WhileWettig continued his exam, tapping on tendons with a rubber hammer, flexing elbows and knees, Abby felt her attention drift away on a tide of fatigue. She kept staring at the woman's head, recently shorn of hair. The hair had been a thick brown, she remembered, clotted with blood and glass. There had been glass ground into the clothes as well. In the ER, Abby had helped cut away the blouse. It was a blue and white silk with a Donna Karan label. That last detail was what seemed to linger inAbby's memory. Not the blood nor the broken bones nor the shattered face. It was that label. Donna Karan. A brand she herself had once purchased. She thought of how, sometime, somewhere, this woman must once have stood in a shop, flipping through blouses, listening to the hangers squeak as they slid across the rack…

Dr. Wetrig straightened and looked at the SICU nurse. "When was the haematoma drained?"

"She came out of Recovery about 4 a.m."

"Six hours ago?"

"Yes, that would make it six hours."

Wetrig turned to Abby. "Then why has nothing changed?" Abby stirred from her daze and saw that everyone was watching her. She looked down at the patient. Watched the chest rise and fall, rise and fall with every wheeze of the ventilator bellows.

"There… may be some post-op swelling," she said, and glanced at the monitor. "The intracranial pressure is slightly elevated at twenty millimetres."

"Do you think that's high enough to cause pupillary changes?"

"No. But-'

"Did you examine her immediately post-op?"

"No, sir. Her care was transferred to Neurosurgery service. I spoke to their resident after surgery, and he told me-'

"I'm not asking the neurosurgery resident. I'm asking you, Dr. DiMatteo. You diagnosed a subdural haematoma. It's been evacuated. So why are her pupils still midposition and unreactive six hours post-op?"