Sharon chuckled. "As natural as it ever was. Nobody has natural auburn hair, and you know it. And you haven't changed either."

Elaine shrugged amiably and patted her hips. "If you call twenty extra pounds 'not changing,' I thank you. But I decided that if Jerry doesn't care, I don't either, so I eat what I want, and the hell with it." Then her expression turned serious. "Mark hasn't changed either, has he," she said, almost tentatively.

Sharon hesitated only a second, then shook her head, but her gaze shifted toward the window. By the garage, Mark was standing next to Linda Harris. Even Linda, who was not a big girl, was an inch taller. "But we're still hoping he'll do some growing," she said with forced cheerfulness, "and you can believe he's hoping so, too. What about Robb?"

Elaine grinned. "You won't recognize him. Six-foot-one, with shoulders a yard wide."

Sharon sighed ruefully. "Well, that's going to be something else for Mark to adjust to. I have a feeling he thinks Robb's going to be just the same as he was three years ago."

"Nothing stays the same," Elaine observed, then made an expansive gesture. "So what do you think of it all? Not like San Marcos, is it?"

"Not at all," Sharon agreed. "But I think I like it."

"You'll do more than like it," Elaine assured her. "Within a month you'll love it and won't know how you ever lived anywhere else. Clean air, a small town, nice people, skiing, hiking, the film festival at Telluride-it's like I died and went to heaven."

"And what if you get transferred?" Sharon asked, not trying to conceal the edge in her voice.

But Elaine only shrugged. "I'll deal with it when it happens, and from here there's nowhere to go but up. And speaking of things that have gone nowhere but up, look who's coming!"

Sharon glanced out the window, and barely recognized the boy who had left San Marcos three years before. The thin and wiry Robb Harris who had been only a little taller than Mark, and slightly asthmatic as well, was now a solidly built young man whose features had matured into a husky handsomeness. His wide-set blue eyes seemed to have become brighter with adolescence, and his blond hair, cropped short, appeared even lighter in contrast to his deeply tanned skin. Catching sight of her through the open window, he grinned, exposing a perfect set of even teeth.

"Hi, Mrs. Tanner," he called. "Welcome to Silverdale. Where's Mark?"

"Out back," Sharon replied vacantly. The change in Robb was so startling, she hardly knew what to make of it. As he headed on down the driveway toward the garage, she turned back to Elaine. "My God," she said. "He's gorgeous! But what about his asthma? Ever since he was a baby-"

"It was the smog," Elaine said. "As soon as we got him out here, it cleared right up! I always half suspected it, but that quack in San Jose always insisted it was psychosomatic. But either way, it's gone."

Sharon shook her head, and when she spoke again, her voice was almost wistful. "I wish it could be that easy for Mark," she said. But unfortunately, there was nothing either smog-related or psychosomatic about the aftereffects of rheumatic fever.

Elaine, understanding perfectly her friend's feelings, said nothing.

There were times when silence was better than any kind of sympathy.

AndrewMacCallum, who had been known as Mac almost since the day of his birth thirty-two years earlier, gazed glumly at the stack of X rays on his desk. When Rick Ramirez had first been brought into the hospital nearly three hours before, Mac hadn't thought the boy looked too bad. Indeed, his first instincts were that Rick had simply been knocked out.

Now he knew better.

Two vertebrae in the boy's neck were broken, one of his kidneys was ruptured, and three of his ribs had been cracked. Two of the ribs had punctured his left lung, which had collapsed, and in the few hours since he'd been in the hospital, his condition had deteriorated to the point where he was now on life-support systems.

The job of explaining to the boy's mother what had happened had, of course, fallen to MacMacCallum. He left his office and turned down the hall toward the waiting room, then decided to have one more look at Rick. Perhaps, with luck, he might find some scrap of improvement that would soften the news he had to give to-he glanced quickly at the Next of Kin entry on the boy's chart-Maria Ramirez.

Susan Aldrich, whose shift had just been ending when the ambulance arrived with Rick Ramirez strapped to a stretcher, sat by the boy's bed. When Mac glanced at her questioningly, she only shook her head, her lips tightening.

Mac picked up the boy's limp left arm and quickly checked his pulse, then glanced at the array of displays on the monitors above Rick's bed. Nothing had changed: his pulse still erratic, his blood pressure low. Only his breathing, assisted by the respirator next to the bed, appeared normal. But Mac knew that without the machine, Rick's breathing would soon stop.

"No changes at all?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.

Susan shook her head again. "It's so strange," she said, her voice quavering. Her eyes wandered to Rick's face and she gazed silently at his calm expression, which seemed to indicate a peaceful sleep rather than a struggle for life itself. "I keep thinking he's going to wake up and say something, and everything's going to be fine. But he's not, is he?"

Mac shook his head. "I'd better go talk to his mother."

He gently closed the door behind him, then continued down the hall to the small waiting room where Maria Ramirez, her face pale, rose shakily to her feet as he entered. She looked so young to Mac-so vulnerable.

"Ricardo," she breathed. "Please-is he going to be all right?"

Mac gestured her back into her chair as his eyes shifted to the man who sat next to her. "You are…?" he began, deliberately leaving the question hanging.

"Bob Jenkins," the man replied. "I'm the coach of the Fairfield team."

"I see," Mac replied. "I wonder if I might have a moment alone with Mrs. Ramirez?"

But now it was Maria who shook her head. "It's all right," she said, her voice so low Mac could barely hear it. "He's been a good friend to Ricardo-to both of us…" Though her voice trailed off, Mac could read perfectly the situation as she gazed at the coach, who reached out and took her hand protectively in his own.

"I wish I could give you good news," Mac began, and winced inside as Maria Ramirez's eyes filled with tears.

"Ricardo," she whispered almost inaudibly. "He's…?"

"He's alive," Mac quickly reassured her. "But he's in a coma, and he has a lot of internal injuries." As gently as he could, he outlined the extent of the damage Rick Ramirez had sustained, but before he was done, Maria had buried her face in her hands and begun quietly sobbing.

It was Bob Jenkins who questioned him when he was finished. "What are his chances for recovery?" he asked, and the steadiness of his gaze as he met the doctor's eyes told Mac he wanted no temporizing.

"Right now, I'd have to say somewhat less than fifty percent," he replied. A small cry of anguish escaped Maria Ramirez's lips, and Mac swallowed the lump that immediately rose in his own throat. "But that's not to say things couldn't change radically by tomorrow," he added. "I'm afraid, though, that even if he survives, his chances of walking again are going to be very slim. The breaks in his vertebrae have damaged some of the main nerves."

Jenkins's eyes clouded. "But what about surgery?" he demanded. "I thought-"

Mac shook his head. "Right now surgery is out of the question. There's no way Rick's body could withstand the shock. Perhaps later-"

"No!" Maria cried. Her hands fell away from her face, and her eyes, wide and beseeching, fixed onMacCallum. "He can't be crippled," she pleaded. "Not my Ricardo. He's all I have… He-" But her voice failed her, and she collapsed against Jenkins, whose arm went around her to hold her close.