"Absolutely." Meredith Andrews walked around Alex and looked down at her patient. "Grace, do you understand me?"

"Yeth."

"Do you want your husband in this room?"

Grace slowly shook her head. "I wan…my bay…be. Wan Jamie."

Dr. Andrews looked up at Bill Fennell, who towered over her. "That's good enough for me. I want you to leave the unit, Mr. Fennell."

Bill stepped close to the neurologist, his eyes sheened with anger. "I don't know who you think you are, or who you think you're talking to, but I give a lot of money to this university. A lot of money. And I-"

"Don't make me call security," Dr. Andrews said quietly, lifting the phone beside Grace's bed.

Bill's face went white. Alex almost felt sorry for him. The power had clearly passed to Dr. Andrews, but Bill seemed unable to make the decision to leave. He looked, Alex thought, like an actor on a DVD movie after you hit PAUSE. Or that's what she was thinking when the alarm began to sing.

"She's coding!" Dr. Andrews shouted through the door, but the shout was unnecessary. Nurses were already running from the station to the cubicle. Alex jumped out of their way, and an instant later Bill did the same.

"Cardiac arrest," Dr. Andrews said, yanking open a drawer.

Because this was an ICU, there was no crash cart; everything was already here. The quiet cubicle suddenly became a whirlwind of motion, all directed toward a single purpose-to sustain the life fast ebbing from the body on the bed.

"You need to leave," said a tall male nurse standing behind Dr. Andrews. "Both of you."

Dr. Andrews glanced up long enough to give Alex a moment of eye contact, then returned to work. Alex backed slowly out of the ICU, watching the final act of her sister's life unfold without any hope of playing a part herself. Ridiculous regrets about choosing law school over medical school pierced her heart. But what if she had become a doctor? She would be practicing two thousand miles away from Mississippi, and the result would be the same. Grace's fate was in God's hands now, and Alex knew how indifferent those hands could be.