"Do you know if they occurred at one hospital or at a number of hospitals?" Laurie inquired.

"Just one. It was an orthopedic hospital. Why do you ask?"

Laurie sat up straighter in her chair. "What was the name of the hospital?"

"Angels something. I think Angels Orthopedic Hospital. They were all orthopedic cases."

A slight crooked smile turned up the corners of Laurie's mouth. Instead of losing strength, the potential success of her argument with Jack notched upward.

"There have been some cases here as well," Laurie said, "including one I autopsied today. I'm going to look into it, even though I was told the hospital has been aggressively proactive in dealing with the problem."

"Let me know if I can help."

"Can you give me the names?"

Laurie could hear the familiar sound of Dick's keyboard. A minute later, he said, "Philip Moore, Jonathan Knox, and Eileen Dimalanta."

Laurie quickly added them to her matrix. "Have all three been signed out?"

"Yup, so you can access them in the database."

"I'd still like to see the case files; hospital records, if you have them; and also a tissue sample, so I can have the strain accurately typed, if it hasn't already been done."

"I'll bring what I have over for Thursday conference."

"I'd prefer you messenger them over today. I'm under a time constraint."

"How so?"

"A personal commitment," Laurie said, not wishing to elaborate.

Next, Laurie called Jim Bennett in Brooklyn and Margaret Hauptman in Staten Island. Although Margaret had had no MRSA cases, Jim had had three, like Dick. Two were necrotizing pneumonias like the others and were from the same hospital, but another one was fatal MRSA toxic shock syndrome secondary to a fulminant endophthalmitis, a massive infection inside the victim's right eye, which had quickly followed a routine cataract extraction. Hanging up the phone, Laurie added Carlos Suarez, Matt Collord, and Kayla Westover to her rapidly growing matrix. Laurie was now convinced that something was wrong – something was very wrong.

3

"Rodger Naughton will be with you shortly," the priggish secretary said. "Would you mind taking a seat?" From Angela's perspective, the woman seemed more like an automaton than a real person. As many times as Angela had been to Rodger's office, she expected some small gesture of familiarity rather than cool indifference, and although Angela had anticipated the reception from having experienced it so often in the past, it still added to her discomfort.

For as long as Angela could remember, she had been an independent person, loath to ask people for favors, always determined to do whatever it was herself. As she grew older, this characteristic extended to asking for money. Yet there she was, sitting in the columned splendor of the Manhattan Bank and Trust with her metaphorical tin cup, forced to beg for a loan.

The only bright side was that Rodger's personality was quite the opposite of Miss Darton's. From their first encounter, Angela had found him to be friendly, helpful, and all around remarkably simpatico. Under different circumstances she would have looked forward to seeing him, but not today. From the moment she'd awakened, through getting Michelle off to school amid the continuing belly-button-piercing debate, through talking with the lead counsel about the previous day's MRSA death, and through reassuring Cynthia Sarpoulus that no one blamed her for the continuing infection problem, Angela had tried to come up with a strategy to talk Rodger into giving her a sizable personal loan or giving Angels Healthcare a commercial loan.

Unfortunately, she'd been unsuccessful in coming up with any ideas short of getting down on her knees and begging. As dire as the situation was, she'd do it if she thought it would help.

"Mr. Naughton will see you now," Miss Darton said. The only change in her expression was a slight lift to her eyebrows and a flutter of her eyelids.

Feeling like she was headed to the principal's office after having been nabbed committing an infraction such as smoking a cigarette in the girls' room, Angela headed into Rodger's office.

"Angela!" Rodger called out with alacrity as he bounded out from behind his desk with his hand outstretched. "So glad to see you. This is a treat. Normally, I have to deal with your CFO, not that I dislike Bob Frampton. He is very much a gentleman, but if I had my druthers, I'd prefer to deal with you directly. Now, don't you tell him that!" He laughed as he shook Angela's hand vigorously and guided her toward a seat facing his desk.

Angela sat and observed Rodger as he returned to his tufted leather high-backed desk chair. He was a handsome, boyish man with a carefully groomed appearance. He had fine, closely trimmed blond hair and pale blue eyes. His position at the bank was one of several healthcare relationship managers. As a business with no discernible ceiling to its growth, healthcare was of great interest to banks in general and to the Manhattan Bank and Trust in particular. When Angela had come to the bank five years previously to arrange for Angels Healthcare's first construction loan, she had been assigned to Rodger. Over the ensuing years, Rodger had worked with the company as its liaison with the bank, earning considerable money for the bank in the process. During this time, Angels Healthcare had built three multimillion-dollar hospitals, which had been veritable cash cows until the recent MRSA outbreak. It was this reality that Angela planned to emphasize and hopefully exploit.

"How is your daughter?" Rodger asked with sincerity rather than merely to make conversation.

"Other than some preteen angst, she's okay," Angela said, while her mind struggled with how to begin the quest for yet another loan. "And yours?" She knew Rodger had a girl a year older than Michelle, but that was the extent of her knowledge of the man's private life.

"She's struggling with the same issues. I'm learning that teenage daughters can be a handful."

Angela remembered her own teenage struggles all too clearly. It was during that stressful middle-school interval that her problems with her father had come to a head, never to be truly resolved.

"Angela," Rodger said. "I'm assuming you are here today about the call I made to Bob, your CFO. I want to reassure you it was pro forma bank policy. The margin on Angels Healthcare loans comes to my attention automatically when it nears a specific point. The problem, of course, is the bridge loan we arranged a little over a month ago, combined with the recent sale of bonds from your company's management account. It is bank policy that I, as your relationship manager, make the call. Rest assured, I am not calling any of the company's loans."

"I appreciate that," Angela said, groaning inwardly. His comments, although solicitous in trying to put her at ease, had the opposite effect. Rodger was, in effect, telling her that Angels Healthcare had no more credit. Regardless, Angela cleared her throat and added, "But your call to Bob was not the reason for my visit."

"Oh," Rodger said. He leaned back in his chair. "How can I help you?"

"I know you are aware of our upcoming IPO," Angela began. "Its scheduled closing is just a little more than two weeks away, so we are in the quiet period, meaning I cannot divulge any specifics. Let me just say that we have been assured the IPO will be successful."

"I'm happy for you," Rodger said. "An underwriting guarantee! Wow!"

"Congratulations may be a little premature. The short-term problem which prompted our need for a bridge loan a month ago has cost considerably more to fix than we had predicted. We need another bridge loan, but only for three weeks. The interest doesn't matter, and we can pay it up front."