The coffeemaker light indicated that it was ready. Angela loaded one of the sealed capsules, tightened the handle into the unit, and turned it on. She grimaced at the noise in the stillness of the apartment.

As the coffee ran into the cup, Angela reminisced about individual episodes she'd had with patients and families during her residency and during the year she'd had her private practice. They ranged from the sublimely joyous to the sublimely sad, but always uniquely human. Then she found herself comparing how she'd felt after a day of practicing medicine to how she felt after a day working at Angels Healthcare and acknowledged how fundamentally different the rewards were. With medicine, it was deeply personal; at the end of the day, she could almost always revel in the fact that she had helped at least a few people in the most direct way possible. With business, it was more vague and had to do with accomplishing something, even if it was difficult to define exactly what it was, although it invariably had something to do with money.

Angela took her coffee back to her study. It was her favorite room in the apartment, with one entire wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, complete with a ladder that was attached to a track across the bookshelves' face. Angela had loved books as a child and was proud that she'd never thrown one away.

At the desk, Angela got out a legal pad and began writing down the problems she was currently facing and what she would try to do about them that day. When she wrote Paul's name down, she thought about the man having an alcohol problem, which she hadn't known about. From the standpoint of a CEO, it made her angry that the information had been kept from her, and she was surprised Bob had done so. But then, thanks to her recent reflections about her medical training, she thought about the problem from a physician's point of view and remembered how difficult all addictions could be. Angela then wondered if the company should pay for inpatient rehab, which might be important if he was truly relapsed. She wrote the idea down. It was an issue that should be considered after the IPO.

When Angela wrote Dr. Laurie Montgomery's name down, she paused. There was little she could do about that problem. It was in Michael's hands, for whatever that was worth. The previous evening, when she'd called him to tell him the disturbing news about Laurie's apparent personality and the fact that she had voiced that she was going to solve the Angels Healthcare problem with MRSA if it killed her, he'd said that he'd do something about it immediately. Knowing him as well as she did, she had no idea whether he was telling her the truth or just placating her for the moment. With her intuition telling her loud and clear that Laurie Montgomery was the biggest threat to keeping their infection problem out of the media since the problem began, there was no time to delay. With all the trouble and effort they were going through with the cash-flow problem, it would be tragic if the IPO stumbled from the work of an overenthusiastic medical examiner.

Angela's eyes strayed over to her telephone and then on to the Tiffany desk clock. It was four-thirty-five in the morning, hardly the time for a personal call. Yet she was so certain of Laurie's threat potential that she seriously debated calling. From sore experience, she knew Michael sometimes partied to such an hour, even five a.m., on numerous occasions when they were married.

Talking herself into making the call, Angela justified it because of the importance of starting some sort of offense against Laurie and because Michael deserved it. All those times he'd stayed out to such an hour he'd return and wake her with his drunkenness, and sometimes even Michelle.

With a certain vengeful glee Angela dialed the number. As the number rang, she fully expected his voice mail, especially since he had caller ID and she had a private line.

To her surprise, he answered, sounding mildly intoxicated.

"This better be important," he said, slurring his words.

"Michael, it's Angela."

There was a pause. In the background, Angela could hear a woman's voice with a heavy New Jersey accent complaining and demanding to know who was calling in the middle of the night.

"Did you hear me?" Angela demanded. Now that she'd awakened him, she felt a tad guilty, but she was determined not to show it.

"For chrissake. It's four-thirty in the fucking morning."

"It's four-thirty-five, to be exact. I'm concerned about the Dr. Laurie Montgomery issue I called you about last night."

"I said I'd take care of it."

"Have you?"

"I told you I'd take care of it, and I did. It's over, it's done, so go back to sleep!"

"How are you so sure? As I was told, she has a reputation of being very persistent."

"It's not going to matter how persistent she is. My client actually knows her personally. He said he'd be happy to talk with her, and he's confident she'll be amenable to his position. What I gathered was that the doctor owes my client big-time."

Michael's explanation didn't make too much sense, but his assuredness did. Angela thanked him and told him to go back to sleep.

18

Laurie had been awake for a while; she didn't know exactly how long when she finally looked at the clock. By then it was quarter to five, an hour before Jack would be getting up to shower and an hour and fifteen minutes before he would come back and drag her out of bed. That was the normal routine, and the fact that she was already awake spoke volumes about her mental state. Laurie was a night person. Along about ten o'clock, when Jack was finding it hard to hold up his eyelids, Laurie would usually get a second wind. She loved to read at night and would stay up after midnight engrossed in a novel more often than she liked to admit, always to deride herself the following morning and vow never to do it again. Now, as she lay there, fully awake and staring up at the dark ceiling, she knew exactly what the problem was; she was depressed. It wasn't a major, incapacitating depression, which she'd never had but could imagine was like, but rather a nagging melancholy that she was inexorably being set up for a major disappointment. She'd always wanted a child from as early as she could remember, and she always thought of herself as a mother-in-waiting through her long medical training, which she'd blamed for not having had the time to find a spouse. Then she'd fallen in love with Jack and had to deal with his guilt over the loss of his family and whether or not he could commit to another. But that was now behind them and they were trying to have a family, but over the last year, it hadn't happened despite temperature charts and careful monitoring of her cycles. The problem, as she saw it, was her age now that she was in her forties. Every month that went by, she was terrified that her chances of naturally conceiving had sunk, and now Jack was insisting on having an operation, which would take him out of commission for God knew how long, and not only that, he was choosing to have it at a time when he was putting himself at significant risk.

Laurie rolled over on her side facing Jack and propped herself up on an elbow. She gazed at his profile, the picture of tranquility lying on his back with one arm casually thrown onto the pillow behind his head. She did indeed love him, but his obstinacy could drive her to distraction, as was the case with the surgery issue. For the life of her, she could not understand how he could dismiss the data and believe it was prudent to have the procedure.

Recognizing that more sleep was not in the cards, Laurie got out of bed. With her bathrobe and slippers on, she padded into the study they had made facing out onto 106th Street. It was just becoming light. She looked down from the window onto Jack's beloved basketball court, wishing it would suddenly disappear. Then she turned back to the partner's desk. Her side was piled high with the MRSA case files and hospital records of the twenty-four cases, along with her uncompleted matrix. She'd hauled all the material home with the intention of working on it the previous evening, but she hadn't done it. And now that she was awake early, she thought she would take advantage of the time, but before even sitting down, she recognized she felt the same as she had the night before. Her despondency kept telling her that her efforts were in vain. Jack was just going to do what Jack wanted.