I can rely on her to get things done.' Zorn thought that perhaps this type of personnel was necessary, for here the illnesses were more severe and the patients more testy. He caught a good example of this, and the different ways Nurse Grimes and Head Nurse Varney handled difficult cases, when they heard a rather loud rumpus, and looked into one of the rooms to which Nurse Grimes had hastened at the first signs of trouble.

A Mr. Richards, eighty-eight, and weighing not much over a hundred and fifteen pounds, was having a tantrum and making a good deal of disturbance for his size. Nurse Grimes was tugging him about but Nora stepped between them and said rather roughly: 'Hey! Brother Blowhard! What's all the racket?'

'They took my paper. I want my paper. Only thing I enjoy is my paper and they took it.'

'What's he talking about?' Nora asked and Miss Grimes said: 'Cleaning people must have seen it on the floor and thrown it in the trash.'

'No wonder you're distressed,' Nora said to the angry little fellow. 'I'd be, too, if they took my paper before I'd read it.' Reaching for his phone, she dialed her office and said: 'Jane, rush my copy of today's paper up to Room 326,' and this was done, but when it arrived, Mr. Richards took one look and threw it to the floor: 'It's the Tampa paper and I want my paper, the St. Petersburg one. It has more foreign news.' Again Nora phoned her office: 'Have Sam rush over to the mall and get Mr. Richards a copy of today's St. Petersburg paper. Use money from our petty cash,' and while they waited for this to be done, Nora sat on the bed with Mr. Richards and told him: 'You raise hell like this again, Buster, I'm gonna whomp you,' and he looked up at her gigantic size and said: 'I believe you would, too. But I do want my paper.'

'Weren't you listening? I just sent Sam to get you a copy,' and he said: 'I'm not going to pay twice for what was mine to begin with.'

'Mr. Richards, my dear friend, I've already paid for it. You were right to make a fuss, but now settle down or I'm really gonna whomp you.' He looked at her and smiled, and when Sam delivered the paper with the foreign news Richards took it, thanked him and explained to Nora and Zorn: 'In my real life I worked overseas a lot, Arabia, Pakistan, Congo, Mexico, wherever there was oil in the ground, there I was. Thank you.'

But even Nora's relaxed style tensed when they approached Room 312, where she stopped outside the door: 'This is our job at its worst, Andy. The woman in here, Mrs. Carlson, is practically dead, but there is no way, legally, that anyone can take any positive step, like cutting off support systems or stopping medication, to enable her to die of natural causes.'

'Does she know she's in the last stages?'

'Know! Doctor, she's been comatose for more than a year. In all that time she's never known who she was, or where she was, or the name of anyone who comes to visit her. She's what they call a "living vegetable," and I want you to see how she's kept alive.' Nora ushered him into the room where, in a bed lined with many wires and transparent tubes running down from a complicated gantry, Mrs. Carlson, pallid and passive and tormented by bedsores, spent her unheeding existence. It was both a miracle and a travesty of modern medicine. She was kept alive without her brain or nervous system sending signals for the various body functions; they were discharged according to the dictates of medicines or pumps or the slow drainage of chemicals into and out of her body.

Nora commented, in a voice carefully devoid of inflection: 'We are absolutely committed by law and the customs of humanity and the Hippocratic oath to keep her alive as long as we can, and medicine comes up with one miracle solution after another to do this. Her physician, you'll meet him, Dr. Ambedkar, an Indian Indian, is first-class. He's engineered the devices that keep her going and I suspect he thinks of her as his masterpiece.'

'And what has it cost so far?'

'Counting everything, outside costs and ours and the doctors', she has to have several of them, around two hundred thousand dollars.'

'You certainly don't approve of a scene like this, do you?'

'I'm a licensed agent of the government with a sworn obligation to keep her and all the others alive, and let me give you some stern advice, Doctor, don't you by word or deed or even a hint go against the legal rules or you could destroy both yourself and the Palms. Our responsibility is to keep them alive.'

'But isn't there something called a living will? Gives the doctors the legal right to terminate cases like this?'

'There is. But she didn't sign one. And even when they do we often find that because of some slip or other the courts find them not legal at all. We're on very tricky ground here, Dr. Zorn, and don't allow yourself to be thrown by it. Anyway, you have nothing to say about the problems on this floor. Only Dr. Farquhar can give orders, and he's extremely careful about preserving life. So do not try to interfere. Only disaster can come from that.'

These two compassionate officials who understood the moral aspects of what they were discussing had conducted their analysis while standing on opposite sides of Mrs. Carlson's gantried bed, but she did not hear their arguments, even though they concerned her welfare, nor had she heard anything for the past fifteen months, a hostage to the miracle of modern medicine.

During his third week on the job, Dr. Zorn had two conspicuous successes, which gave him the confidence to tell Miss Foxworth: 'We may be able to turn the corner,' only to have her warn: 'Each of your predecessors told me the same thing at some early stage in his regime, only to see the brief success crumble into dust.'