Hippocrates, that wily Greek who turned medicine from magic to science. The author of the famous oath that Val had uttered twenty years ago on that sunny summer day in Ann Arbor when she graduated from med school: “I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but I will never use it to injure or wrong them. I will not give poison to anyone though asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a plan.”

The oath had seemed so silly, so antiquated then. What doctor, in their right mind, would give poison to a patient?

“But in purity and in holiness I will guard my life and my art.”

It had seemed so obvious and easy then. Now she guarded her life and her art with a custom security system and a Glock 9 mm. stashed in the nightstand.

“I will not use the knife on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.”

She’d never had a problem with that part of the oath. She was loathe to use the knife. She’d gone into psychiatry because she couldn’t handle the messy parts of medicine. Her father, a surgeon himself, had been only mildly disappointed. At least she was a doctor, of sorts. She’d done her internship and residency in a rehab center where movie stars and rock idols learned to be responsible by making their own beds, while Val distributed Valium like a flight attendant passing out peanuts. One wing of the Sunrise Center was druggies, the other eating disorders. She preferred the eating disorders. “You haven’t lived until you’ve force-fed minestrone to a supermodel through a tube,” she told her father.

“Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will do so to help the sick, keeping myself free from all intentional wrongdoing and harm, especially from fornication with woman or man, bond or free.”