If Kurt Hermann was surprised by the sudden arrival of the man who ran the Wingate Clinic, he didn't show it. Other than looking up, his only acknowledgment of Paul's presence was a slight questioning elevation of his right eyebrow.

Paul grabbed one of the straight-backed chairs that lined the sparse office and sat down in front of the security chief.

"We have a problem," Paul said.

"I'm listening," Kurt said. His chair squeaked as he leaned back.

"We've had a major anesthetic complication. Catastrophic, actually."

"Where's the patient?"

"Still in the OR, but she'll be out shortly."

"Name?"

"Kristin Overmeyer."

"Did she come alone?" Kurt asked as he wrote Kristin's name down.

"No. She came by car with a friend named Rebecca Corey. Dr. Donaldson said she's in the main waiting room."

"Make of the car?"

"I have no idea," Paul admitted.

"We'll find out," Kurt said. He raised his steely blue eyes to meet Paul's.

"This is what we hired you people for," Paul stated tersely. "I want you to handle it, and I don't want to know anything."

"No problem," Kurt said. He laid his pen down carefully as if it were fragile.

For a moment the two men stared at each other. Then Paul stood up, turned, and disappeared out into the gusty April morning.

SO LET ME GET THIS straight,' Joanna Meissner said to Carlton Williams. The two friends were sitting in the dark inside Carlton's Jeep Cherokee in a no-parking zone on Craigie Street alongside the Craigie Arms apartment building in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "You've decided that it would be best for us to wait to be married until after you finish your surgical residency some three or four years from now."

"I haven't decided anything," Carlton said defensively. "We're having a discussion here."

Joanna and Carlton had been out to dinner in Harvard Square that Friday evening and had been enjoying themselves until Joanna;id brought up the sore subject of their long-term plans. As usual, from that moment on, the tone of the conversation had deteriorated. They had been over this thorny issue many times in the past as a consequence of their engagement. Theirs was a quintessentially long affair; they had known each other since kindergarten and had been dating each other exclusively since the ninth grade.

"Listen," Carlton said soothingly. "I'm just trying to think of what's best for both of us."

"Oh, bull!" Joanna blurted. Despite her vow to herself to stay calm, she could feel anger brewing in her gut as if she were a nuclear reactor about to go critical.

"I'm serious," Carlton said. "Joanna, I'm working my tail off. You know how often I'm on call. You know the hours. Being a resident at the MGH is a hell of a lot more demanding than I'd ever guessed."

"What difference does that make?" Joanna snapped, unable to keep the irritation she felt from being painfully obvious. She couldn't help feeling betrayed and rejected.

"It makes a lot of difference," Carlton persisted. "I'm exhausted. I'm no fun to be with. I can't have a normal conversation outside of what's going on in the hospital. It's pathetic. I don't even know what's happening in Boston, much less the world."

"That kind of comment might have some validity if we were dating casually. But the fact of the matter is we've been seeing each other for eleven years. And up until I broached this delicate issue of setting a date tonight, you were enjoying yourself, and you were perfectly fun to be with."

"I certainly love seeing you…" Carlton said.

"That's reassuring," Joanna interjected sarcastically. "What I find particularly ironic about this situation is that you're the one who asked me to marry you, not vice versa. The trouble is, that was seven years ago. I'd say that suggests your ardor has significantly cooled."

"It hasn't," Carlton protested. "I do want to marry you."

"I'm sorry, but you're not convincing. Not after all this time. First you wanted to graduate from college. That was fine. No problem. I thought that was appropriate. Then you thought you should just get through the first two years of medical school. Even that was okay with me since I could get most of my Ph.D. coursework out of the way. But then you thought it best to put things off until you got yourself all the way through medical school. Are you detecting a pattern here or is it just me? Then the issue became getting the first year of residency behind you. Stupid me even accepted that, but now it's the whole residency business. What about the fellowship deal you talked about last month? And then after that you might even think it best to wait while you set up your practice."

"I'm trying to be rational about this," Carlton said. "It's a difficult decision, and it behooves us to weigh the pros and cons…"

Joanna was no longer listening. Instead her emerald-green eyes wandered away from the face of her fiancé who, she recognized, wasn't even looking at her as he spoke. In fact, he'd avoided looking at her throughout this conversation; as far as she could tell, he'd only intermittently met her glare during her monologue. With unseeing eyes she stared straight ahead into the middle distance. All at once it was as if she had been slapped across the face by an invisible hand. Carlton's suggestion of yet another delay in setting a marriage date had spawned an epiphany, and she found herself laughing, not out of humor but disbelief.

Carlton halted in midsentence while enumerating the pros and the cons of getting married sooner rather than later.

"What are you laughing about?" he asked. He raised his eyes from watching himself fumble with the ignition keys and gazed at Joanna in the car's dim interior. Her face was silhouetted against the dark side window by a distant streetlamp whose light fingered its way through the windshield. Her sleek and delicate profile was limned by her lustrous flaxen hair, which appeared to glow in the half light. Diamond-like flashes glistened from her starkly white teeth just visible through her slightly parted, full lips. To Carlton, she was the most beautiful woman in the world even when she was badgering him.

Ignoring Carlton's question, Joanna continued her soft, mirthless laugh as the clarity of her revelation sharpened. Precipitously, she'd come to acknowledge the validity of what her roommate Deborah Cochrane and her other female friends had been hawking all along, namely that marriage in and of itself should not be her life's goal. They'd been right after all: she'd been programmed by the totality of her suburban Houston upbringing. Joanna couldn't believe she'd been so stupid for so long and so resistant to question a value system she'd so blindly accepted. Thankfully, while treading water waiting for Carlton, she'd been smart enough to lay the foundation of a rewarding career. She was only a thesis away from a Ph.D. from Harvard in economics combined with extensive computer skills.

"What are you laughing about?" Carlton persisted. "Come on! Talk to me!"

"I'm laughing at me," Joanna said finally. She turned to look at her fiancé. He appeared perplexed, with his brows tightly knit.

"I don't understand," Carlton said.

"That's curious," Joanna said. "I see everything rather clearly."

She glanced down at the engagement ring on her left hand. The diamond solitaire sucked in the weak available light and threw it back at Joanna with surprising intensity. The stone had been Carl-ton's grandmother's, and Joanna had been thrilled with it, mostly because of its sentimental value. But now it seemed like a vulgar neon reminder of her own gullibility.

A sudden sense of claustrophobia gripped Joanna. Without any warning she unlatched the door, slid out, and stood up on the curb.