The relief was immediate. Cynthia was a bundle of enthusiasm, received so well by the patient families she saw that by week's end the group sent out a letter explaining that she would be taking over Mara's practice.

Paige began to breathe more easily. With a fourth doctor to normalize things at the office, she could run back and forth to the hospital, where her sernces were snapped up.

Every bed in the place was taken and then some. Doctors were in demand, hospital services stretched thin. Specialists had been brought in to treat many of the patients Paige had seen, but there was always something for her to do. And then there was Jill, who was lying in her cast listening to the fetal monitor, wondering if the baby would live and whether she wanted it to. With her father still ignoring her, her mother trying to hold her job and visit Jill on the sly without her father finding out, and her best friend still hospitalized in Hanover, she spent much of her time alone.

For that reason Paige was pleased to walk into her hospital room on the Saturday morning after the collapse and find Sara standing by her bedside. "What a nice surprise," she said, putting an arm around Sara, then as quickly drawing back. "Don't you dare tell me you thumbed in this time, Sara Dickinson."

"No. I came with my father."

"Ahhh. Better." She felt a flicker of heat at the thought of Noah nearby.

"You didn't tell me Jill was pregnant," Sara said.

"I felt it was Jill's decision to make as to whether she told or not."

"She asked what the monitor was for," Jill explained. "But I don't mind. Everyone knows."

Paige smiled her encouragement and asked softly, "Are you okay?" The floor nurse had caught her on her way past and told her that the baby had appeared distressed at one point during the night. For a short time, the doctors had considered doing a section. Then it had stabilized.

"I'm okay," Jill said. "Just hurting. They won't give me much for the pain."

"They're afraid it would affect the baby."

"I'd think the baby would like it," Sara said, and did something with her eyes to give the illusion of their spinning in opposite directions at once.

"How do you do that?" Paige asked, laughing, but Jill had laughed, too, so the answer was moot, and Sara was barreling on, looking slightly awed now.

"Jill said that the guys from Henderson Wheel were in to visit."

Paige looked at Jill. "Yes?"

"Last night. After you left. Robbie Howehe's the drummeris so cool.

He sat with me for ten minutes. He said he'd have stayed longer but that they had to fly to New Jersey for a gig."

What did you talk about?" Sara asked.

41usic. The concert. Where else they're playing.

They never had anything happen to them like happened here last week, and this is their hometown. It's like, too much. They feel awful.

They're going to keep coming back to see people. He said that if I needed anythinglike if I had trouble with money for all thisI should let him know. They want to help." "So does my dad," Sara said. "He's downstairs talking about it with someone now. He thinks it would be a great if the kids at Mount Court could help some of the people who were hurt. I mean, we can't do medical things, but we can visit, or help with homework."

"How about baby-sit?" Paige asked, thinking of Mary O'Reilly. Her husband had suffered a broken back and would be hospitalized for months. Once he was tranferfed to Tucker, Mary would want to visit but she had limited mobility herself. For now her in-laws were helping her out, but they both worked.

wWe can baby-sit," Sara said with confidence.

Baby-sitting was only the first of the things Paige thought of. The list was endless once she got going and it included helping both those injured in the movie house and those who had relied on the injured for help. She passed on her ideas to Noah who was determined to take the opportunity to teach his students a lesson in community cooperation.

The time it took for Tucker General's social services director to organize things allowed for fall sports to wind down.

Diligently, Paige prepared her team for the last few races of the season. Several were running better than evergirls who had climbed Noah's mountain and found a measure of self-confidence at the top Sara was one, her times continued to improve, along with her comfort level, if telling friends of her relationship to Noah was any measure of that.

Then again, it struck Paige that Sara might have felt comfortable telling friends that he was her father because the tide had turned. He wasn't winning popularity contests yet, but he had earned a modicum of respect on campus.

As for Paige, when Noah stoppea by to watch practice it was all she could do not to shake.

She still thought him gorgeous. She had even come to like him. And then there were the dreams that she had all too often.

So she limited her interaction with him to discussion of the girls, which was, after all, the only business she had at Mount Court. And there was plenty to talk about, particularly where Julie Engel was concerned.

She was a problem. She skipped class and was put on detention, she left the dorm after hours and was put on detention, she smoked in her room and was put on detention. While the others had generally responded well to Noah's tactics, she had not. Rather than being buoyed by the experience of Knife Edge, she felt humiliated.

"I couldn't do it," she complained when Paige raised the issue in an attempt to get to the heart of the problem.

"You did it. You made it across."

"I was a total wimp."

"But you got there. That's what counts, Julie. You have to stop regarding the glass as half-empty. It's half-fulland you can fill it the rest of the way if you want, but you have to u)ant."

Unfortunately the only thing Julie wanted related to the opposite sex.

Of all the senior girls, she was the one most aware of herself as a woman, which, given the letter she had written to Peter, made Paige a mite uneasy.

Peter, fortunately, was aware of the problem and h>i started sending Cynthia to Mount Court when the infirmary called. What with the return of normalc to the office, he, like Paige, was spending time each ay at the hospital, helping with Fatients injured in the movie house collapse.

Given the negative thoughts she had had about im, Paige found his dedication to be redeeming b en she made a casual reference to it, though, he was far from casual. "It's the least I can do don't you think. Okay, so it wasn't a fire, but Jamie Cox had no business packing people into the movie house. I knew it just as well as Mara did, but I was too cowardly to pick up the fight where she left off If I had, the collapse might never have happened." did nOthing ejtheYr cnhastised I m as guilty as you. I taken Maras child Thhaat,tselse jYou re doing.

YOusve Ssomething negative Samle jrsenpstliaetd ll "An Obligation is She's work and responsibility."

"But not negative. And only temporary."

Paige kept reminding herself of that. Weekly visits from the adoption agency's Joan Felix helped, as did biweekly sessions with the agency's other parents Those discussions focused on the ups and downs of adoption in general and interracial adoption in particular, and while those ups and downs didn't faze realitY Without them shienmSiwhetreha touchstone to that Sami would be forever hers.

The little girl was a treasure, a blossoming little person to wake up to in the mornings, to stop home at noontime to see, and to have supper with at night. As a pediatrician, Paige had known about the miracle of a child's development, but seeing it in other people's children was one thing, seeing it in her own another Each day Sami did something new, something that gave Paige a special pride. The child was thriving, putting on weight, catching up with her age with astonishing speed.

Paige was sure that when she hit school she would be the smartest little girl in the class.

The problem of hiring a baby-sitter haunted her. She knew she should be looking but kept putting it off. As guilty as she felt imposing so deeply on Nonny's life, the fact was that she didn't trust anyone else with Sami as she trusted her grandmotherwho had, for all practical purposes, moved in with her. She had taken over the second upstairs bedroom and had brought enough things from her house, including a red-and-white rag rug, a huge heart comforter, and a white wicker rocker, to make the room her own.

They were a familyNonny, Sami, and Paige.

They went out together driving, shopping, and visiting, and Paige loved every novel minute of it. Those times when she felt guilty having such fun, she simply reminded herself that it was temporary and the guilt eased. Likewise when Noah invited the three of them out to dinner. He was passing through Tucker, like Sami and Nonny. The transiency made it safe.

So different was this makeshift life from the one Paige knew to be permanent, and so shielded did she feel from reality, that when the middle of November arrived, and with it her birthday, she decided to break with tradition. Normally she filled the day with every commitment she could find for the purpose of arriving home at night too tired to do anything but fall into bedcertainly too tired to thinkand by the time she awoke the next morning the dreadful day was gone.

This year she felt braver.