Nothing definite. At least the seed was sown. "Bertha Worthmueller," Timmie said. "I think the hospital should give her a private-duty nurse for a few days. Maybe somebody from outside the hospital, just to be sure."

Mary Jane turned for the door. "Bertha is perfectly safe."

"There is one other thing," Timmie said, figuring this would be her last chance. "I'm sure you've already asked Mr. Landry about my trip into orbit the other day. I found out it was to keep me from sharing a directive I'd stumbled on. I just don't know why."

Mary Jane arched an eyebrow, once again the supervisor. "I'm not giving you information just so you can take it back to your lawyer."

"I'm not taking it anywhere. I just want to know if it has anything to do with this."

Mary Jane shook her head. "Certainly not. It was just a schedule for the next level of streamlining we need to implement to strengthen the hospital's financial future."

Streamlining. Read "downsizing." Layoffs. No wonder it was hot stuff. The staff found out early and all hell could break loose. Still not enough to ruin her car, Timmie thought.

"I don't suppose this stage includes the introduction of GerySys to the family, does it?" she asked, looking for a reaction.

The reaction was Timmie's, because Mary Jane just nodded briskly. "As a matter of fact, it does."

"You don't look upset about it."

"Why should I? It's a logical business decision. GerySys has the capital and we have the reputation."

It made Timmie even angrier. "What would Alex say?"

Mary Jane smiled, almost fondly. "If we're lucky, Alex will never lift his head from his workload long enough to figure it out. He doesn't understand finances, Ms. Leary. He shouldn't have to. But a unit like ours simply can't survive now without additional funding. It's as simple as that."

Go figure. Timmie clamped her evidence box under her arm and prepared to get the hell out of Dodge.

She didn't get out fast enough. She'd just made it out Alice's door when she heard skidding footsteps.

"Oh, Ms. Leary, there you are!"

Timmie looked up to see Tracy rush from her father's wing and slide to a halt in the unit doorway, looking almost as frazzled as the bunch on this end. Amazing what a person could block out of her receptors if she really tried. The minute Timmie saw Tracy, she heard what she knew had probably been going on for at least ten minutes over on the other hall.

"Where's my daughter? Timmie, help! Help me, Timmie!"

The evidence box became a football on a forty-yard run as Timmie took off toward the smell of popcorn and certain disaster.

He was backed into a corner like Frankenstein's monster facing the pitchforks. Except that the pitchforks were really upheld hands belonging to some nurses and more than one security guard.

"I'm sorry," Timmie gasped, skidding to the edge of the crowd. All up and down the aisle she could hear the anxious babble of fractious voices responding to the uproar.

Joe never looked her way. "Timmie! Where's my daughter?" he pleaded, striking out at the nearest security guard, a beefy kid named Dave who just ducked and held his ground. "They have her," he insisted, pleading, his eyes wet. "In Glen-Car. Look for her there, please?"

"Glen-Car?" one of the nurses asked at the back of the crowd. "Where's that? What's he talking about?"

Dave smiled, never taking his eyes off Timmie's father. "That poet he likes, Yeats. 'The Stolen Child,' isn't it, Joe? 'Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild'? It's about fairies."

The nurse nodded, impressed. "No shit."

"Da!" Timmie called, shoving her way through. "Da, it's me! It's Timmie!"

It was the damn popcorn. She should have remembered that that was something else she'd rarely had at home for this same reason. He smelled it, boomeranged back to the great old days, and became frightened when he couldn't find the door into the bar.

He still couldn't. '"For the world's more full of weeping,'" he all but sang to Dave, as if explaining, tears trickling down his face, "'than you can understand.'"

Timmie carefully set down the coat-wrapped box with the county seal on it before approaching her father, hands lifted so he could see her better. Don't, she wanted to beg. Don't be wild and sad. Not tonight. I can't take it tonight.

"Da, I'm here," she pleaded. "I haven't gone off. I'm here."

He was too lost in his own fairy world to even hear. "Timmie, where are you? Help me! They won't let me out and I have a gig at nine!"

She lifted her hands to his clean-shaven, soft face. "Da, I'm here!"

He swiveled those watery blue eyes her way like a horse trying to escape fire and flinched back. "Where is she?" he pleaded, taking hold of her arms so tightly it hurt. "I can't find her. I... she'll be afraid, and I can't find her..."

"I'm here," Timmie pleaded back, suddenly tired to death of all this drama. She wanted to go home and crawl under her comforter, play with her daughter, chase a chameleon or two. She wanted, for once in her life, not to have this man on her conscience.

He looked straight through her. "I know she can't get home, please, please help me because she comes to the water and the wild..."

Well, at least it wasn't "Innisfree."

"Da, please, Da, it's Timmie, it's all right, I swear, shhhhh, come on now, Da, please," Timmie begged until she was chanting just like he was. Like they all were, the words mindless and meaningless and meant to be soothing.

Except that they weren't. They grated in her like ground glass until she was sure she was bleeding, and she ended up holding on to him as he crumpled into an untidy ball in the corner, sobbing because his daughter had never come home and he didn't know what to do.

* * *

In the end, Timmie made it back to her own daughter. She sent Cindy home after getting one more harangue about faithless asshole boyfriends, and then she crawled up into her bed and let Meghan do her homework on top of the aqua-and-pink duvet. And all the time she thought of gomer noises. The chanting, wailing, mindless repetition she could no longer stand. The morass her father was quickly sinking into, from which she couldn't save him. Near which she was so afraid to venture.

She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew it was late and Meghan was curled up next to her, sound asleep in her play clothes. For a minute Timmie couldn't figure out what had woken her. Then the phone rang again and she jumped to answer it.

The alarm clock said 2:00. Only bad things happened at two in the morning, which meant that either her father had had a new crisis or the emergency department had a disaster on its hands.

"Hello?"

"Timmie?"

The voice was soft. So soft. Creepy. It made her shiver, even cocooned within down and her daughter's small warmth.

Timmie sucked in a breath to calm her racing heart. "Yes?"

"You're not alone, Timmie. I thought you should know that."

"Alone? What do you mean?"

"Your father..." The voice paused, but Timmie had already held her breath, not recognizing it. "He's such a special man. An awful lot of people in town love him. They can't stand to see what's happening to him any more than you can."

Not creepy. Hypnotic. Compelling. A snake that had slithered straight out of her subconscious to torture her. "Yes?"