They were all standing around her like mourners at a wake as the ambulance attendants came running into the house. After one look at her, they moved her to the ambulance with lightning speed, and were gone in less than two minutes, with sirens screaming.

But Gabriella heard nothing this time as they drove. She saw no visions. Heard no voices. She had been in a coma since shortly after Steve had left her. She was in a faraway place free from all pain now.

The entire trauma unit team worked on her all afternoon, the arm was set, the wounds were sewn, the bruises were staggering, and this time nearly all her ribs were broken, but it was the head injuries that worried them. They did several EEGs, but the real test would be if her brain survived the swelling. Eventually a plastic surgeon came to work on her face. She had a long open wound on her chin, and another over her left eyebrow. But he was satisfied, when he was finished, with the repair work. He couldn't help noticing the bruises on her neck as well, and shook his head when he left her. He stopped to talk to the head of the trauma team, a young doctor he'd worked with before, he was the head of the department, Peter Mason.

“Nice job they did on her,” the plastic surgeon said, adding his notes to the chart. She'd already been in surgery twice that evening. Once with him, and the other time with the orthopedic man to put a pin in her elbow. “She must have really pissed someone off.” It was nothing short of amazing that they hadn't killed her.

“Maybe it's her cooking,” Peter said without smiling. It was the kind of humor that kept them going. They saw too much of this, car accidents, people who jumped out of windows and survived despite their best efforts not to, and near-fatal beatings. What Peter hated most was seeing the children. The trauma unit was not a place that left you many illusions.

“Have the cops seen her yet?” the plastic surgeon asked casually, handing the chart back.

“They took a lot of pictures of her after we got the arm set. It wasn't pretty.” And it still wasn't. Neither of them had any way of gauging what she had once looked like.

“Think she'll make it?”

Peter Mason whistled before he answered. His whites were still covered with her blood, the list of her injuries seemed endless, and their X rays showed a fair amount of earlier damage, maybe a car accident, it was hard to say. But what had been done to her this time had been damn near fatal. Her liver and kidneys were in bad shape too from being kicked, it seems like there wasn't any part of her that wasn't damaged. “I'd like to think she'll make it,” Peter Mason said optimistically, but he really didn't think she would. The head injuries just added one more complication. The rest would have been enough to kill her. Even one of her eyes had been affected.

“I hope they get the son of a bitch who did it,” the plastic surgeon said amiably, and went home to dinner.

“Probably her husband,” Peter muttered to himself. He had seen that before too. Husbands or boyfriends who were jealous or drunk or came unhinged for some minor reason that made sense to them and seemed to justify taking another life in order to soothe their egos. He'd seen too much of this in the past ten years. He was thirty-five years old, divorced, and afraid he was getting bitter. His wife had left him because she said she couldn't stand it anymore. He was never home, always on call, and even when he was with her, he wasn't. He was always thinking about his patients, or running out the door to save the victims of a car crash. She stuck it out for five years and left him for a plastic surgeon who only did face-lifts. And he wasn't sure he blamed her.

He checked on Gabbie himself several times that night, and everything seemed stable. She was in the trauma ICU along with a woman who had jumped out of a third-story window and landed on two children and killed them. There was a drug overdose in the bed next to hers who had fallen onto the tracks of the IRT subway, and wasn't going to make it. But Gabbie was still a question. She could survive, if she fought hard enough, and wanted to, and if she came out of the coma.

The nurses said several people had called about her from the boardinghouse where she lived, but there was no next of kin, and no husband. Only a boyfriend apparently, and he hadn't been heard from. Peter wondered if he had done this to her, and figured it was more than likely. Intruders didn't put that much energy into it. This guy had pulled out all the stops and hit all the bases. The only thing he hadn't done was set fire to her.

“Any change?” he asked the nurse in the ICU, and she shook her head.

“She's just hanging in there.”

“Let's hope it stays that way,” he said. It was midnight by then, and he decided to take a nap while it was quiet. You never knew what was coming. They worked twenty-four-hour shifts in the trauma ICU, and his was just beginning. “Call me if anything happens.” They exchanged a smile, and whenever she worked with him, she really enjoyed it. He was a nice guy and better-looking than she would ever have admitted to her husband. He had shaggy good looks, with rumpled brown hair and dark brown eyes the color of chocolate. But he was tough, too, not always easy to work for, but a hell of a good doctor.

