"Then it's pick your nose and die," Thomas had drawled, driving the point home to anyone who disputed the possibility. The phrase became their watchword in a campaign to heighten people's vigilance against contaminating themselves.

Teddy Burns had been the latest proof that they hadn't done enough.

"What are his chances?" Earl asked when Stewart finished changing.

The weariness in Stewart's gaze trebled. "I don't know." He pulled Teddy's chart from a wall slot beside the test result sheets and flipped to the progress notes. "Did you hear the latest rumors out of the CDC?" he asked while scribbling a few lines to describe what he'd done. "That intensive care and emergency staff will have to wear Stryker suits all the time?"

Earl's heart sank. Critical care workers across North America had been dreading it might come to that.

Stewart was referring to the outfits with self-contained oxygen supplies that personnel in level four virology labs or investigators at the hot zone site of a virulent outbreak would wear. "Space suits," the residents called them. The thought of ending up in one as a part of the new normal for ER left Earl feeling defeated. Gloves and masks created barriers that were distancing enough, but at least he could still speak to those under his care, allay their fears with the sound of his true voice. But to confront already frightened patients while dressed like something out of a science fiction movie and talk to them with the muffled tones of a voice coming through a completely enclosed hood- that tore it, stripped the final human touches from the profession he loved. People like Teddy Burns would die in total isolation, barely able to see, feel, or hear the ones taking care of them.

Earl hesitated, not sure this would be the best time to bring up his own problem.

"Out with it, Earl," Stewart said, but didn't look up. "What do you want?"

"I need a favor about the Matthews case."

Stewart's pen stopped in midstroke. "Oh?"

"Yeah. I just came from her post. The gross showed tumor as expected and no surprises." He handed over the folder. "These are the morphine levels found in her blood, and the resuscitation team's observations, including an estimated time of death. The rest are lab reports, nursing notes, the times of the injections and the doses. Plus her height and weight."

"So?"

"I want you to calculate backward and figure out the dose she must have received before she died." Complex formulas existed in obscure pharmacology references involving the metabolic breakdown rate and body dispersion quotients for just about every drug in the world. They made the exercise possible, and Stewart read that kind of thing as light reading.

"Wait a minute. You figure someone gave her more than what you prescribed?"

"In a word, yeah."

His eyes narrowed, suspicion displacing fatigue. "Why are you asking me to figure it out? You could do it yourself."

"And Wyatt would immediately demand an independent opinion. He's lit a fire under pathology to have the slides ready early next week, plus scheduled death rounds for the day after. In other words, he's hot to nail me. I need you in my corner on this."

Stewart continued to scrutinize Earl, his brow unfurling slightly. "Yes, of course. I'd be glad to help you out. But who do you suspect screwed up? I've pissed off too many people at St. Paul's already not to check out whom I'll offend this time."

Earl told him his theory about the nurses and the double dose.

Stewart's forehead relaxed the rest of the way. "Count on me."

Evidently Yablonsky and company weren't on his don't-mess-with list.

"But what if I don't get the results you expect?" he asked.

"Then I'm probably screwed." Earl got up to leave, then added, "Oh, by the way, I heard about some other peculiar goings-on up there that I've been meaning to ask you about."

The frown returned.

"Wyatt told me some patients have been complaining they'd had near-death experiences, and when his nurses asked you to look into it-"

"That was bogus!"

"Bogus?"

A flush spread over Stewart's face from under his mask. "Yes. The ones I talked to no more had a near-death experience than you or I."

"I don't understand."

"I told Wyatt it probably resulted from all the media reports my work has generated. The power of suggestion, combined with all those drugs they're on, can make for some pretty potent dreams."

"But Wyatt said that after interviewing some of the patients you accused him of trying to set you up."

His color deepened. "Well, that's not exactly true…"

"And according to the nurses, you stormed off the ward mad as hell."

"Mad? Not at all. Annoyed, maybe, that they'd wasted my time, making me check out crap reports."

Earl's curiosity grew. Stewart never minimized a slight or perceived wrong, yet here he seemed intent on portraying whatever happened up there as inconsequential. "Explain crap."

"The accounts were made up. Trust me, I've analyzed enough true experiences to know the components common to the real thing. These just weren't authentic."

For a man who always had at least ten reasons to support an opinion, and in any discussion would usually machine-gun Earl with them, "Trust me" sounded positively evasive. "Look, I'm not blaming you for anything, Stewart. It's just if you found something screwy going on in Wyatt's department, I want to know about it."

Stewart's ears became glowing red half shells. He took a breath, then exhaled slowly, practicing one of the many self-control techniques Earl knew he'd tried to learn over the years. "Okay, I first got a little steamed and figured Wyatt and the nurses had primed their patients to try to dupe me into believing a bunch of trumped-up accounts."

"Dupe you? Why the hell would they want to do that?"

The pupils of his eyes flared wide with anger. "To discredit me and my work." He leaned forward, continuing to speak with a hushed urgency that Earl found uncomfortable. "You see, if I fell for it and incorporated those stories as part of my research cases, then they could expose what happened, and it'd be ammo for all those who say my publications aren't real science."

Lord help him. "Stewart, for what conceivable reason would Wyatt and a floor full of palliative care nurses even want to do such a thing, let alone go to all that trouble? And how do you figure they got the patients to cooperate?"

Stewart took another protracted breath. "Well, I had to admit afterward that that part didn't make sense."

Thank God, Earl thought, grateful to see that a flicker of reason had once again prevailed, however barely.

A layperson might label Stewart paranoid. Earl knew better. He read him as someone bright enough to scan twelve steps ahead of everybody else and see possible scenarios that might mean very real trouble. A great asset in ICU, but a little hard to take in everyday life. What distinguished him from a truly crazy person? He could admit later, although it took a little encouragement, that perhaps his predictions, when they were based on his social exchanges with people, weren't all that probable. Stewart appeared to have once more cleared that hurdle as far as Wyatt was concerned, but Earl still sensed that he was holding something back. "You haven't explained why you thought the accounts were bogus," he said, trying not to sound confrontational.

The flush receded. "I just knew, that's all. Pattern recognition. Hey, some things aren't quantifiable."

Bullshit! Stewart could and would quantify anything remotely to do with his research, including how to recognize bogus data. But in an attempt to render him less defensive, not more, Earl nodded and took another tack. "So you don't think Wyatt is up to anything. Believe me, it might help my situation if I had something on the guy."