He took a shower, as hot as he could endure, hoping to chase the cold from his bones. The quiet rap came and went and came again, but he did not wipe the steam from the glass door in expectation of an intruder’s grinning face.

In his closet, which was as large as a room, as he dressed, the rapping might have come from behind any cabinet door, from within any drawer, from behind any pane of the three-sided mirror, but Ryan no longer needed to search for the source.

The scheduled superstretch from the limousine service arrived at eight o’clock. The driver called himself Naraka, though Ryan didn’t know if that was his first name or his last.

As they pulled away from the house, the internal knocking fell silent and never once resumed all the way from Newport Coast into distant Beverly Hills.

Two days previously, prior to dinner with Samantha, Ryan had secured an emergency appointment with Dr. Dougal Hobb. Following Sam’s disapproval, he considered canceling it, but left the final decision for the last minute, for this morning.

Considering the frightening problem with his breathing in the night and the belated realization that the occasional knocking was a muffled internal sound, he believed that a conversation with Hobb would be prudent.

Ryan did not inform Dr. Gupta or Forry Stafford of his decision. He did not even tell Samantha.

His only consultation was with his instinct for survival, which told him that meeting Hobb was not merely advisable but as essential to the preservation of his life as a flame-free stairway would be indispensable to a man trapped in the inferno of a burning high-rise.

Dr. Dougal Hobb did not maintain his offices in one of the gleaming skyscrapers that lined Wilshire Boulevard, as did many other physicians. His practice occupied an entire three-story building on a quiet street on the edge of the Beverly Hills business district.

This elegant neoclassic structure-white with a black slate roof, embraced by old magnolia trees that fanned their giant spade-leaf shadows onto its walls-looked more like a private residence than like a place of business. Only a discreet brass plaque beside the front door identified the premises: D. HOBB, M.D.

Three doors opened off the foyer, and the one on the right was labeled APPOINTMENTS.

This proved to be a waiting room with a Santos mahogany floor on which floated an antique Persian carpet, a nineteenth-century Tabriz, which glowed as if woven from gold. The comfortable chairs and stylish end tables suggested that patients here were treated like guests.

Ryan could not identify the classical music that played at low volume, but he found it soothing.

The receptionist, an attractive woman in her forties, was not wearing the surgical scrubs or the shapeless exercise suits that were all but standard in most medical offices these days, but a beige knit suit of designer quality.

Both the receptionist and the nurse, Laura, who took Ryan’s preliminary medical history in a small conference room, were well-spoken, professional, efficient, and warm in their manner.

Ryan felt that he had sailed out of a storm into a sunny harbor.

Laura, in her twenties, wore an oval locket suspended from an intricately braided gold chain. The enameled medallion on the front of the locket featured a stylized gold-and-red bird with spread wings, rising.

When Ryan complimented her on the beauty of the locket, the nurse said, “It’s a phoenix. Early nineteenth century. Dr. Hobb gave it to me for my third anniversary.” She registered his surprise, and her fair cheeks pinked as she quickly corrected the impression that she had given him. “The doctor is my father-in-law. And Andrea-Mrs. Barnett, the receptionist-she’s his sister.”

“You don’t think of a medical practice as a family business,” Ryan said.

“They’re a close family,” she said, “and quite wonderful. Blake, my husband, graduated Harvard Medical.”

“Cardiology?”

“Cardiovascular surgery. When he finishes his residency, he’ll join Dougal-Dr. Hobb-in the practice.”

Given the indifference to the idea of family and tradition that characterized both of Ryan’s parents, he envied the Hobb clan.

Instead of taking Ryan directly to an examination room, Laura led him first to Dougal Hobb’s study. “He’ll be with you in just a minute, Mr. Perry.”

Again, he felt as if he were in a private home rather than in a medical office, even though on one wall were displayed the surgeon’s medical degrees and numerous honors.

Because Wilson Mott had provided a thorough file on the surgeon, Ryan did not bother to review the framed items on the wall.

Instead, when Dr. Hobb entered, Ryan stood admiring the cherry-veneer Biedermeier desk with ebony inlays.

Under six feet tall, fit and trim but not pumped, dressed in black loafers, gray wool slacks, a cranberry-red cardigan, and a white shirt without tie, Hobb did not cultivate a power look, yet Ryan felt that a force of nature had entered the study.

Although he had a clear baritone voice, Hobb spoke softly, with the trace of an ingratiating accent that might have been Carolinian. He had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, but not a leonine silver mane; his brown eyes were direct, though not striking; his features were pleasant, though not handsome. Yet he seemed to fill the room with his presence.

They sat in armchairs that faced each other across a Biedermeier pedestal table with magnificently figured walnut veneer, in order to, as Dr. Hobb put it, “get to know each other.”

Within a few minutes, Ryan understood that Dr. Hobb made such a powerful impression because he seemed, from the first encounter, to be self-effacing, even humble, although his great surgical skills and his success prepared you to expect a fulsome pride if not arrogance, and because he seemed genuinely to care about you, to be motivated by compassion that he could convey without ever sounding either as if he were selling himself or coddling his patient.

“These past three months,” Ryan said, “have been frightening, of course, and dispiriting, but it’s not just the fear and the bouts of depression that leave me increasingly unable to cope. It’s the strangeness of these months, the downright weirdness, the sense that something’s terribly wrong in my life other than just my illness. I keep thinking that someone’s manipulating me, that I’m not in control of my own life anymore, that the medical care I’m being given isn’t the care I should have. I understand that for a guy my age, it’s easy to succumb to paranoia when you’re hit with a diagnosis like this, because it’s so unexpected. I mean, I’m just thirty-four years old, and I can’t get my head around the idea that I’m going to die.”

“We won’t let that happen,” said Dr. Hobb, leaning forward in his chair. “We simply will not let it happen.”

Considering how the odds were stacked against Ryan, he did not think such a confident declaration as the one Hobb had made could be taken seriously, yet that was how he took it. He believed that Dougal Hobb would not let him die, and he was filled with such relief and overcome with such gratitude that his vision blurred, and for a moment he could not speak.