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He tried to figure out why he had been so fortunate. Why the wood hadn't struck half a foot to the left and perfed his intestine, or a foot higher and pierced his heart. He would have liked to think it was because of fate-that he was a divine instrument whose usefulness had not yet been depleted-but he knew that was not the case. He would live for the same reason that a three-millimeter embolus had lodged in Elisabeth's basilar artery and killed her. Brute chance.

David recognized the last couple of years for what they'd been-his period of mourning, his time withdrawn. He'd been letting go of Elisabeth in small, meaningful steps, savoring each part of her before relinquishing it. The soft skin of her nape. Her cold feet pressed against his legs beneath the sheets. The cant of her smile-slightly left. The last memories of his wife, lingering in his half-closed hands like hourglass sand.

A flash of Nancy lying upstairs, her mouth moving in a chant. I wanna die I wanna die I wanna die. Clyde's flat, senseless eyes: illness incarnate. They'd all retreated into their respective agonies-why had David been left a road back?

A knock on the open door drew his attention. Diane.

She did not advance. Her face was unbandaged, and her wounds looked raw and healthy. She propped a shoulder against the doorjamb and regarded him for a full minute. A tear swelled at the brink of her left eye, then dropped.

"I wasn't worried about you at all," she said.

"Nor I you," David said.

"I don't think you're fucking insane," she said.

A little boy walking by in the hall stopped to stare at Diane's face until his mother whispered an apology and tugged him along. Diane raised her eyebrows at David, a gesture of mild amusement. "We're like Beauty and the Beast without a Beauty."

"You can be Beauty," David said.

"You're sweet when you're wounded." She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. "Plastics checked me out. I'm again free to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of the paparazzi." She smiled, but sadness found its way through.

They stared at each other across the distance of the room.

"Are you going to come over here?" David asked.

"No." Diane shook her head, tilting it back slightly so she wouldn't spill more tears. "No."

Snapping her cell phone closed, Sandy turned into the doorway, almost colliding with Diane. She stepped into the procedure room, looked at David, and said, "Christ."

Looking from David's face to Diane's, Sandy took note of the emotional current, and her lips pressed together disapprovingly.

"Sandy," David said by way of greeting. He raised his head from the pillow.

Sandy's eyes traced down the front of his hospital gown. "Your catheter's out. Have you voided?"

He nodded. "Let's just say now I know what it's like to have the clap."

"Antibiotics?"

"Unasyn. Started with two grams."

Sandy slid her cell phone into her white jacket and rubbed her hands together quickly, as if to draw warmth. "Look, I can see this isn't the best time, but, well, tact has never been my long suit." Hesitating, she glanced over at Diane.

"It's fine," David said. "What is it?"

A momentary droop in the firm line of Sandy's shoulders. "You've been asked to step down as chief. By the board. There was a vote."

Diane pushed herself off the wall as if she were going to say something. Sandy kept her eyes trained on David.

David's laugh was a bit giddy from the morphine.

"Goddamn it, David. You've had angry confrontations with police, you've been playing Nancy Drew around the hospital, you assault a colleague-"

"Assault," David repeated with amusement.

"-and don't even bother to appear when summoned to the board. What did you expect?" She shook her head in exasperation, then ran a thumb along the bottom of her painted lip, removing excess lipstick. Walking over, she sat on the gurney beside David. "I'm having Dr. Nelson take over responsibilities temporarily-I'll be fucked if I'll give Don the satisfaction. If you spend your time off quietly and distance yourself from this case, maybe things will settle down. Then I could see about-"

"No," David said.

He shifted on the bed and a dagger of pain shot into his side. Sandy moistened some gauze padding and dabbed around the edges of David's wound. By the door, Diane watched silently.

"Back off this case," Sandy said. "The press is making you look like an ass."

"To be honest, I don't really care anymore."

Sandy wadded the gauze pad into a ball and shot it at the trash can. It hit dead center. "You don't have your mother's sense, do you know that, David? You'll never be the doctor she was."

"No," David said. "I won't."

Sandy looked at him, reading his face. Evidently, she didn't find what she was looking for. "Goddamn it, David. Goddamn it." She reached out and patted him on the cheek roughly, almost a slap. "Whichever way this lands, I'm going to be unhappy, aren't I?"