Ricardo's room had become the focal point of the hospital. The small staff no longer gathered around the Formica table in the kitchen on their breaks, but gathered at Ricardo's bedside instead. Now, with a few extra minutes on her hands, Susan automatically wandered down the hall to look in on the boy. Her eyes, as always, quickly scanned the monitors over his bed, and she frowned. His heartbeat, always so perfectly regular, was fluctuating madly, and his eyes, which had remained closed and still since the moment he'd been brought into the hospital, were moving spasmodically behind his closed lids.

Even as she stared unbelievingly at the screen, an alarm bell sounded outside the room, alerting the tiny hospital to a Code Blue. Within a few secondsMacCallum appeared, followed by two orderlies and Maria Ramirez.

"What is it?" Maria asked, her voice fearful, her eyes locked on the still form of her son. Then his eyes moved again, and Maria gasped. "He's waking up!"

She pushed close to the bed and leaned down just asMacCallum turned to Susan Aldrich and began snapping out orders for emergency equipment to be brought in. Maria looked up, the eagerness that had filled her eyes a moment ago now replaced with fear. "What is it?" she asked. "Is something wrong?"

MacCallum'slips tightened. "He's going into cardiac arrest," he said.

Maria's eyes widened and her face went ashen. Then she looked down at Rick again, and as she watched, his eyes suddenly blinked open and his mouth began to work. A sound-faint and rasping-rattled in his throat. Maria leaned closer, her hand closing on her son's. "I'm here, Ricardo. It's going to be all right."

Ricardo blinked then, and once more his lips moved. Maria pressed her ear close. Even as an orderly hurried into the room with a cart bearing the equipment to apply electro-shock to Ricardo's heart, she thought she heard her son breathe a single word.

"Good-bye…"

For a split-second Maria wasn't certain she'd heard the word at all, but then, asMacCallum moved her aside so he could rip the gown from Ricardo's chest and press the electrodes against the boy's skin, she made up her mind.

"No!" she said sharply, her voice echoing oddly in the small room.

Everyone around the bed stopped what they were doing and stared at Maria.

"But he's going to-"MacCallum began. He stopped as Maria nodded.

"He's going to die," she said softly. "I know it. He knows it. We must let him go."

Susan Aldrich gasped, andMacCallum himself flinched at Maria's words. He glanced at the monitors once more. Ricardo's blood pressure was dropping rapidly and his heartbeat was coming only spasmodically now. "Are you sure?" he asked.

Maria hesitated only the barest fraction of a second. Her eyes were flooded with tears, but she nodded. "I'm sure. We must let him go. He has said good-bye to me, and so I must say good-bye to him." Then, as the others watched in silence, she leaned down and gently kissed Ricardo's lips.

Susan Aldrich took one of the boy's hands in her own, and Mickey Esposito took the other. MacMacCallum reached down to lay his hand on the boy's forehead. Though all of them knew that Ricardo was totally incapable of any kind of speech, none of them was willing to take Maria's single consolation away from her. A moment later Ricardo Ramirez's eyes opened once more and appeared to come into brief focus.

What might have been only a spasmodic twitching-but could also have been the barest trace of a smile-worked at the corners of his mouth.

Then his eyes closed once more. The line on the heart monitor went flat. And a single steady note-almost like a dirge-began to sound.

Ricardo Ramirez was dead.

Half an hour later MacMacCallum sat in his office, numbly staring at the completed death certificate. Like the rest of the staff at County Hospital, he had been taken completely by surprise by the boy's sudden death. Like the others, Mac had also taken to dropping by Rick's room several times each day-not because there was anything specific that needed to be done for the boy, but simply because even in his comatose condition, there was something about the boy that reached out to him. He, too, had come to regard Rick as more than simply a patient. Quite simply, even though he and Rick had never exchanged so much as a single word, MacMacCallum had come to regard him as a friend.

Now his friend was dead, and Maria Ramirez, whomMacCallum also had come to think of as a friend, was sitting in the waiting room, only her eyes betraying the depth of her grief, trying to come to terms with the loss of the single thing in her life she had truly loved and believed in. Finally, his features setting harshly,MacCallum reached for the phone and called Phil Collins at Silverdale High School, then waited impatiently, drumming his fingers on his desktop while the coach was summoned from the playing field.

"It's Dr.MacCallum," Mac said when Collins came on the line. "I know you don't really care, but Ricardo Ramirez died half an hour ago."

"Christ," Collins swore, butMacCallum was certain the only emotion in the coach's voice was worry, not regret. "What's going to happen now?"

"I don't know,"MacCallum replied. "But I can tell you that I'm very well aware of what you and Ames andTarrenTech have lined up for Maria, and I don't think it's enough." His voice hardened. "I've had it with you and your football team, Collins. We had a broken leg in here last weekend, and a ruptured spleen day before yesterday." He hesitated, briefly wondering whether or not he would be able to back up his next words, then plunged on. "I'm going to suggest to Maria that she institute a wrongful death suit against you, the school, JeffLaConner, his parents, Marty Ames, and Rocky Mountain High. I don't know what you're all up to, but it's got to stop right now."

"Now wait a minute," Collins began, butMacCallum cut him off.

"No, Collins," the doctor breathed, and gently replaced the phone in its cradle. He didn't know what, if anything, he'd accomplished, didn't even really believe a wrongful death suit would get anywhere. But at least he felt better.

In his own office, Phil Collins stared at the dead phone in his hand for a moment, then rattled the button on the cradle until a dial tone buzzed. He punched the digits for Marty Ames's private number, then waited, drumming his fingers impatiently in unconscious duplication of MacMacCallum a few minutes earlier. When Ames came onto the line, Collins repeatedMacCallum's words almost verbatim.

Two minutes after that, Ames was repeating them to Jerry Harris.

"All right," Harris replied tiredly. He thought a moment, then spoke again. "We'll have to clean up theLaConner situation right now. Can you make whatever preparations we might need?"

"Of course," Ames replied.

Before he called ChuckLaConner into his office, Jerry Harris made arrangements for one of theTarrenTech corporate helicopters to prepare to make a flight to Grand Junction, where a Learjet would be waiting.

CharlotteLaConner felt an empty hollowness in her stomach. She couldn't have heard Chuck right-it had to be a mistake. Perhaps, after all,shewas beginning to imagine things, as he'd been insisting since that terrible moment at the Tanners' the other day-she could no longer quite remember which day it was-when Chuck had as much as told Blake and Sharon that she was losing her mind. Maybe she was even imagining that he'd come home from work in the middle of the morning today. Maybe he wasn't really here at all.

She shook her head dazedly. "Pack a bag?" she asked. "Now?"

Chuck nodded. "That's right," he said. "I'm leaving."

"But, I don't understand."

"I'm being transferred, honey, remember?" Chuck said. "I'm going to Boston."

Charlotte's hands fluttered in a helpless gesture. "But I thought-I thought we were waiting for Jeff…"