He disappeared into the room he used when he needed some sleep. It was a supply room where they kept chemicals and a spare gurney, but it was useful.

And for the rest of the night, the nurses watched Gabriella. She never stirred, never moved, and she seemed to be barely breathing, but the monitors showed her vital signs were constant. They did another EEG in the morning, and it seemed normal, but she still hadn't come out of the coma.

And at the boardinghouse, the mood was heavy. Mrs. Boslicki gave everyone bulletins as they left for work, and promised to call them if anything happened. It was the worst thing that had ever happened in her house other than the death of the professor. They were all aware of the fact that Steve hadn't come home that night, and he hadn't called her. Mrs. Boslicki reported his disappearance to the police that morning. The police had talked to everyone the night before, and asked a lot of questions about Steve. And it was interesting to realize how little they all knew about him. They knew he'd gone to Stanford and Yale, lived there for eight months, was unemployed, and was Gabriella's boyfriend. Beyond that, they knew nothing. But the police had taken a stack of messages from his phone calls, which Mrs. Boslicki was holding for him in her kitchen. But when she talked to the police that morning, even they knew nothing.

And by that afternoon, the reports from the hospital were depressing. There was no change in Gabriella's condition, and when Mrs. Rosenstein spoke to Dr. Mason, he didn't sound optimistic. He said the outlook for her was “guarded,” whatever that meant. She was still listed in critical condition, and still in a coma. There was nothing more to say, but he promised to call if anything happened.

Peter was supposed to be off duty that afternoon, but the doctor supposed to be on this shift had called in, his wife had gone into labor, and he was upstairs in labor and delivery helping to deliver his first baby. So Peter agreed to cover for him, which meant he was stuck here for another twenty-four hours. He was used to it and he had nothing else to do these days, but it was exactly the kind of thing that had cost him his marriage.

“Anything new?” Peter checked in at the desk when he came back from the cafeteria, and was told that two new cases had come in, a ten-year-old boy they'd transferred to the burn unit after a bad fire in Harlem, and an eighty-six-year-old woman who'd fallen down a marble staircase. In other words, nothing exciting.

And more out of routine than because anything was happening, he decided to check on Gabbie. He watched the monitors for a minute or two, and then examined her gently. But when he did, he saw an expression of pain flit across her face, and stopped to watch her. He touched her again, and saw the same thing happen, and it was hard to tell if she was coming out of it, or if it was just a reflex. He looked at the chart and read her name again, and moved a little closer to her.

“Gabriella?… Gabriella… open your eyes if you can hear me.” There was nothing. He put a finger into her hand then, and curled her own fingers around it, and spoke to her. “Squeeze my finger, Gabriella, if you can hear me.” He waited an instant and was about to take his finger away, when the smallest movement of her fingers touched him. She had heard him, and he couldn't help smiling at her. These were the victories he lived for, that he had given up a marriage and most of his life for. It wasn't much, but it was what made his life worth living. He tried it again, and this time her touch seemed stronger, “Can you open your eyes for me?” he asked softly. “Or blink a little. Squeeze your eyes shut, or open them… I'd like to see you.” There was nothing for a long time, and then slowly the lashes fluttered, but her eyes never opened. But it meant that she heard him and her brain had stopped swelling. And it also meant their work was just beginning. He signaled to one of the nurses from where he was standing, and when she joined him, he told her what had happened.

“We're heading for first base. Why don't you talk to her for a while and see what happens. I'll come back and check her later.”

He then went to check on the woman who had fallen down the marble staircase, and found her in remarkably good condition. She was mad as hell to be there at all, had broken her pelvis and a hip, and she demanded to be sent home immediately. She said she had an appointment at the hairdresser the next morning. And Peter was still smiling when he left her. She was outrageously crotchety and aristocratic, and he could just imagine her hitting him with a cane, if she'd had one at her disposal. He had promised to send her home as soon as she could manage with a walker. But she had to have surgery on the hip in the morning.