"Yes!" Jazz blurted while shutting her eyes tightly, grimacing, and balling her hands into tight fists with excitement. After getting no names for more than a month, receiving two in the same night was unbelievable. It had never happened before. She was almost faint from holding her breath when she reopened her eyes and looked again at the screen. She wanted to make sure she wasn't fantasizing, and she wasn't. The name was still there, boldly standing out against the white background. Vaguely, she wondered what kind of name Sobczyk was, since the juxtaposition of consonants vaguely reminded her of her own.

Jazz stood up and began peeling off her street clothes as she headed over to her closet. It was still too early to go to the hospital, but she didn't care. She was going anyway. She was too keyed up to sit around and do nothing. She thought she could at least reconnoiter at the hospital and come up with a general plan of attack. She got out her scrubs and pulled them on. Next came the white coat. While she dressed, she thought about her offshore account. By that time the following evening, the balance would be close to fifty thousand dollars!

Once in the Hummer, Jazz actively calmed herself. It had been okay to celebrate for a time, but now it was time to get serious. She understood that dispatching two patients would be more than twice as difficult as dispatching one. She briefly thought that perhaps she should do them on successive nights but abandoned the idea. If that was the way Mr. Bob wanted it, he would have e-mailed on successive days. It was obvious to Jazz that she was supposed to sanction them together.

En route to the hospital, Jazz didn't even challenge the taxicabs. She was intent on keeping herself composed and focused. She parked the Hummer in its usual location on the second floor and walked into the hospital. After stashing her coat in its customary place, she descended to the first floor and sauntered into the emergency room. She was glad to see that the usual chaos reigned. As had been the case on all her previous missions, she obtained the two potassium chloride ampoules with no problem whatsoever. With one in each side of her white coat, she went back to the elevators and rode up to the sixth floor.

In comparison to the ER, the surgical floor seemed peaceful, but Jazz could tell it was busy. A glance at the chart rack let her know that every room on the floor was occupied, and a glance in the empty utility room meant that all the nurses and nurse's aides were out in patients' rooms. On quiet nights, by that time, the evening-shift nurses were already gathered in the back room, kibitzing and getting ready for report to pass the baton into the hands of the night people. The only person in sight was the ward clerk, Jane Attridge, who was busy getting a stack of laboratory reports into the right charts. Jazz looked into the drug room to make sure Susan Chapman wasn't around yet. She always came in early.

Jazz sat down at a monitor and typed in "Stephen Lewis." She was pleased to learn that his room was 424 in the Goldblatt Wing. Although she'd never been there, she felt it was auspicious. Being the fancy VIP part of the hospital she knew that there would be less nursing activity than on regular floors, which undoubtedly would make things easier for her. The only thing she had to check was whether the guy had a private-duty nurse, which she doubted, because the patient was only thirty-three and all he was in for was a rotator cuff repair.

With Stephen taken care of, Jazz typed in Rowena Sobczyk's name. As soon as she did so, a smile spread across her face. Rowena was right there in room 617, just down the corridor. She thought it would be ironic if she were assigned the case, which was a distinct possibility, and if she were, it would make the sanction that much easier. One way or the other, she felt confident that doing both people was going to be like a turkey shoot.

"You're in awfully early," a voice quipped.

Jazz's eyes popped up, and a shot of adrenalin coursed through her veins. She found herself looking into Susan Chapman's chubby face, with its rounded features demarcated by a slight seborrheic rash in the creases. Susan's expression was more challenging than friendly as she looked over Jazz's shoulder at the monitor screen. Jazz hated the way she wore her hair pulled back in an old-fashioned, tight bun. Jazz couldn't help but think she looked like some kind of nursing anachronism, especially with her old-fashioned lace-up leather-soled shoes with inch-thick heels.

"What, may I ask, are you doing?" Susan demanded.

"Just trying to familiarize myself with our cases," Jazz managed. Swallowing her anger at this woman, she forced herself to smile. "It seems like we have a full house."

Susan stared at Jazz for what seemed like minutes before speaking. "We almost always have a full house. What's with this Rowena Sobczyk; do you know her?"

"Never saw her in my life," Jazz responded. Her smile lingered but now looked more real since she had recovered from her initial alarm at being discovered accessing Rowena's record. "I was trying to take a peek at all the new patients to get a jump on the night."

"I think looking at the new patients is my job," Susan said.

"Fine and dandy," Jazz said. She blanked out the screen and stood up.

"We've been over this before," Susan snapped. "We have a rule in this hospital that protects patient confidentiality. I'm going to have to report you if I find you doing this in the future. Do I make myself clear? Looking at records is on a need-to-know basis."

"I'm going to need to know if I'm assigned."

Susan breathed out audibly as if exasperated. She stared at Jazz with her hands on her hips like an irate grammar-school teacher.

"It's funny," Jazz said, breaking the silence. "I would have thought you and the rest of the brass would encourage individual initiative. But seeing that you don't, I'll just take myself down to the coffee shop instead." She arched her eyebrows questioningly and waited for a beat for Susan to respond. When she didn't, Jazz flashed one more fake smile and headed down toward the elevators. As she walked, she could feel Susan's eyes boring into her back. She shook her head imperceptively. She was learning to detest the woman.

Descending to the first floor in case Susan was watching the floor indicator, Jazz followed the twisting corridors past the closed day clinics and walked into the Goldblatt lobby. She could have gotten off on the fourth or pediatric floor and headed into the Goldblatt Wing from there, but she was worried that Susan was getting too suspicious about her meanderings.

Even on the first floor, the Goldblatt Wing was different in all regards from the rest of the hospital. The walls were paneled in mahogany, and the corridors were carpeted. Oil paintings hung beneath their picture lamps. The visitors who were disembarking from the elevators and leaving were dressed nattily, and the women sparkled with diamonds. Outside were limousines and valet attendants.

Despite an elaborate security setup at the front entrance, no one questioned Jazz's arrival from the hospital proper. She stood at the elevators, waiting for a car, with a few other nurses coming on duty. She noticed they were dressed like Susan Chapman, in old-fashioned nurses' outfits. Several even wore hats.

Jazz was the only person to get off on the fourth floor. Like the lobby downstairs, it was carpeted and paneled and decorated with fine art. A number of departing visitors waited for a down elevator. Several smiled at Jazz, and she smiled back.

It hardly seemed like a hospital. Her cross-trainers hardly made a sound on the carpet. Glancing into the patient rooms, she could see that they were decorated in an equally refined manner, with upholstered furniture and draperies. Visiting hours were ending and people were saying their good-byes. As she came abreast of room 424, she slowed. About fifty feet ahead was the central nurses' station, a beacon of bright light compared to the subdued illumination of the hall.