"Tease," Mina called after her.

Wynter met Ken in the hall. He looked toward the playroom with a perplexed expression. "Is she talking to me?"

"No. Me," Wynter said.

"Huh. Want a ride to work?"

"I'd love one. I'll wait for you downstairs." She listened to Ken and Mina laughing together as she started down the stairs and allowed herself one brief instant of imagining what it would be like if she and Pearce shared the kind of life that her friends had. Then she chased the thought away. It wasn't that she didn't trust her feelings. She did. She trusted Pearce's too. But she didn't trust much of anything else. She'd seen too much of life's fickle cruelty to plan too far ahead.

v "See you later," Wynter called to Ken as she headed for the women's locker room. She hung her parka in her locker, grabbed her lab coat, and pulled it on as she took the stairs down to the ground floor.

She needed another cup of coffee to really get her brain working. She was tired, but it had been worth it. Smiling to herself, she replayed the night with Pearce. Her blood ran hot as she thought about making love to her, the way it had felt to make Pearce's body writhe with pleasure.

"Jesus," she breathed as the heavy ache of desire descended. "I can't think about that now."

Still smiling, she checked her watch. Pearce had been gone a little over two hours. She should be almost there by now. Wynter got a large cup of coffee and a bagel, paid, and started toward her usual table. She frowned when she saw that it was empty. She checked her watch again.

She was right on time. Glancing around the cafeteria, she realized that none of the surgery residents were there for sign-out rounds. No one had been in the locker room, either. It was Saturday, which meant that only a handful of the residents were on call, but someone should have been in the cafeteria. Since there was no point in sitting around waiting, she started back upstairs. Just as she reached the main corridor, she saw Bruce jogging toward her.

"What's going on?" Wynter asked. "Where is everyone?"

"Downstairs in the ER," he huffed. "Pearce is there."

"She's back?" Wynter said, unable to keep the excitement from her voice.

Bruce looked at her curiously. "They medevaced her in about fifteen minutes ago. Something about a carjacking..."

Wynter stared at him, hearing the words but unable to decipher them. Her head filled with a roaring sound and the coffee cup dropped from her hand. Bruce jumped back with a surprised yelp.

"What?" Wynter cried. "What are you talking about?"

"I didn't get all the details--something about someone trying to boost her car and she tried to stop them--"

"She's hurt?" Wynter grabbed his arm hard enough to make him wince. "Is that what you're telling me? Pearce is here and she's hurt?"

"Dzubrow told us because her father called hi--"

"Oh my God." Wynter dropped his arm and spun away in the direction of the ER. As she started to run, Bruce called after her.

"She's on her way to CAT scan, Wynter."

Wynter veered right and pushed through the fire doors into the stairwell. A startled lab tech flattened himself against the wall as Wynter clattered by, bolting down the stairs so quickly she nearly fell several times. The hall outside the CAT scan room was jammed with residents and a few nurses. Curious onlookers. She pushed and shoved her way through, oblivious to the surprised grunts and muffled curses until she got as far as the doorway to the small cubicle adjoining the room which housed the CAT scanner. She couldn't see the desk where the tech sat in front of the monitor because the anteroom was wall-to-wall people, most of whom she recognized as surgery department heads.

Neurosurgery. Plastic surgery. Cardiothoracic surgery. Ophthalmology.

Wynter's heart seized. Jesus God, what's happened to her? She saw Henry Dzubrow and then Ambrose Rifkin in the center of the pack. Oblivious to the disgruntled expressions from those she elbowed, she managed to reach them. Through the glass partition that comprised most of one wall, she could make out part of the person inside the scanner. Bare legs and feet. Where were her jeans? Her boots? Maybe it wasn't Pearce. Maybe it was all a mistake. It had to be.

"Make sure you get cuts all the way through the facial bones,"

Rifkin said, his voice cool and steady.

"Yes sir," the tech said sharply.

"Is that Pearce?" Wynter said, her throat so tight and scratchy she barely recognized her voice.

"Yes," Dzubrow replied in a strident whisper.

Part of Wynter's brain automatically assessed the situation.

There was no one in the room with Pearce, which meant she was hemodynamically stable. There was no respirator, which meant she was breathing on her own. There was a single clear plastic bag of saline hanging on an IV pole with the tubing snaking inside the scanner and, presumably, to Pearce's wrist. But no blood was hanging. She wasn't hemorrhaging.

