Certain she was strong enough to see it all through, she had invited numerous friends to their home to join her in a celebration of their lives; but the shock of what had happened, coupled with the almost unbearable strain of the funerals and the crush of well-meaning people, had overwhelmed her, and she'd broken down, retreating in tears and near-hysteria to lock herself in her bedroom, screaming for people to go away and refusing even to answer the door.

Congressional chaplain and pastor of their church, Reverend Rufus Beck, had been among the mourners and immediately sent for Caroline's personal physician, Lorraine Stephenson. Dr. Stephenson had come quickly and with the pastor's help convinced Caroline to open the bedroom door. Within minutes she had injected her, as Caroline said, "with a sedative of some kind." When she woke up she was in a room in a private clinic where Stephenson had prescribed several days' rest and where "I never felt the same again."

Marten turned down one darkened street and then another, replaying the hours he had spent with her in the hospital. With the exception of the other instance when Caroline had been awake and talked to him, she had simply slept, and he had stayed by her side keeping vigil. Throughout those long hours health care personnel monitoring her condition had come and gone and there had been brief visits by friends during which Marten simply introduced himself and then quietly left the room.

There had been two other visitors as well, the people who had been immediately involved when Caroline had broken down at home. The first had been an early-morning call by the woman who had given her the "sedative" and prescribed her stay in the clinic, her personal physician, Dr. Lorraine Stephenson: a tall, handsome woman in her mid-fifties. Stephenson had exchanged a brief pleasantry with him, then read Caroline's chart, listened to her heart and lungs through a stethoscope, and left.