“I thought the patient could administer the morphine when needed.”

He was stumped for a moment, she saw it clearly. He said, “I’m sorry, but we can’t give you that.”

“Why?” Her voice was very soft.

“Because there is a question of attempted suicide. We can’t take the chance that you’d pump yourself full of morphine and we couldn’t bring you back.”

She looked away from him, toward the window, where the sun was shining in so brightly.

“All I remember is last evening. What day is it? What time of day?”

“It’s late Thursday morning. You’ve been going in and out for a while now. Your accident was last evening.”

“So much missing time.”

“It will be all right, Mrs. Frasier.”

“I wonder about that,” she said, nothing more, and closed her eyes.

• Dr. Russell Rossetti stopped for a moment just inside the doorway and looked at the young woman who lay so still on the narrow hospital bed. She looked like a princess who’d kissed the wrong frog and been beaten up, major league. Her blond hair was mixed with flecks of blood and tangled around bandages. She was thin, too thin, and he wondered what she was thinking right now, right this minute.

Dr. Ted Larch, the surgeon who’d removed her spleen, had told him she didn’t remember a thing about the accident. He’d also said he didn’t think she’d tried to kill herself. She was just too “there,” he’d said. The meathead.

Ted was a romantic, something weird for a surgeon to be. Of course she’d tried to kill herself. Again. No question. It was classic.

“Mrs. Frasier.”

Lily slowly turned her head at the sound of a rather high voice she imagined could whine when he didn’t get his way, a voice that was right now trying to sound soothing, all sorts of inviting, but not succeeding.

She said nothing, just looked at the overweight man-on the tall side, very well dressed in a dark, gray suit, with lots of curly black hair, a double chin, and fat, very white fingers-who walked into the room. He came to stand too close to the bed.