“So was Jack.” Liz was quick to defend him. “I always thought he was a better lawyer than I was.”

“I wouldn't say that,” Jean said honestly, “but he turned away more cases than you do. You never have the heart to say no to anyone. If he didn't like a case, he booted it right out the door into the hands of some other lawyer.”

“Maybe I should do more of that,” she said thoughtfully.

“I'm not sure you could bring yourself to do it.” Jean knew her well. Liz was incredibly conscientious.

“Neither am I,” Liz said as she laughed, and they went back to work on the dictation. She had a number of things to send to various judges, and other attorneys, on the cases she was currently working on.

It was late when she got home that night, nearly eight o'clock, but she was paying her dues for her vacation. The kids were still sitting around the pool when she got home, and Carole was dishing out pizza.

“Hi, guys,” Liz said with a smile, and she was pleased to see Peter there, but less so when she saw two of his friends dive into the pool and play a little too roughly with the younger children when they all got into a game of Marco Polo. She told them to tone it down a little bit, and asked Peter to tell his friends not to play quite so roughly. “Someone's going to get hurt,” she said quietly to Carole, who agreed with her and said she had spent the whole afternoon telling Megan's friends the same thing. Liz was particularly worried about Jamie, who was only a fair swimmer.

And she warned them about it again that night after their friends left. “I don't want any accidents here … or any lawsuits!”

“You worry too much, Mom.” Annie dismissed her, and Liz told her that she meant it.

She reminded them of it again the next day when she left for work, and when she came home that night, things seemed a little calmer. But on Thursday, when she came home late again, and found half a dozen of Peter's friends in the pool with him, she watched them diving too fast, too soon, and not waiting until the other children had cleared the area, and she told him in no uncertain terms that his friends would be banned from the pool if they didn't observe basic safety rules, and respect the younger children.

“I don't want to have to remind you again,” she said sternly.

“You look tired, Mom,” he said gently.

“I am tired, but that's beside the point. I don't want an accident here. You can't rough-house in the pool, Peter, and I mean it.”

“Okay, Mom, I heard you.” He had grown up a lot in the past year, but not completely. He was still young, and some of his friends were daredevils and foolish, and she had always worried about it. Having someone get hurt was a headache she didn't need. They'd been through enough trauma for one year, and she wasn't afraid to say so to him, or his friends.

She went up to her room to work again that night, and she had an early appearance in court the next morning. She was tired and edgy, and she wanted to get a good night's sleep.

She was just leaving the courtroom in fact, at noon the next day, when her cellular rang. It was Carole, and she sounded precise and calm, as Liz stopped to talk to her on the steps of the courthouse.

“You need to come home right away,” she said clearly, and Liz felt her spine tense. Carole only sounded like that when one of the kids got hurt, or there was a serious problem.

“What happened? Is someone hurt?” She knew before Carole told her.

“It's Peter. He had a day off from work, and some of his friends were here.” Liz interrupted her instantly in a shrill tone that was unfamiliar to her own ears, but her nerves were no longer what they once had been.

“What happened?”

“We don't know yet. He was diving and he hit his head, I think. The ambulance is here.”

“Is he bleeding?” All she could think of was Jack as he lay on their office floor with blood everywhere. If there was blood, to her now it meant disaster.

“No,” Carole said with a calm she didn't feel. She had hated to be the one to tell her, but she knew she had to. “He's unconscious.” She didn't have the heart to tell her he might have broken his neck. They weren't sure yet. “They're taking him to Marin General. You can meet him there. Liz, I'm sorry.”

“Is everyone else okay?” She was running to the car as she asked her.

“No one else was hurt. Just Peter.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

No one really knew. There were paramedics everywhere, and Liz could hear the sirens start to wail as they took off with him as she asked the question.

“I think so. I don't know much, Liz. I was watching them … I told them. …” Carole started to cry as she said it, and Liz started her car, and ended the conversation as she pulled away from the curb, praying that he'd be all right. He had to be. They couldn't live through another disaster, or God forbid, losing him. She just couldn't. She drove to the hospital as fast as she could without running lights or hitting pedestrians, and she pulled into the parking lot shortly after they rushed Peter into the emergency room. They had taken him straight to the trauma unit, and they directed Liz to it as soon as she got there.

