COFFEE GINA DIDN'T GET BACK TO THE SURGICENTER until shortly before noon. She'd hovered by Congressman Allard's side until the E.M.Ts arrived. She watched them bandage his face, strap him to a back board, load him into their rig, and howl away toward G. W. Medical Center.

She stopped back at Allard's office to let them know what had happened, and after that she'd been at loose ends, wandering around the Capitol area, thinking, wondering . . .

Duncan had acted so strange this morning, and he hadn't shown the slightest concern for the fate of the congressman, who wasn't just some stranger, he was one of Duncan's patients. And who was this Lisa he'd been talking about to Allard? It had seemed like such a non sequitur.

She took the Metro Red Line up to Friendship Heights and walked the rest of the way, still thinking, still wondering.

By the time she reached the surgicenter she still didn-t have an answer.

"He wanted to see me, ' she told Barbara as she paused at her reception desk.

"He mentioned it, but right now he's conferencing with another doctor.

Strict orders not to disturb." "Really? Anybody we know? " Barbara shrugged. "All he tells me is to block out half an hour for Dr. V.

Now you know as much as I do. But he's very good-looking." Barbara's eyebrows oscillated as her voice took on a Mae West tone. "This is his second visit, and I hope it's not the last." Why so mysterious about the name? A doctor who wanted cosmetic surgery maybe?

Gin shrugged. Not her business.

"Let him know I'm here."

"Will do." A few minutes later she was sitting in the basement lab across the workbench from Oliver, diffidently watching him fill the next batch of a dozen or so implants for tomorrow's surgery. She already had a headache, and the residual olfactory tang of solvents was conspiring with the bright overhead fluorescents to make it worse. She should have been working with Oliver, learning the technique, but she couldn't muster the concentration.