They walked quite a few blocks. Nothing happened to them. This was partly because Anna Maria was holding very tightly to the gold cross on her necklace, and partly because it was too early for people to be really drunk or really high or really dangerous.

It wasn't even dark enough for the streetlights to come on yet. Anna Maria hated streetlights. Most of them didn't work anyway, and the ones that did cast a sick pool of yellow that turned the faces of strangers into vampires.

Last year they had spent a lot of evenings at the public library because the children's room was friendly. But the library had run out of money, too. Anna Maria thought of the books in there, silent and closed like the doors. You never thought a library could close.

If a library could close, maybe even a hospital could close.

Anna Maria shivered.

The flimsy stroller caught on a crack in the sidewalk, and she was horrified for a moment that a wheel had broken. How could they replace the stroller? Yasmin knelt beside the wheel, extricated it, and got it started again. Anna Maria drew a breath of relief.

Just ahead was the neon sign she wanted: EMERGENCY ROOM.

She had been here plenty of times. Never on her own, though. But she knew several things about the Waiting Room at City Hospital.

It was air-conditioned.

It had a working television on the wall.

It was full of people and noise and things to watch.

There was a water fountain to drink from. They gave you crayons and paper while you waited.

Anna Maria paused briefly where the sidewalk curved beneath huge pillars. People were lined against the walls smoking cigarettes because you weren't allowed to smoke inside a hospital. Two ears pulled up, and people got out and walked into the ER. Either they weren't too sick to walk, or else they were visiting other people who were. Then the drivers drove on to the parking lot. A security guard came out, his hand resting lightly on the b.u.t.t of his gun while his radio, on the other hip, shouted with static.

Anna Maria took Yasmin's hand and pushed the stroller forward. Big silent gla.s.s doors opened automatically when their combined weight triggered the controls.

On the other side of the doors she quickly a.s.sessed the situation. The Admitting Nurse was taking somebody's pulse. The desk secretary was answering phones. The inside security guard was yelling at a drunk.

Anna Maria slid past a man in a wheelchair, two fat women reading old magazines, and a pregnant woman with tears rolling down her cheeks.

Anna Maria sat down in one of the plastic seats and pulled the stroller in close. Yasmin hung onto the stroller handle and looked around. Jose sucked on his bottle.

Oh, it was so nice in here! The air was cool and comfortable. The fat women looked friendly. Somebody had abandoned a bag of potato chips on the coloring table. Anna Maria would wait a little bit and if n.o.body came, she would share the chips with her brother and sister.

The TV was showing the news.

Anna Maria would not have chosen the news herself, but she loved being talked to, and the man on Channel 8 was talking in that warm, solid, comforting way.

n.o.body noticed the children.

They were safe. They could stay hours, as long as Jose was good.

Jose was two.

Yasmin was four.

Anna Maria was eight.

The Waiting Room 6:17 p.m.

DIANA PRAYED THERE WERE family members in the Waiting Room to give her the necessary statistics. She stood on the rim of the packed room, as nervous as a bungee jumper on the edge of his bridge. "Sczevyl?" she whispered. Funny-looking name. What if it was spelled wrong, or she was saying it wrong? It didn't matter, n.o.body so much as glanced at her. Whispering in the Waiting Room was clearly ridiculous. She, who hated to raise her voice and be obvious, had to shout. "Sczevyl!" she yelled, p.r.o.nouncing it "shovel."

If there were family members in the Waiting Room, they didn't p.r.o.nounce it shovel. Therefore, she had to find the patient.

Diana went back to Mary, hoping for help on her second work sheet as well. "What exactly does this mean - urgent, female, psychotic, abusive, swearing?"

Mary surveyed the sheet. "Offhand, using medical terminology, I'd say the woman's nuts."

Diana tried to laugh.

"It means she was fighting," explained Mary. "Fighting probably means kicking, screaming, biting, hitting. That kind of stuff. See the check in this box? Police are involved."

"Neat."

Mary laughed. "She'll be in CIU. Crisis Intervention Unit. That's supposed to sound less threatening than calling it Psychiatric. The door's that big thick slab of gla.s.s at the end of Hall Four. It's locked. You have to knock. Guards let you in and let you out. Don't be scared."

Don't be scared.

Right.

Diana actually squared her shoulders to walk down the hall to CIU. Her hands were sweating and her knees hurt. She wanted to be a doctor, but she wanted her patients to be clean, neat people who talked normally.

Crisis Intervention Unit? What kinds of crises were they intervening in? And did she, Diana, wish to intervene?

What if she intervened when a fist or a foot was lashing out? Not to mention a gun or a knife?

Seth fell into step with her. "So how's Insurance?"

Diana was sorry that Seth was so attractive. His looks kept provoking her interest. She wrenched her thoughts and eyes away from Seth's b.u.t.tons. "It's pretty interesting. I haven't actually done any insurance. What have you been doing?"

"MVAs and GSWs," said Seth casually. Motor vehicle accidents and gunshot wounds.

Diana put him down instantly. She had time to stop herself but didn't. "You mean they admitted an MVA and a GSW. I asked what you did."

Seth put on his usual big sprawling Texas-sized grin. "Nothing," he admitted. "They kicked me out of Trauma. I hardly got to see a thing."

"Did you see the gunshot wound itself though?" whispered Diana. She didn't want anybody to overhear; how perverted she would sound, hungering after the sight of a GSW. What did it really look like? A round hole? No chest where once a chest had been?

"No, but if I do, I'll give you details," Seth promised.

Diana was not grateful. She liked to be the one who knew everything first, not the one who found out secondhand. She struggled with jealousy. I'm investing too much emotion into a simple volunteer night at a hospital, she thought. The thing is, I want to be a doctor, and working in Insurance isn't fair.

