"This one should be stitched, but it'll wait until after the CAT scan."

She rechecked his vital signs and made notations on his chart, then looked up when the door opened.

Bartholomew was an orderly who was large, white-haired and bearded, and nearly seventy.

His greatest problem getting John's gurney out the door were John's mother and two of his sisters, who had been waiting in the hall and now crowded in. In a voice aimed to calm, Paige explained what she had found and where John was headed. After sending them to foF low, she turned to the patient in the second bed.

Her name was Mary O'Reilly. She was twenty-four years old, married, and the mother of two young children who were patients of Paige's.

Mary's husband, Jimmy, had been red-coded and taken to one of the other hospitals, and Mary was in such a panic about him that she was paying little heed to herself, which was just as well. Her thigh was a mess.

It had been impaled by a shard of wood that had crashed from above.

The shard had been removed at the scene and the gash temporarily bandaged, but it was deep enough to expose the bone. Paige called on every bit of her medical skill to repair layers of muscle, tendon, and skin. When she was done, she smoothed Mary's hair back from her damp and ashen face. "You'll have to stay off this, Mary."

"But I got my kids to take care of. And I gotta find Jimmy."

"Who's with the kids now?"

"My landlady." Her voice rose to a hysterical pitch. "She was doing us a favor. We don't go out much since the kids were born."

[ "Do your parents live nearby?"

"There's just my father, but he's up in St. ohnsbury and he won't talk with me since I married "What about Jimmy's parents?"

[ "They're here in Tucker." She looked horrified t Someone has to tell them about Jimmy."

And about Mary, Paige thought. She couldn't be kept at the hospital long, what with the crowd, but she certainly couldn't go home alone.

She was going t to need help with the children for some time to come.

l ll have someone call them," Paige assured her h Maybe they heard.

Maybe they're looking for - "Then your landlady will stay with the kids until they get back, and in the meantime we'll try to get you some news on Jimmy."

"What if he's dead?" she cried.

Don t even think it," Paige scolded gently, and stood , back when an orderly wheeled her from the bay. She lollowed only long enough to stop at the desk, which was being manned by a harried charge nurse and a handful of eager volunteers, and see to contacting both Mary's in-laws and her landlady. She returned to Room C in time to be accosted by an unhappy parent.

hat s my boy in there. Name's Alex Johnson.

When's a doctor gonna see him?" ill'm a doctor, Mr. Johnson. I'll see him now. If you wait here, I'll be out as soon as I can to tell you what I Snd." She backed into the room and let the door close.

Alex had multiple lacerations and a fractured lemur. Paige corraled the portable X-ray unit into the bay and had pictures made of the fracture When it proved to be a simple one, she casted it and stitched his cuts.

To the father she said, Ideally, I'd keep him here overnight, but given I just can't. He has crutches. We'll wheel him out to the car and help you get him in. He'll have to stay off that leg."

"You tell him. He don't listen to me."

It's important, Alex. You can't put any weight on it." To both of them she said, Keep it elevated to minimize the swelling. Take aspirin for the pain. If it gets terribly uncomfortable, if the cast starts feeling too tight or too loose, let us know. Okay?"

She turned to the patient whose stretcher had replaced Mary O'Reilly's on the other side of the bay. Tim Hightower, age twenty and strapped to an immobilizer, had been a patient of Mara's. He had bruises and cuts and was mildly concussed, but the possibility of a cervical spine injury was the real cause for fear. Paige examined him with care, using her fingertips on the base of his skull and his neck to detect swelling or tenderness. She worked her way down his back, questioning him all the while. To her relief, he had neither paralysis nor inhibition of movement. His reflexes were as they should be, as were the sound and feel of his stomach, liver, and kidneys. But his back hurt, which was what had prompted the paramedics to immobilize him.

rI'II clean up your cuts and send you to the X-ray unit upstairs, but unless something shows up on the pictures, we can assume that a lower back muscle strain is the source of your pain."

She sent him along and turned to the next, a twentp eight-year-old woman with enough broken facial bones for Paige to defer to a plastic surgeon. Next was another heartrendingly familiar face, a seventeen-year-old with fractures of the collarbone and the humerus, then a thirty-three-year-old with a broken rib and a questiolF able punctured lung, then a twenty-nine-year-old with abdominal injuries that would require surgery.

And so it went. Over the next few hours a steady rotation of patients kept her at work without a break When one patient left, she turned to another, when that one left, she turned to the next. Every few patients was one of her own, a teenager who had been having the time of his or her life and now lay bruised broken, and in pain. But alive.

She kept telling herself t at. Some recoveries would be slow. There would be problems with school, with afterffchool jobs, with playing sports in a town that revered its varsity teams. But at least these children were alive Adrenaline pumped through her system, masking fatigue, while she set bones, stitched lacerations cleaned abrasions, and forwarded to the surgeons more compound fractures, internal hemorrhaging and edemas than she had seen during her three month E.R rotation in medical school.

There was no sign of either Jill, her parents, or her friend. During one brief coffee break, Paige found Angie, but Angie hadn't seen Jill, either.

Three fatulthes, Paige kept hearing. Three fatalities The night waned before the last of the yellow tags were seen. With the dawn came the green tags injuries that were less serious but no less in need of attention. Paige gulped down more coffee and a candy bar from the machine in the staff lounge and delved back into the suturing, casting, and splinting At midmorning, when she took a short break, she called the Stickleys' house. There was no answer On the chance that Jill had escaped injury. entirely she tried her own house.

Nonny answered.

What are you doing there?t she cried in surprise "We got up early and walked all around my neigh borhood, then we decided to help you out and drive back here ourselves," Nonny said, sounding chipper and no worse the wear for the trip with a child. gAre youal rig t.

"I am," Paige said wearily, "but so many aren't.

What a niahtmaro " b 5 - - L "Have you gotten any sleep?"_ _ "Not yet. Soon. You haven't heard from Jill, have you?"

"No. Should I have?" lv ves I can't seem to locate her. If she calls, wiii you call the E.R and leave me a message?"

Nonny agreed, and Paige returned to work. It wasn't until noon, when she sank down wearily in the physician's lounge to await the return of enough energy to get her home, that Peter approached with the information she wanted.

Jill's upstairs. She was one of the first to be seen. She has a pelvic fracture."

Paige groaned in distress. "The baby?"

He waved a hand. "It's touch and go. She's had some bleeding, but the baby's still in there. For how long, no one knows. She and her friend were in the middle of the crush that came down from the balcony, but Jill got the worst of it. The other girl was bussed to Hanover."

Weary and heartsick, Paige closed her eyes.

No matter that Jill hadn't planned to be pregnantno matter that she was going to give the baby up for adoptionto lose it would be a tragedy.

"I have to go see her," she said, and pushed herself up from the sofa, but she hadn't taken more than two steps when an alarmed face appeared at the door.

"We need help. They've pulled seven more from the rubble."

It seemed to go on and on and on.

Paige shot Peter a horrified glance and set off on the run beside him.

seventeen PETER HUNG HIS HEAD OVER THE SINK IN ROOM D and tossed water into his face. He was dead tired, yet he felt a sense of satisfaction that he hadn't felt in a long, long time. He had helped. No doubt about it. He had done his share, had worked right along with the others, had held up his end even with those last difficult cases.

If he were to go to the Tavernwhich he wouldn't, since it was two in the afternoon and he planned to go home and sleep for the next seventeen hourshe would be hailed as a hero. He had treated more than a few of his brothers' friends' kids. They'd be buying his beer for years.