The ugly duckling had returned as a swan. A dark swan. A cygnet.

But if he had been twenty minutes later in getting to that emergency room nineteen years ago, she wouldn't be anywhere now. That had been the great perk of his former life, saving someone who might make a difference in the world.

And he loved the way she'd started coming up with new words for him.

One day she'd stump him, but that was all right.

Seems I did us all a favor when I put your insides back together, Gin.

Not for the first time, he questioned having changed his field of practice, but only for a heartbeat. The choice had been made for him.

No going back.

But where was Gin going with all her brains and hardwon education?

"What irks me? " he said slowly as he began restructuring Vincent's trimmed platysma. "I don't think too much of the Joint Committee on Medical Ethics and Practice Guidelines." He made a point of enunciating the committee's name in its entirety. Simply saying the joint committee didn't do justice to the pretentiousness of its title.

"I don't like its name, I don't approve of its mission, and I think it is staffed with arrivistes, parvenus, Pecksniffs, and bumptious ... yanoos He watched Gin's dark eyes crinkle at the corners.

I made her smile.

'"Hey, don't hold back, " she said. "Tell me what you really think. ' He would have liked to tell her the truth about what they did to his life, his family, but that would serve no purpose.

Never complain, never explain.

"Do you know what they're up to? " he said.

"Well, I understand it was the president's idea to revive the old McCready committee." Duncan straightened and paused in his suturing.

He didn't trust himself with a scalpel in his hand and McCready on his mind.

"Alas, our dear president didn't get his health-care plan, so he's taking it out on the medical profession. A medical guidelines bill wasn't good enough7 wasn't broad enough. No. Now it's mandates on medical ethics." Duncan closed his eyes to control his fury.