" 'Surprising' is the adjective that springs mostly to my mind. How could this have happened?"

"I hope you are not blaming me. If you remember the day before, you had asked me where I was in my cycle. I told you that it was probably safe, but that it was close. When we made love, it was technically the next day, and obviously not safe."

"Why didn't you put a limit on our lovemaking?"

Laurie glared at Jack. "You are starting to anger me again. It sounds like blame to me, and you know something, it was the two of us involved in the decision to make love, not just me, and we both had the same facts."

"Calm down," Jack said appeasingly. "I'm really not placing blame. Honest! I'm just trying to understand. Your being pregnant has taken me totally and completely by surprise. We had done well to avoid it in the past. Why did we mess up on this occasion?"

Laurie glare softened. She took a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh. "Well, at this point, it's probably best to be completely honest. That morning, when I began to suspect that we might make love, I did think that we were taking a chance, and I was certain you did, too. It wasn't a huge chance in my mind, considering I thought it was the tenth day, but a chance nonetheless. With as much as I wanted a family with you for both our sakes, I was comfortable with the risk. From your point of view, I thought that somewhere in the depths of your soul, you were of the same mind, with the idea that conceiving a child would help push you beyond your past to start a whole new personal life. Maybe I was projecting too much of my own desires onto you, I don't know, but that was the long and short of how I felt."

Jack mulled over what Laurie had said. Absently, he chewed the inside of his cheek in the process. Life had thrown him some curve-balls, and this one seemed right up there with the best of them. The shock of being presented with the news that he had possibly fathered another child caught him completely off guard. It also terrified him, mainly because he feared he would love it too much and it would make him as vulnerable as he'd been in the past. Losing a family had been the biggest trial of his life, and he doubted he could survive it again. Yet on top of these disturbing thoughts was another, more positive one. If he had learned nothing else in the past miserable six weeks, he'd at least learned that he loved Laurie more than he had admitted. How that was going to play out in the current situation he had no idea. He had no idea how she felt about her current boyfriend.

"I have trouble with these silences of yours," Laurie said. "Not only is it not like you, but I need feedback. Anything, even if it is bad. I need to know how you feel. We have some decisions to make, or if you don't want to be involved, tell me. Then I'll make the decisions myself."

Jack nodded. "Of course I want to be involved, but this is a little unfair. It's difficult for me to have all this dumped in my lap and then be expected to respond in the spur of the moment. In fact, it seems to me to be unreasonable for you to expect that. I would have preferred that you told me the moment when you learned so that we could both have had a chance to think in tandem. Then, at this dinner we could have shared our thoughts."

"You have a point," Laurie admitted. "I don't mean to put you on the spot, even though I wish you would respond the way I want you to respond."

"And how is that?"

Laurie reached across the table and gripped Jack's forearm. "I'm not going to put words into your mouth other than to hope this event can be positive and draw you out of your grieving role. Having a child will not demean your late family. But go home and think about it. I'm on call this weekend, so if I'm not at home, I'll be at the OCME. I'll wait for your call."

"Fair enough," Jack said in a tired voice.

"Hey, don't get depressed on me," Laurie chided.

"I won't get depressed, but I can tell you one thing. I'm no longer hungry."

"Neither am I," Laurie said. "Let's call it a night. We're both strung out." Laurie raised her hand and the waiter came over on the run.

sixteen

ROGER LEANED BACK AND stretched his arms up toward the ceiling. They felt cramped after the hours he'd spent leaning over the library table in the conference room of the human resources department of St. Francis Hospital. Stacked around the table in little individual piles were numerous pages of computer printouts, plus a recently burned CD. Sitting across from him was the department head, Rosalyn Leonard. She was a serious-appearing, tall, striking woman with inky black hair and porcelain skin who had initially intimidated Roger since she seemed immune to his charm, which Roger took personally. It was inordinately important for him to think of himself as attractive to women he thought were attractive. But persistence had paid off, and as the hours had passed, he had finally prevailed. Ever so slowly at first, she had begun to warm. During the last hour, he felt she was flirting in return. The fact that she was not wearing a wedding band was not lost on Roger, and as the day melded into evening, he had tactfully inquired about her social status. When he learned that she was single and currently between relationships, he even considered taking the risk of asking her for a dinner date, especially if things didn't work out with Laurie.

When Roger had come out to Queens from Manhattan earlier that afternoon it had been a little like going home, since the hospital was located in the East Side of Rego Park, which was a stone's throw away from the section of Forest Hills where he had grown up. Although both of his parents had passed away, he had several aunts and an uncle who still lived close to his boyhood home. As he'd peered out of the taxi window while cruising along Queens Boulevard, he'd even entertained the idea to pass by the old homestead when he was finished with his errand.

Roger had made significant progress. His meeting with Bruce Martin, who headed up the Manhattan General Hospital 's department of human resources, had been quite fruitful, although not at the outset. When Roger had initially asked straight-out for employee records, Bruce had told him that there were all sorts of federal rules that restricted access to such information. That forced Roger to be creative in his request, by contending that in his role as the chief of the medical staff, he was starting a study about the interaction between the doctors and all the support and custodial staff, particularly in regard to new employees and particularly during the night shift, when the hospital was on, in his words, "cruise control." Roger assiduously avoided mentioning even a hint of his true goal.

By the time Roger had left Bruce's office, he'd been promised a list of all employees at the Manhattan General Hospital and a list of new employees since mid-November, with a particular emphasis on people who worked the eleven-to-seven night shift. There had been a slight worry in Roger's mind when he had proposed such a seemingly arbitrary commencement date for the new employees that Bruce would have become suspicious in some form or fashion, but Bruce had merely written it down without any reaction. He promised Roger he'd have the list before he left work that very afternoon, and would have it placed on Roger's desk.

The second thing Bruce had done was call Rosalyn Leonard, his counterpart at St. Francis Hospital, to tell her that Roger would be coming over and to give her an idea of what Roger needed. At the time, Roger didn't appreciate how helpful that had been. Had Roger walked in off the street with his requests, which was his initial plan, he wouldn't have gotten anywhere with Rosalyn. There was no doubt in Roger's mind that she would have been dismissive and unhelpful. Thanks to Bruce's call, she had already done some of the preliminary work before Roger arrived. It turned out that getting the kind of lists Roger wanted required accessing a number of different sources. Roger had been surprised that the various departments in AmeriCare hospitals more or less functioned as individual fiefdoms within the constraints of their centrally dictated budgets.