The deputy was a big guy. He had a nightstick, a gun, and a pair of plastic cuffs dangling from his belt, but none of them were any help. He tried to ward off the woman's blows and talk her down. Almost immediately some hospital staff members arrived to help him.

Mesmerized, Cassie and Marsha watched the drama. Two male nurses calmed the woman. The deputy departed quickly. After he was gone, she became enraged again and tried to punch out the TV screen. More hospital staff arrived. They surrounded and eased her into one of the chairs. Their soothing voices hummed in the air. Now this was a domestic violence case. She put her hand over her eyes.

"Are you okay, Mom?" Marsha asked solicitously.

"Oh yes, fine. Don't think about me." She felt sick and frightened, but she had to be strong for the children.

"Mom, I hope you don't mind. I called Teddy," Marsha went on.

"Oh God," Cassie groaned. All she needed was to have the two of them together at a time like this. "Promise me you won't fight." Her body wouldn't stop shivering. Mitch would be upset about this. He was a private man, a gourmet. He'd hate the take-out food odors, the drama, the idea of his adoring son seeing him like this.

Suddenly the noise level increased. Cassie opened her eyes. The small room was filled with people screaming in Italian. The smell of garlic was strong. Oh, was it strong. Cassie swooned against her daughter's shoulder.

"I'll get you something to drink," Marsha said quickly. "You need to hydrate."

"Poor Mitch. This is such bad luck. I hope he doesn't die," Cassie murmured. And she meant it. She really did.

"I'll be right back." Marsha hurried away.

Cassie hid her eyes. There was screaming all around her. She couldn't help hearing the story. Oh God. The woman who'd tried to punch out the sheriff and the TV had good reason. Her husband had been driving their two kids to pick up a pizza for dinner. That's how late it had gotten. They'd been in an accident on the Long Island Expressway. He was dead on the scene; her son, too. The woman's nine-year-old daughter was alive, but her skull had been crushed. No one wanted to tell her how bad her daughter was. Protocol seemed to demand a certain order to things. A person could absorb just so much. An old man, talking to himself, was wondering what Tony had been doing, driving on the L.I.E. Apparently it wasn't his usual route to the pizzeria.

Marsha returned with two Diet Cokes. Cassie thought she was going to explode. Teddy was coming by way of the L.I.E.

"I called Edith," Marsha informed her.

"What?" Cassie cried. Oh, now her aunt was involved. Cassie couldn't bear it.

"She's your only relative. Except for Julie. Do you want me to call Julie?"

Edith, her mother's sister, was now seventy-three and the worst pain in the neck in the entire world. Except for Cassie's sister Julie. "No!" Cassie said. Julie lived in L.A. and hadn't spoken to Cassie in years. Cassie didn't want either of them here with her.

"You need support," Marsha told her.

What was that, some word she'd learned in social work school? "I didn't tell Edith about the face-lift," Cassie admitted softly.

"Car crash," Marsha said. "I've got that covered."

"Oh God," she whispered. It seemed so trivial now.

Another hour went by. The room emptied. The Italian family hurried away. Cassie realized she had been holding her breath.

"The poor little girl was never admitted here," Marsha said suddenly. "They let her go in the emergency room."

"They let her go?"

"She died."

"Oh no." Cassie's head throbbed. That poor woman had lost everything in a second. Cassie covered her eyes to stop her tears.

Dark descended outside, and the lounge filled up again. Old women came to see their old husbands, middle-aged women came to see their mothers, young parents came to see their kids, and every single patient was hanging on by a thread. Cassie was agonized by the wait. Why was it taking so long? Teddy finally arrived at eightP.M. Why had it taken him five hours to get there from Manhattan where he lived and worked?

"Oh shit, Mom! What happened to you? I thought it was Daddy!" He pretty much freaked out when he saw her.

"It is Daddy. She's going to be fine," Marsha told him superciliously, right away setting the tone for an unpleasant confrontation between them. "Where have you been?" she demanded.

"She doesn't look fine." Teddy was not as tall as his father and was much thinner. He had never grown into his nose. He didn't work out. His shirt and pants didn't go together. Two plaids. He had a golf hat on his head, but still he was a handsome boy. Very handsome, Cassie thought. And very good at numbers.

"Hi, Teddy," she said.

He paced back and forth in front of her as if she were an inanimate object. "She looks like shit," he announced. "Mom?" He raised his voice as if she'd gone deaf.

"She's fine!" Marsha insisted.

"She doesn't look fine, Marsha. What's that thing on her head? What's going on?"

"Shut up, you idiot, I told you she's fine!"

"What do you know about it?" Teddy stared angrily at his sister.

"I'm fine," Cassie said weakly. "Don't fight."

"I demand to know what's going on. What's wrong with her? She looks like an Arab," Teddy spoke to his sister.

"Mom was in a car accident," Marsha said quickly.

"No shit!" Teddy moved in for a closer look. "In Dad's Mercedes?" His voice was hushed.

"No."

"In the Volvo?"

"Yes, the Volvo."

"How is it? Is it totaled?"

Marsha rolled her eyes. She didn't, after all, think very much of her brother.

THE KIDS WERE STILL BICKERING twenty minutes later when three doctors hustled imp ortantly into the lounge. The family internist was the one in charge. Dr. Cohen had taken care of both Cassie and Mitch for twenty years. They'd had dinners together many times. His cellar was stocked with their very good wines, nothing less than $140 to $200 a bottle. He had about a thousand-bottle cellar and could afford it. He was a short, wide, completely bald man with a round, usually smiling face like the happy stickers the kids used to get on their papers when they were small. He wasn't smiling now.

"Cassie!" Unprepared for the black eyes and bruised jawline, he stopped short. Truly shocked, he turned to Marsha for an explanation.

Marsha, however, missed his distress. She had caught sight of something she liked and had put three fingers to her forehead as if to keep her head on during a religious experience. The object of her attention was a thin, stern-looking, white-coated young man, about five feet nine, totally unremarkable, and a complete opposite of the long-haired, tattooed biker-types that usually caused her seizures.

"Uhhh, hhhhh." A third doctor, whose tag readNESSIM SALIM, coughed delicately. This one looked as exotic as his name sounded.

"Ah, Dr. Salim is a neurosurgeon. This is Mrs. Sales, Marsha, Teddy," Dr. Cohen introduced them, bowing slightly. He straightened up and smoothed his bald head as if he still missed his hair. "Cassie, what happened…?" The question hung in the air.

"It's nothing at all." Cassie waved her hand at him impatiently.

"Ah. Unfortunate timing, then," he murmured with full understanding. "This is Dr. Wellfleet. He's our best young neurologist."

Dr. Wellfleet nodded solemnly. He must have thought so, too.

A fourth man, this one dressed in a black suit, hurried officiously in, his jacket flapping in his haste. "Sorry to keep you waiting, Mrs. Sales, I'm so sorry." He put his hand on Cassie's arm to comfort her and pulled her scarf off. Now everyone saw the black stitches around her ears and the change of hair color her surgeon had suggested to distract people from the changes in her face. Her hair was no longer the light silvery brown of the last decade. It was now a shocking daffodil yellow.