"What happened?" she asked. She would have asked why no one called her, but why would they have? No one knew. No one knew what Pearce meant to her. Right now, knowing Pearce was in that room alone, hurt, Wynter realized just how much. She wanted to get to her so badly, she feared she might scream. If she'd been thinking clearly, she would have been surprised that Ambrose Rifkin answered, but as it was, all she cared about was knowing.

"Apparently," he said smoothly, "someone tried to steal her car and she objected. There is some blunt injury to the head and chest."

Blunt injury. Someone had hit her. Wynter's stomach nearly revolted, but she forced down the swell of nausea. The room was hot under the best of circumstances, and now, with so many people jammed into it, the air was stifling. Dizzy, she put a hand down on the counter to steady herself, unable to take her eyes away from the body in the CAT scanner. "Is she awake?"

"Mildly disoriented, but responsive."

"Brain looks clear," the tech said.

"Let's let Lewis decide that," Rifkin said, turning sideways so that a tall, thin African American man could move closer to the monitor.

Wynter recognized the chief of neurosurgery. Refusing to give ground, she craned her neck to see the computer images of Pearce's cranium and brain. The fluid-filled ventricles were symmetrical and not enlarged, the gray matter showed no evidence of hemorrhage or edema, and there were no collections of blood between the brain itself and the skull. No epidural or subdural hematomas. No air in the intracranial space. She scanned the double rim of calvarial bone and saw no evidence of fractures. No serious head injury. The relief was so intense she felt weak.

"It looks fine," Lewis pronounced. "I'll wait around until they cut the spine, just to be sure her neck is clear. I'll be out in the hall. This sweatbox is getting to be a little much."

"Don't go far," Rifkin said mildly.

"I'm not moving until we're sure she's all right."

Wynter watched the machine generate image after image, as it artificially reconstructed "slices" of Pearce's skull and face, spreading them out across the computer screen like so many cards on the table.

When followed in sequence, they gave a detailed survey of all the bones and soft tissue elements in their path.

Dzubrow pointed to the monitor. "Facial bones are clear too."

"No," Wynter said, stretching out a hand that was amazingly steady considering that she felt as if she were coming apart. She indicated the second row of images. "She has fractures of the right orbital wall and a blowout of the orbital floor. Right there." She was aware of Dzubrow flushing bright red beside her, but she didn't care.

"Patricia," Rifkin commanded of the chief of plastic surgery.

"What do you think?"

The fifty-year-old redhead, usually jovial to the point of irreverence, was uncharacteristically solemn as she studied the films one after the other. "I agree. There's a fair amount of floor disrupted beneath the right globe."

"Scan's done," the tech announced.

Wynter didn't wait to hear anymore. She edged around Dzubrow, pushed through the inner door into the CAT scan room, and rushed to the side of the long, narrow motorized table that carried the patient in and out of the machine. "Pearce? Honey?" She heard the whir of a motor and, slowly, the platform slid out, bearing Pearce's still form.

She moaned softly and fumbled for Pearce's hand. The right side of Pearce's face was misshapen and bruised, both eyelids discolored and so edematous that she couldn't open her eye. A cervical collar was Velcroed around her neck. Pearce seemed thinner, smaller, beneath the frayed white cotton hospital gown covered with tiny blue diamonds.

"Oh, sweetheart."

"I'm okay, babe," Pearce said groggily, squeezing Wynter's fingers.

Her voice was slurred as a result of the swelling that extended through her cheek and into the intraoral tissues. She managed a lopsided smile.

"Asked them to call you."

Wynter lifted Pearce's hand and kissed it, then cradled it against her breast. She ached to gather Pearce into her arms. "I just found out. I'm sorry I wasn't here when you got here."

"S'okay. Freakin' zoo."

Two nurses pulled a stretcher into the room. "We're going to take you up to the operating room now, Dr. Rifkin," one of them said. "We just need you to slide over onto this stretcher."

Pearce jerked and tried to sit up. "OR? Why?"

"Lie down, darling." Wynter said gently, ignoring the surprised stares from the nurses. "Let's get you out of here, and then we'll talk."