A fine thought. Once he got some sleep.

He wiped his face, tossed away the paper towel left the room, and headed for his car.

When he rounded the corner, he nearly fell over a single gurney than stood there. On it, strapped to a longboard and looking as white as the sheet that covered her, was Kate Ann Murther.

gPIease help me," she pleaded in a shadow of a voice. She was on oxygen and an IV. "Please help me please helD me."

Her head, like the rest of her, was immobilized, so that she couldn't see him, and either no one at the nearby nurses' station had heard her or no one cared to respond. Kate Ann might well have been invisible, which was pretty much what she'd been all her life. She was an introvert to the extreme, a quiet creature who lacked the courage to reach out for niceties such as friendship, physical comfort, and respect.

Peter didn't owe her anything, certainly not compassion for having suffered through childhood as he had. The last thing in the world he wanted was to be associated with a nobody like Kate Ann Murther.

She was seven years younger than him. She had never married. To his knowledge she had never even dated. She lived alone in a tiny house on the edge of town that always had one problem or another frozen pipes, a leaky roof, racoons in the cellar. Same with her car, which had a way of breaking down at the most inopportune of spots. She supported herself by doing simple bookkeeping work for several of the smallest businesses in town, though none of those broadcast the fact. They dropped their books at her house and picked them up when she was done, all after dark so no one would see, and if there was snickering in the Tavern about what else liaR pened at the time those books were exchanged, no one believed it. Kate Ann was so shy as to be pathetic, so pathetic as to be sexless. She wasn't someone anyone in town wanted to take credit for knowing.

What stunned Peter was that she'd been at the concert at all.

"Please help me please help me."

More words than he had ever heard her say at one time.

"Someone pleeeeeease."

So soft and sad and terrified that he couldn't have turned around and taken the back way out of the hospital unless he'd been made of stone.

He came to the side of the gurney where she could see him. "What's the problem, Kate Ann?" he asked kindly. The generosity of the night was still in effect. He was giving of himself to the less fortunate. Mara would be pleased.

Kate Ann looked up at him through tear-filled eyes. "I can't move,"

she said so quietly that he might have missed the words if he hadn't heard them once too often in the hours just past.

He took the chart kom the foot of the gurney, read it, and, against his better judgment, felt a twinge of sympathy. He wondered what her doctor according to the chart, it was Dick Bruno, though he wasn't a neurosurgeonhad told her.

You can't move," he said gently, "because we're trying to keep you perfectly still.

There may have been some damage to your spinal chord. The CAT scan says there's some swelling. One of these IV bottles contains Solu-Medrol to fight it. The immobilization is to prevent further damage from being done and hopefully let things start to heal."

"But I can't feel anything," she whispered with eyes large as a child's.

Caught by them, Peter was suddenly back in med school, starting his rotation in pediatrics, facing his first patient. The hurt, the fear, the dependence then the absolute adoration when the hurt eased, had sold Peter on being a pediatrician.

Kate Ann Murther wasn't a child. She wasn't his patient. She wasn't any of his business.

But, doctor to patient, he felt bad for her, so he said, "The trauma of the injury will have numbed things up," which was the truth, though not the whole truth.

She didn't say anything immediately but continued to hold him with those large, child's eves. He had the sudden impression that he had told her more than anyone else had that night.

"Have they mentioned getting you into a room." he asked.

No one answers when I ask."

"I'll ask for you," he said, and forgetting his exhaustion, he marched to the nurses' station. "What's the story on Kate Ann?" he asked of the charge nurse, who looked up blankly.

"Kate Ann?"

"Murther. Kate Ann Murther." He tossed his head toward the gurney.

The nurse peered around him in surprise, as though she hadn't known anyone was there, which bothered the hell out of Peter. Okay, so Kate Ann was the forgettable type, and in times of turmoil the forgettable types were forgotten. But the turmoil had tapered off.

And Kate Ann had spinal damage and possible permanent paralysis. She had a right to be terrified. It wasn't fair that she should be ignored.

In a low but firm voice, he said, ill'd like to get her to a room stat"

The nurse waved a hand at the papers on her desk. "Where should I put her? We're bulging at the seams."

"I want Three-B. That's where spinal inJuries are usually kept."

"It's filled."

"Tell you what," Peter said. "I'll wheel her up there myself while you call and have them look around. They'll find a place. I don't care if they have to empty out a stockroom, but the woman is seriously injured.

She needs to be monitored." He glanced at the clock.

"You have five minutes. That's how long it'll take me to get there."

He returned to Kate Ann, whose eyes begged for help.

he arnved "We haven, kaBny as looking harried w ut to get you the best view in town' " ate Ann I m Ssixth. She Youldn' fihh kand might just eW to his car and drove home. , went straight Xe we dl XhZeotddobhuet young man e hhad been< wuat al dII, a department, a physical job in itself, but was also the star of the intertown basketball league. He had been caught under an extraordinary weight of rubble that had fallen from above. To free him, emergency workers had had to amputate his leg.

In the commotion of bringing him in, Paige had been swept into the operating room + asist the two surgeons there, and when the v s doctors had left she remained with the patient's family. They talked of recuperation from the surgery, of physical therapy and a prosthesis.

They mentioned the possibility of his return to work. No one mentioned basketball.

Paige stayed with them until she simply couldn't a minute longer. Then she trotted up the stairs to the second floor, trotted all the way down the hall, and breathlessly singled Jill out from the four in the room at the very end.

She went straight to the bed, took Jill's hand, and leaned low.

"How're you doing, lion?"

Jill struggled to open her eyes. Paige knew that it would be a while before the grogginess wore off. Beneath the sheets, a cast ran from her waist to her knees. At the head of the bed, a fetal monitor beeped steadily. On a nearby chair, looking drained, sat her mother.

"I feel weird," Jill mumbled.

"You will for a while. But you're doing fine."

"My baby . . . they don't know."

"That's why they have you on a monitor, to tell them if the baby has any trouble."

Jane rose. She didn't speak, but stood there looking uncomfortable enough to tell Paige that she wanted to.

"Let me go calm your mom," Paige told Jill.