“Even though I know it’s a minor operation, I’m still frightened to death.”

Thomas leaned over and put his arm around her. “Of course you’re scared. It’s a natural reaction. But Martin Obermeyer is the best. You couldn’t be in better hands.”

“I know,” said Cassi, with a weak smile.

“And I made a decision this afternoon,” Thomas said holding her tighter. “As soon as Obermeyer gives you the green light, we’ll take a vacation. Some place like the Caribbean. Ballantine convinced me that I need some time off, and what better time could there be than while you’re recuperating. What do you say?”

“I say that sounds wonderful.” She turned her face up to kiss him as the phone rang.

Thomas got up to answer it. She hoped he wasn’t being called back to the hospital.

“Seibert,” said Thomas into the phone. “Nice to hear your voice.”

Cassi leaned forward and carefully set her glass on the coffee table. Robert had never called her at home. This was just the kind of interruption that could throw Thomas into a frenzy.

But he was saying calmly, “She’s right here, Robert. No, it’s not too late.”

With a smile he handed the phone to Cassi.

“I hope it’s all right that I called you at home,” said Robert, “but I managed to sneak up to pathology and look at Jeoffry Washington’s vein sections. After I got back to my room, I remembered where I’d seen such precipitates before. I had been doing the post on a man killed in an industrial accident. He had spilled concentrated sodium fluoride onto his lap. Even though he’d rinsed himself off, enough of the substance had been absorbed to prove fatal. He had the same kind of precipitation in his veins.”

Cassi lowered her voice, turning her back to Thomas. She did not want him to know she was still following the SSD study. “But sodium fluoride isn’t used as a medication.”

“It is on teeth,” said Robert.

“But it’s not given internally,” Cassi whispered. “And certainly not by IV.”

“That’s true,” said Robert. “But let me tell you how this accident victim died. He had grand mal seizures, and finally acute cardiac arrhythmia. Sound familiar?”

Cassi knew that six patients in the SSD series had died with the same symptoms, but she didn’t say anything. Sodium fluoride wasn’t the only thing that could cause them, and there was no sense jumping to conclusions.

“As soon as I get back in the lab,” said Robert, “I’ll be able to analyze these precipitates. I’ll find out if they are sodium fluoride. If they are, you know what that means, don’t you?”

“I have an idea,” said Cassi reluctantly.

“It means murder,” said Robert.

“What was that all about?” asked Thomas when Cassi had rejoined him on the couch. “Does Robert have some new brainstorm about his SSD series?” To Cassi’s surprise Thomas only seemed curious, not upset. She decided it was safe to tell him a little about Robert’s progress.

“He’s still working on it,” she said. “He’d begun to collate the data just before he was admitted to the hospital. He got a computer printout that showed some rather interesting results.”

“Like what?” asked Thomas.

“Oh, any number of possibilities,” Cassi said evasively. “He can’t rule out anything. I mean, all sorts of things can happen in hospitals. Remember those poor people in New Jersey who were given curare?” Cassi laughed nervously.

“Surely he doesn’t suspect murder?” said Thomas.

“No, no,” said Cassi, sorry she said so much. “He just noticed an odd precipitate at the last autopsy that he wanted to track through the data.” Thomas nodded and appeared to be thinking. Hoping to restore his good humor, Cassi added, “Robert really appreciated your intervening on his behalf.”

“I know,” said Thomas, suddenly smiling. “I didn’t do it for his benefit, but if he insists on seeing it that way, it’s fine with me. Now I think we should go to bed.”

As he tenderly guided her upstairs, Cassi wasn’t sure just what she read in his extraordinary blue eyes. She shivered, not entirely sure if it was with pleasurable expectation.

Ten

Cassi had not been a hospital inpatient since college. Now with medical school and internship behind her, it was a very different experience, just as Robert had suggested. Knowledge of all that could happen made the process far more frightening. Since she’d ridden into the hospital with Thomas, she was there far too early to be admitted. In fact, she’d been told she would have to wait until ten before the proper clerks were available. When Cassi protested that people were admitted all night long through the emergency room, the secretary just repeated that Cassi had to come back at ten.

After spending three unproductive hours in the library, much too nervous to concentrate on anything more demanding than Psychology Today, Cassi went back to admitting. The personnel had changed, although their attitude hadn’t. Instead of smoothing the way through the admitting procedure, they seemed intent on making it as harrowing as possible, as if it were a rite of passage. Now Cassi was informed that she had no hospital card, and without one she could not be admitted. A disinterested clerk finally told her to go to the ID office on the third floor.

Thirty minutes later, armed with a new ID which looked suspiciously like a credit card, Cassi returned to admitting. There she was confronted with another seemingly insurmountable problem. Since she used her maiden name, Cassidy, in the hospital because it was the name on her medical degree, and since Thomas had taken out her health insurance under Kingsley, the secretary claimed they needed her marriage certificate. Cassi said she didn’t have it. It wasn’t something she’d imagined she’d need to be admitted to the hospital, and surely they could just call Thomas’s office and get it straightened out. The clerk insisted the computer had to have the certificate. She was only the machine’s handmaiden, or so she said. This impasse was finally solved by the admitting supervisor who somehow got the computer to accept the information. Finally Cassi was assigned a room on the seventeenth floor, and a pleasant woman in a green smock, with a badge that said MEMORIAL VOLUNTEER, escorted Cassi upstairs.

But not to seventeen. First Cassi was taken to the second floor for a chest X ray. She said she had just had one six weeks ago during a routine physical and did not want another. X ray claimed anesthesia would not anesthetize anyone who was not X-rayed, and it took Cassi another hour to get the chief of anesthesia to call Obermeyer, who in turn called Jackson, the chief of radiology. After Jackson checked Cassi’s old film, he called Obermeyer back, who called back the chief of anesthesia, who called back the radiology clerk to say that Cassi didn’t need another chest film.

The rest of Cassi’s admission went more smoothly, including the visit to the lab for standard blood and urine analysis. Finally Cassi was deposited in a nondescript light blue hospital room with two beds. Her roommate was sixty-one and had a bandage over her left eye.

“Mary Sullivan’s the name,” said the woman after Cassi had introduced herself. She looked older than her sixty-one years because she wasn’t wearing her dentures.

Cassi wondered what kind of surgery the woman had had on her eye.

“Retina fell off,” said Mary, as if noting Cassi’s interest. “They had to take the eye out and glue it back on with a laser beam.”

Cassi laughed in spite of herself. “I don’t think they took your eye out,” she said.

“Sure did. In fact, when they first took my bandage off I saw double and thought they’d put it back in crooked.”

Cassi wasn’t about to argue. She unpacked her things, carefully storing her insulin and syringes in the drawer of her nightstand. She would take her normal injection that evening, but after that she was not to medicate herself until she was cleared to do so by her internist, Dr. Mclnery.