"It doesn't do that. It actually curled around the edge of the defect and dumps into Ellen's side. So, we can ligate it and forget it. But there's another vein we didn't see-we're calling it fourteen-that comes up beside it. If we could splice seven into fourteen…"

"How big are they?" Weather asked.

"Not big. But not so small as the ones you did on the toe operation…"

"I was using the scope for that. If we drop the scope on them, you guys would have to get out of the way."

"I think they might be large enough for you to do with your loupes… I'm hoping."

"I'll scrub up," she said. SHE WAS BACK in ten minutes, robed in another five, operating glasses in place. Maret moved sideways, pushing one of the nurses away from the table, and Weather moved in close. The other neurosurgeon continued working on the other side of the babies' heads.

Maret said, "Here," and indicated the two veins with a tip of his scalpel.

Weather's operating glasses were equipped with an LED, and the light illuminated the patch of dura mater as though it were an illustration in a medical text. The veins were small, dark, wire-like-a bit smaller in diameter than the wire in a coat hanger.

Weather looked at them for a full fifteen seconds, until Maret asked, "What do you think?"

"How bad do you need it?"

"Well, it's impossible to know. But the babies are doing okay, so far, we are ahead of schedule, and better to do this now, if we can-we need to move as much blood as possible…"

"I can do it, but it'll take a while," she said finally. "Sandy might have to stop working every once in a while. I couldn't have the slightest bit of movement."

"How long?"

"Thirty, forty minutes. They're well exposed."

"Thirty minutes?"

"Thirty or forty."

"Thirty minutes. I believe you can do this." THE VEINS were not especially delicate, but they couldn't be yanked around, either. Weather tied off the smaller fourteen, and began the process of splicing it into the seven. The process was slow: she would be placing four square knots, each smaller than a poppy seed, around the edge of the splice. Ten minutes in, she had one knot; in seventeen minutes, she had two.

An anesthesiologist said, "We've got a gradient showing up."

"I'll be out in ten or fifteen," Weather said. The gradient was the blood pressure in Sara's brain.

"Let's stay with it," Maret said.

Weather did the third knot and asked, "Where's the gradient?"

"Need to move along," the anesthesiologist said.

"We could bleed her for a minute," Weather said. "I think we're tight enough that we won't damage the established sutures."

Maret said, "How long to go ahead and finish?"

"Six or seven minutes, if there're no problems."

"Bleed her just a minute…"

Weather released a ligature on the fourteen, and blood began seeping out of the incomplete splice. They stood for a minute, then two, soaking up the blood, and the anesthesiologist said, "Better," and Weather closed the vein again.

Six minutes later she was out, removed the ligatures on seven and fourteen, and she and the other neurosurgeon, Sandy, watched the splice for ten seconds, fifteen, and then Sandy said, "Just like shooting free throws."

Weather said, "You should explain surgery to my husband."

Maret: "What does this mean, free throws?"

"Means we're good," Sandy said. "Get your ass back in here. We're coming to the stretch."

"Sometimes, I wish I understood English," Maret said. To Weather: "Thirty-two minutes."

"Best I could do," she said, a little stiff.

He said, "If you'd told me an hour, I would have asked for forty-five minutes. Thirty-two, I hardly believe."

That made it all better. WEATHER WAS SITTING in the observation theater when Virgil and Lucas squeezed in, and Lucas reached down and tapped her on the shoulder and gave her the thumb. She followed them out into the hall.

"Have you seen a skinhead orderly around?" Lucas asked.

She shook her head. "Not close by. I haven't really noticed one. You mean a guy with a shaved head?"

"Not shaved, just a super-butch. Virgil's seen him around."

"You think?"

"We think. Gotta call Marcy, let her know, see if we can break out the guy's name. It bothers me that Virgil may have seen him here. So I'm sticking close. I'm going to get Jenkins and Shrake over here…"

"We'll be done this afternoon," Weather said. "We're moving fast now."

18

CAPPY SAID, "I don't see any other way to get her. Has to be inside the hospital, but the cowboy guy is all over her."

A car door slammed close by-the driveway?-and Barakat went to the window, peeked, turned and said, urgently, "They look like police. Man and a woman. Get in the bedroom, and keep quiet."

There were two open twists that'd held cocaine, sitting on the coffee table, and as Cappy disappeared into the back, Barakat snatched them up, looked frantically around the room for other problems, and stuffed the twists in his pants pocket.

Could they smell him? Cappy? He lit a Gauloise, blew some of the acrid smoke around the room, took another quick drag, blew it out, settled in at a desk, turned on the desk lamp, brought up his laptop, threw a couple of medical papers on the floor.

And the doorbell rang.

He took his time, checking the living room once more, and went to the door.

Man and a woman. They held up IDs, and the woman said, "Marilyn Crowe, Minneapolis police. This is Doug Jansen. Are you Dr. Barakat?"

"I am," he said, holding the storm door open. It was snowing behind the two cops. "What happened?"

"Do you know a Dr. Adnan Shaheen?"

"Yes, of course, very well. We were at school together…" Thinking: If they found a note, if Adnan had a journal, if they found a letter to my father… we should have looked, we should have looked, stupid stupid stupid…

"I'm sorry to tell you this, Dr. Barakat, but Dr. Shaheen was killed last night."

Barakat had seen this interview coming, had even talked about it with Cappy. He didn't react immediately. He simply froze. Then, "What? Addie…?"

The cops waited for him to say something more, and the silence stretched, and then Barakat pushed the storm door fully open and said, "You better come in. Addie's dead? How did this happen? Are you sure, Adnan Shaheen? He has a Lebanese passport? He is a resident at University Hospitals?"

He let himself ramble, now putting himself in a place of shock and sadness, and said, "This… wasn't drugs?"

"He was hit on the head with a heavy object," Crowe said. "I'm sorry."

"Why did you think it might be drugs?" Jansen asked.

Barakat rubbed his forehead and turned away, wandered to his desk and sat down at the laptop. "He… I think… oh, no."

"Street drugs?" Jansen asked.

"I talked to him," Barakat said. "He sometimes used cocaine. I don't know where he got it, I don't know how he learned to get it. He said there was a man who was working his way through medical school by selling cocaine, but I don't know this man… but that's when he started, you know. Medical school was very hard for Addie, very hard. He had to study very hard. All the time, the cocaine made him… he thought it helped to concentrate."

"You never reported this to anyone?"

"He was my friend," Barakat said. "I tried to help him. He struggled for twelve years to get his degree. Now, so close… if I turned him in, it would be the end for him. So I did not. I turned my eyes away."

"All right," Jansen said. "If… when this is settled, could we call on you to take care of funeral details?"

"Of course. I will call his family-they are still in Beirut. I will call an uncle, who will tell his mother. Addie… he was the great hope of his family, you know."