It seemed the simplest thing, since Sami was already there. ill hate to ask."

"You didn't. I told you. She'll stay with me."

"But I'll be back first thing in the morning to pick her up."

"Not if you've worked all night and need sleep. She's fine with me, Paige. Really. You brought a diaper bag filled with enough supplies to keep her a week."

"Just until tomorrow. Okay, maybe the afternoon, if I'm dead tired and stop home to sleep for an hour. Can I call you?"

"Please do. But if I don't answer, don't be concerned. I may take her out. Just leave me that little stroller we used this afternoon. I liked that one. My friend Elisabeth took her grandchildren out walking in the fanciest something I've ever seen. She said it was state of the art. but I tell you there were so many layers of padding and shock absorbers and sunshades, and that was before she put in little blanketswell, you could barely see the child. So leave your little stroller. I want to see my Sami."

She isn't your Sami, any more than she's mine, Paige wanted to say, because it had been such fun taking Sami to visit Nonny that it could easily be habit forming. Regular reminders of the facts of life were in order.

But the facts of life at the moment, given the tragedy in Tucker, were brutal enough without an addition. So Paige simply gave her a hug.

"You're a lifesaver."

"That's what keeps me going. Now drive carefully do you hear?"

Paige took the roundabout way into Tucker so that she wouldn't have to pass the movie house The street would be a logjam of ambulances and other emergency vehicles, and the helicoptersshe saw two rise and head in separate directions would cause delays of their own. The last thing she wanted was to be hung up in traffic.

The access to Tucker General wasn't much better so she pulled into the parking lot of her own building next door, parked, and ran across the yard and several driveways to the emergency entrance of the hospital.

Havoc reigned within. The sound hit Paige first, the discordancy of whimpering that cried of pain and fear, then the smell, antiseptic from preliminary treatment overshadowed by the mustiness that anyone who had ever been in the old movie house would know.

The waiting room was packed with victims strewn in varying postures.

Some were sitting, some were lying down, some were propped fragilely against pieces of furniture or the wall, cradling one body part or another.

Clothes and skin alike were torn, bloodied, and filthy.

Paige's medical training had included discussion of the mass casualty incident, but she had never experienced it personally before, much less in a town she knew well. She would have suffered a rush of cold dread even if the crowd had been wholly adult, but too many of the faces she saw were those of adolescents. Too many were familiar, though she didn't see Jill, or the friend she had been with, among them. Some of the injured were being comforted by parents and siblings who had rushed to the scene. Others clung to those who were similarly hurt.

The triage nurse stood by the door, clutching an overflowing clipboard and looking bewildered.

"Has everyone been tagged?" Paige asked. She could see a flash of green here and there.

The nurse nodded. "I think. But there's so many. The criticals were flown to the trauma center in Burlington. A couple of them were brought here until they were hemodynamically stable, but they've been taken out now. You missed the worst."

"Fatalities?" Paige whispered.

"Three at the scene," the nurse whispered back.

Paige closed her eyes for a second, but that was all she allowed herself. Better than an hour had passed since the collapse. Those of the red priority one cases that hadn't been airlifted would be upstairs in the operating room or beyond. The stable but serious yellow-tagged victims would be doubled up in E.R bays. She was needed.

She tried to make a beeline there, but there was no speeding through the maze of broken humanity. The injured ranged from their midteens through their thirties and were grouped with their friends. She saw patients and former patients and tried to touch or give each an encouraging word. When she missed one, she was called.

"Dr. Pfeiffer! Here, over here!"

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