You know you’re in for a rough day when, the instant you wake up, you’re already overwhelmed. I stumbled out of bed and rushed deliriously through my apartment to take the body count. Moans and groans came from every corner. No doubt about it – my family had gone from bad to worse. Thinking of the place as a hospital ward no longer applied. Now it was a MASH unit under mortar fire.

Pretty soon, I had some chicken soup on the stove and a Jell-O chilling in the fridge. Meantime, I ran from child to child with cold cloths in one hand, a digital ear thermometer in the other, and a five-year-old on my back – taking temperatures, hydrating the hot and sweaty victims, and trying to warm those with the shivers. Somewhere in the bunch, there might have been one or two of them who were well enough to go to school, but I was too busy to care. The healthy were on their own this morning.

Especially after only a few hours of restless half sleep, I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. So, reluctantly, I’d called Seamus. I hated to bother him so early, but twenty minutes of dealing with my family’s epidemic had stripped me of all my manners. Besides, didn’t every battlefield need a priest?

“Dad?” Jane said, lifting a notebook from her night table as I came into her room. “Let me bounce this off you. ‘The plague continued. It was looking hopeless. What had Michael, the head of the Bennett family, done to bring such misfortune upon his innocent children?’?”

I shook my aching head. At eleven, Jane was the budding writer in the family, and she’d decided to use her downtime to do an in-depth biography of the Bennetts. It sounded like her style was influenced equally by gothic romances and precocious guilt-tripping.

“That’s lovely, Jane,” I said, closing my eyes as Trent, across the hall, sneezed and then wiped his hands on poor Socky. “But why don’t you add something like, ‘Then their father had an inspired idea for a last-ditch radical cure – blistering spankings for one and all!’?”

Jane frowned. “Sorry, Dad, nobody’d believe it.” She wetted her forefinger and flicked through pages. “I still have some background stuff I’ve been meaning to ask you. First off, about Grandpa Seamus. I thought priests couldn’t get married. Was there some sort of juicy scandal?”

“No!” I half yelled. “There were no juicy scandals. Grandpa Seamus just came to the priesthood later in life, after he lost Grandma Eileen. After he had his family. Get it?”

“Are you sure that’s allowed?” she said suspiciously.

“I’m sure,” I said, and retreated before she could think up something else. Jaysus, as the old micks would say. Just what I needed – another female reporter trying to nail me.

I found Mary Catherine in the kitchen, turning off the soup just as it started to boil over. I froze as I noticed something on the island behind her.

People wonder why New Yorkers stay put, with the outrageous crime and tax rates. Well, one of the most compelling reasons was sitting on my kitchen island. Real bagels. Mary Catherine had gone out and picked up a dozen of them, the steam on the inside of the plastic bag the telltale sign that they were still warm. Beside them was a cardboard tray with two large coffees.

I squinted warily. I’d given up on the idea of breakfast five minutes after waking up. Desperate as I’d become, this all very well could have been a mirage.

“Reinforcements?” I said.

“And supplies.” She handed me a coffee and gave me a brave smile. But as I bit into a butter-drenched poppy seed, I noticed the bags under Mary’s eyes. She was looking as peaked as I felt.

Why was she still here? I thought for the thousandth time since she’d arrived. I knew that several of my much wealthier neighbors, seeing the impossibly professional job she did with my mob of kids, had offered her almost blank checks to steal her away. Nannies were big business in Manhattan. Perks like expense accounts, cars, and summers in Europe weren’t unheard of. And most of those millionaire children were onlies. I wouldn’t have blamed Mary one bit for taking the money and running. Considering the pittance I was paying her, she’d certainly put in her charity time with our eleven sorry butts.

Did she feel some sort of obligation? I knew she’d come here at the behest of Maeve’s family to help out while she was dying. But Maeve was gone now. Mary Catherine was what? Twenty-six, twenty-seven? She had the rest of her life to pick up crushing responsibilities all her own.

I was trying to phrase my concern to her when the walking wounded flooded into the kitchen, and surrounded her with a big cheer of affection. As sick as my kids were, they weren’t stupid – they appreciated somebody who actually knew what she was doing. When Shawna climbed down off my back and attached herself to Mary’s leg like a tick, I wasn’t offended in the slightest.

Then, as she laughed and joked with them, I noticed something perplexing. Weary though Mary Catherine looked, there was new color in her cheeks and a new determination in her blue eyes. I stood there speechless, a little stunned. She actually seemed to be right where she wanted to be.

I felt overwhelmed all over again, but suddenly in a good way. How could anybody be so wonderful? I thought.

My brief moment of elation ended when my grandfather, Seamus, burst in through the front door.

“I just heard from the church caretaker,” he cried into the crowded kitchen. “The thief hit the poor box again! Is nothing sacred?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I told him with a mock frown. “Now hurry up and snarf a bagel, then grab a mop and swab the deck in the kids’ bathroom, Monsignor.”

With the arrival of the cavalry, I was actually able to shower and shave. I grabbed another bagel on my way out, egg this time, and almost knocked down my neighbor, Camille Underhill, who was waiting for the elevator in the foyer we shared.

Our large, actually quite luxurious apartment had been a bequest to my deceased wife, Maeve, who had been the nurse of the previous millionaire owner. Ms. Underhill, a senior editor for W magazine, had tried hard to block our occupancy. So I guess it wasn’t that surprising that I’d yet to be invited to one of her “Page Six” cocktail parties.

Although her snobbery hadn’t stopped her from knocking on my door at three in the morning a couple of years ago because she thought she saw a prowler on her fire escape. Go figure.

“Morning, Camille,” I grunted around my breakfast. The elegant lady ignored me as if she hadn’t heard me, and just hit the elevator call button again.

I almost said, No prowlers lately, huh? But I had enough troubles without starting an in-house skirmish.

I picked up the Times from my doormat, a ploy to avoid sharing a ride down with her. It worked beautifully. When the elevator arrived, she was gone like a shot.

The front page of the Metro section was wrinkled, and someone had circled the lead article, entitled “Manhattan Spree Killing.” Scrawled in the margin with a black pen was a note from my ever-helpful grandfather, Seamus: -FYI – I’d be concerned about this if I were you.

Thanks, Monsignor, I thought, and scanned the article while I waited for the elevator to return.

When I was about halfway down the page, my bagel dropped from my open mouth. The reporter stated that “a source close to the case” had confirmed that the push attempt and two shootings were directly related, and that the killer was using more than one gun and disguises to “elude capture.”

I didn’t even have to look at the byline to know that my favorite journalist, Cathy Calvin, had struck again with her poison pen.

Christ! Bad enough she wanted to incite panic, but why did she have to keep dragging me in? “A source close to the case” – she might as well have printed my name in giant red letters. Besides, while it was true that I’d been thinking along those lines, I hadn’t told her anything of the kind.