"Want to go to Blood Lab with me?" said Seth. "We can stop at the vending machine room on the way and get a c.o.ke."

Diana raised her eyebrows. "I'm in a hurry, Seth," she said, to let him know he didn't understand hurrying. Nothing he did mattered. "This is important."

"Oh," said Seth, hanging onto his relentless grin. "Where are you headed?"

"Psychotic admission." Diana shrugged as if she'd done this plenty of times. What is it with me and cute guys? she thought. I go out of my way to make sure they know that just because they're cute doesn't mean they can get anything past me.

But why would I want an adorable hunk like Seth to get past me?

There was not, however, time for an in-depth a.n.a.lysis of her feelings toward men. She was already striding up to the locked bulletproof door of the Crisis Intervention Unit.

Was Seth impressed by how calmly she knocked? She would never know. Once inside, she was too scared to look back.

The attendants, clad in operating room outfits, like pea-green pajamas, were large enough to frighten football tackles. Who was scarier? The patients or the immense men in charge?

An elderly, silent male patient in need of a shave sat on a disheveled stretcher. He was staring at nothing but talking to it anyway Desperate, filled-with-dread cries poured from his mouth. Somehow Diana knew it was not a foreign language. Just helpless, hopeless pleading. With n.o.body.

A middle-aged woman had been sobbing for hours. Red-eyed, patchy-faced, and exhausted from tears, she glanced at Diana and turned away, bursting into tears yet again.

A girl Diana's own age was fastened down on her stretcher by the same thick leather anklets and bracelets that locked the drunks to theirs. A twisted sheet locked up and over her shoulders, flattening her out on the stretcher. Beneath the wrist locks were thick bandages, and another bandage covered her throat.

Diana could not bear to think what this girl had done to herself.

The largest attendant lounged around, while she surveyed his selection of patients. This was not a man with whom Diana would ever choose to argue. Maurice, said his name tag. It was the kind of name you got teased for, but she would bet her inheritance n.o.body ever teased this Maurice. "Who you want?" said Maurice, chewing gum between words.

Diana did not want any of these patients.

She certainly did not want to talk to any of them about their insurance status. How could the hospital make her bother people in such despair? Was she supposed to grab this sobbing woman or this manic man and demand their phone numbers?

I hate this! she thought. "Sczevyl?" she said.

Maurice pointed to the girl.

This was the fighting, kicking, screaming, swearing psychotic? Diana gulped. "Miss Sczevyl? I need to ask a few questions."

The girl did not move. She did not change the focus of her eyes nor acknowledge that she had heard.

"Would you tell me your next of kin, please?" said Diana.

No response. It would have been less frightening if the girl had screamed and sworn. The deadlike person lying there was impossible to look at.

"We'd like to know who she is, too," Maurice said. "We want to let the kid's family know what's happening. So far she doesn't want to tell us anything."

The silence broke. "I told you to leave me alone!" screamed the girl, her voice huge, like trumpets. She tried to free herself, hurling herself up and down even though it was impossible to lunge at all. She fought so hard, the mattress began to inch out from under her. Her skull thwacked violently against the now-exposed metal of the stretcher.

Diana could readily believe this girl had enough strength to break leather bonds. She stepped back. I could be home listening to the radio, she thought.

"Come on, honey, that's not helping." Maurice yanked the mattress back up under the girl.

"I don't want to help! Let me out of here! I hate you! I didn't ask to come here! Let me go!"

The volume of her screaming was unbelievable. Yet, the other patients never so much as looked her way. They were caught in their own broken hearts.

"Ask away, honey," said Maurice. This time "honey" meant Diana.

On campus, it was not considered good form to call a woman honey or dear or sweetie. It was a putdown. In the ER, however, it was a quick way to show kindness and also, of course, to skip all that effort involved in reading name tags.

Diana could not remember when she had felt so inappropriate but she asked, "Would you tell me your street address, please?"

For the second time in ten minutes, somebody told Diana exactly, profanely, where to go. Miss Sczevyl meant it. She wanted Diana in h.e.l.l. Perhaps that was where Miss Sczevyl was, and she needed company.

Abruptly, the girl's volume vanished. She stopped struggling and became motionless again. She was as silent and still as a corpse.

But rigid, as if her muscles had turned to wire.

"It'll be all right," comforted Diana. Why had she said that? What if Miss Sczevyl had the kind of life where it would not be all right?

Tears slid down the patient's cheeks to bury in her hair and dampen the sheets. The motionless face seemed not to be producing the tears, just lying beneath them.

Diana could not bear it that the girl was so alone. The girl needed her mother or her sister or her best friend. "I could call home for you," said Diana. "Or call somebody else. Who do you want me to call?"

"I want you to go away. You don't know me. I don't know you. I don't care what you do, and you don't care what I do."

Gee, I have a flair for this, thought Diana. I can dedicate my life to helping depressed people.

At least Diana was spared having to demand how the girl intended to pay for the privilege of being strapped to a stretcher. A person who wouldn't give her parents' names wasn't going to turn over her insurance card, either. "How do you know her name is Sczevyl?" she asked Maurice, thinking that she could look in the girl's purse for addresses.

"We don't. She was wearing a jacket with that name written inside on the collar tag.

Jacket could be stolen or borrowed or bought used."

"Is your name Sczevyl?" Diana asked.

The patient said nothing.

There was nothing on her face.

There was nothing in her eyes.

She seemed to have stepped out of her body.

Gone wherever she meant to go in spite of being strapped to the mattress.

Diana shuddered convulsively.

Maurice did not. That a patient's personality could exit from the body without death was all in an evening's work to him.