She was running down the halls, looking for him, and as soon as she walked into the trauma unit, she saw him. He was gray and wet and they were giving him oxygen, and working on him frantically. They were too busy to talk to her, a nurse explained to her rapidly what was happening. He had a severe head injury, and a possible fracture of several vertebrae. They were going to X-ray Peter as soon as possible, and they were running IV lines into him, and putting monitors on him as Liz watched them.

“Is he going to be all right?” Liz asked without taking her eyes off her son, overwhelmed by a wave of panic. He looked like he was dying, and she wasn't sure that he wasn't.

“We don't know yet,” the nurse told her honestly. “The doctor will speak to you as soon as they assess him.”

Liz wanted to touch him, and talk to him, but she couldn't even get near him. And all she could do was stand there, and wrestle with her own panic. They were bringing an X-ray machine in, they had cut his bathing suit off, and he was lying naked on the gurney.

They X-rayed his head and his neck, and they seemed to be examining every part of him, as his mother watched them. She was crying as she looked at him, and it seemed an eternity before a doctor in green scrubs walked toward her. He had a stethoscope around his neck, and he looked stern as he explained the situation to her. He was tall, and his dark eyes looked grim, but the gray at his temples made her want to believe that he knew what he was doing.

“How is he?” she asked, sounding desperate.

“Not great at the moment. We're not sure yet how bad the head injury is, or what the implications are. There's a broad range of possibilities here. There's a fair amount of internal swelling. We're going to do an EEG, and a CT scan in a few minutes. And a lot is going to depend on how fast he comes out of it. I think he may have gotten lucky with his neck. I thought it was broken when he came in, but I don't think it is. We'll have the X rays back in a minute.” He saw a lot of quadriplegics come in from pool accidents, mostly boys this age, in their late teens, who played too rough, or dove without caution. But this kid seemed to have gotten lucky. There was no paralysis of his limbs, and he had good mobility from what they could tell. If anything, he had a hairline fracture, which, five minutes later, is what the X rays told them. He had a hairline fracture of the fourth cervical vertebra, but he hadn't damaged his spinal cord. Now they had to concentrate on his head injuries.

And for just an instant, before they took him away, she was able to reach out and touch him. All she could think of to say to him was “I love you,” but Peter was still unconscious and couldn't hear her.

It was nearly an hour later before he came back, and he still looked gray, and the doctor who came to talk to her again didn't look happy. She had learned that he was the head of the trauma unit by then, and his name was Bill Webster.

“Your son has quite a concussion, Mrs. Sutherland. And a hell of a lot of swelling. All we can do is wait now, and if the swelling gets worse, we're going to have to go in and relieve it.”

“You mean brain surgery?” She looked horrified, as he nodded. “Will he be … is he …” She couldn't even formulate the words beyond her panic.

“We don't know yet. There are a lot of variables here. We're going to keep him quiet for a little while and see what happens.”

“Can I sit with him?”

“As long as you stay out of our way, and don't move him. We need him quiet.” He spoke to her as though she were the enemy, and she felt as though he was. There was a toughness to the man, and a lack of sensitivity, which she hated instantly. But all he was interested in was saving Peter, which slightly redeemed him.

“I won't get in your way,” she said quietly.

He told her where she could sit, and she pulled up a stool next to where Peter lay, and quietly held his hand. There was an oxygen monitor on one finger, and there were monitors everywhere, to keep track of his heart and his brain waves. For the moment at least, he was stable.

“Where were you when this happened?” he asked accusingly, and she wanted to slap him.

“In court. I'm a lawyer. My housekeeper was at the pool with them, but I guess things got out of hand.”

“So I gather,” he said curtly, and went to talk to a resident and another doctor. He came back again a few minutes later. “We're going to give it another hour or two, and then take him upstairs to surgery,” he said bluntly, and she nodded. She was sitting on the stool, holding Peter's hand as best she could.