"What about old Mary Jane Arlington?" Murphy offered. "Remember how I tried to tell you she'd worked with the golden boy before? She has, in fact, been promoted from floor nurse to supervisor to vice president since the first unit failed."

Barb sat right down.

Timmie blinked. "She's worked in all three of the units?"

Murphy's smile was on a par with a shark's. "It pays to have drunk the best editors in the country under the table. I found out that Mary Jane has managed to parlay a nursing degree and a night school bachelor's in generic science to a hundred-thousand-dollar-plus-a-year job as senior vice president of the Alzheimer's Research Unit and Restcrest Nursing Home. Pretty heady stuff, don't you think?"

Barb whistled. "Pretty big stakes to forfeit just because one nurse and a reporter don't like the way she does business."

Murphy leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Bigger when you consider that she'd rather poke her eyes out with a stick than disappoint Dr. Perfect. She's been known to toss patients out and scythe through staff like the reaper if they weren't properly respectful."

Timmie was feeling sicker by the minute. "Imagine what she might do if she thought a third unit might have problems due to patient cost."

"Or a bad reputation." Barb wagged a finger at both of them. "What'd I tell you? Rabbit stew all the way."

"I'll find out when I'm there," Timmie said.

"Carefully," Murphy warned. "We're both limping already, and we don't even know what the hell it is we know."

"Don't worry. I had that impressed on me this afternoon. Barb, can you get next-of-kin addresses from those victims?"

"Sure."

Timmie nodded, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes. "Then it's time we visit a few of them to see what they have to say about those sudden deaths."

"I'll do it," Murphy said.

Timmie shook her head. "I don't trust you alone. You don't know what to ask."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Leary," he said. "Ought to really help me on my road back."

Timmie snorted without opening her eyes. "You're not on the road back, Murphy. You're just on the road."

Murphy laughed. Barb climbed back to her feet. "On that note," she said, "Timmie, you need a nap. I need to get back to work, and Mr. Murphy needs a ride back to wherever he ran from."

"We need to send our kids to camp somewhere, Barb," Timmie said, still not opening her eyes. "Until this blows over."

Barb stalled at the edge of the room, a looming shadow of condensed energy. "I can take care of my kids," she said.

Timmie opened her eyes and focused hard on her friend with every truth that afternoon had left her evident in her expression. "It was pretty scary today, Barb. I don't think we want our kids to know scary like that. And if we're not giving up, then whoever we're after is going to get more serious."

Murphy nodded. "Either back out now or take them out of the equation. Your kids make you vulnerable."

It was tough for an ex-bouncer to admit she couldn't protect her own children. Barb fought the inevitable in silence, her stance at once aggressive and frustrated. Finally she sighed. "They've been through enough. Let me talk to the Rev. If nothing else, he's the biggest black man in the county. I don't think even the cops'd screw with him."

"Who's the Rev?" Murphy asked.

"Walter Wilson," Timmie said. "His wife, Mattie, works with us."

"And you trust him?"

Timmie laughed along with Barb. "The day we stop trusting Walter, we might as well just give up."

"Now then, Mr. Murphy," Barb said. "It's time to go."

Murphy got to his feet with a grin. "Caller ID on the phone, too, Leary. Before our friend phones again."

Behind them the door slammed open again, and finally, it was Meghan. Timmie wrapped her daughter in a hug and the other two showed themselves out the door.

* * *

While Cindy entertained Meghan with her shrieking response to Renfield the next night, Timmie spent a lifetime in the Restcrest advanced care unit. She gave medications and she gave tube feedings and she cleaned and rolled and cleaned and rolled again. She feasted her eyes on the empty husks that had once been active, individual persons, and listened to the dissonant music of the gomer chorus, endless ululating wails, repeated words, questions, all carried in high, fractious voices.

"Nurse! Nu-u-u-urse!"

"What'd he do? What'd he do? What'd he d-o-o-o-o-o-o-o?"

"Help me, please, oh, please, oh, please help me, they're taking me, help..."

All conspiring to freeze her brain into immobility and her sense of humor to stone.

It wasn't just an exile into the wilderness far away from trauma. It was an exercise in prognostication. An unerring view into her father's future. This was where Timmie would spend her afternoons watching her father disintegrate into vegetable matter, until he lay sprawled out on the bed like the Scarecrow after the monkeys had gotten through with him, scattered and brainless.

And alive.

Repeating over and over again, "'I will arise and go now, I will arise...'" until Timmie would want to throttle Yeats himself for finding Innisfree in the first place. Until she was tempted to stuff a blanket in her father's mouth just to get him to stop. Until she was crushed by the impulse to simply put him to sleep, like an old dog who'd gone blind.

Which made her wonder just what good she was doing tracking down the people who were doing that very thing. Putting these poor, empty shells out of their misery and saving their families the money that should have gone to their children's education and instead went to care for their parents.

Timmie doubted sincerely that this was what Barb had had in mind when she'd suggested the trip. She'd probably wanted Timmie to find empty vials of tubocurarine among the linens, or notations on charts about tripling Digoxin doses. Timmie found neither of these. She found a well-run unit that spared nothing for its patients. She found a place where the administrator came to stroke old faces, and where the patients might not be better, but at least they were clean.

She did get to meet the reclusive Dr. Davies, which was a trip to Mars in itself. She spotted him wandering into the room of one of the newer patients, a fractious little lady named Alice who had lots of money, a heart like a jackhammer, and a truly foul mouth. Since Timmie also knew that Alice had no in-state family, she tried to toss Davies's rumpled butt out of the unit until one of the other nurses introduced him. Davies pushed his wirerims up his nose, muttered something about late stage-two deterioration, and walked on into the room without even saying hello.

And then, weirdest of all, at seven o'clock on a Sunday evening, Mary Jane Arlington herself came blowing in. Clad in razor-pressed chinos and a pink silk blouse, she looked a bit frazzled when she came upon Timmie standing by the nurse server.

"Well... you're... helping?" she asked, blinking.

Timmie smiled. "You guys need more staff. I got pulled from the ER."

"Your father... uh, he's not..."

"Here? No. He's on his regular unit."

"Well, that's good. That's..." Mary Jane squinted, peered closer. "What happened to you?"

Probably the last question Timmie thought Mary Jane would be asking this evening. "I was run off the road yesterday. Why?"