Roy, as I still sometimes called him, ever since I was a sociology major at San Francisco State University, and I obligingly came in once a year for my checkup. That was last Tuesday. To my surprise, he had called at the end of the week and asked me to stop in today before work. I had a busy day ahead of me: two open cases and a deposition to deliver at district court. I was hoping I could be at my desk by nine. "Ms. Boxer," the receptionist finally called to me, "the doctor will see you now." I followed her into the doctor's office. Generally, Orenthaler greeted me with some well-intended stab at police humor, such as, "So if you're here, who's out on the street after them?" I was now thirty-four, and for the past two years had been lead inspector on the homicide detail out of the Hall of Justice. But today he rose stiffly and uttered a solemn "Lindsay." He motioned me to the chair across from his desk. Uh-oh. Up until then, my philosophy on doctors had been simple: When one of them gave you that deep, concerned look and told you to take a seat, three things could happen. Only one of them was bad. They were asking you out, getting ready to lay on some bad news, or they'd just spent a fortune reupholstering the furniture. "I want to show you something," Orenthaler began. He held a slide up against a light. He pointed to splotches of tiny ghostlike spheres in a current of smaller pellets. "This is a blowup of the blood smear we took from you. The larger globules are erythrocytes. Red blood cells." "They seem happy," I joked nervously. "They are, Lindsay," the doctor said without a trace of a smile. "Problem is, you don't have many." I fixed on his eyes, hoping they would relax and that we'd move on to something trivial like, You better start cutting down those long hours, Lindsay. "There's a condition, Lindsay," Orenthaler went on. "Negli's aplastic anemia. It's rare. Basically, the body no longer manufactures red blood cells." He held up a photo. "This is what a normal blood workup looks like." On this one, the dark background looked like the intersection of Market and Powell at 5:00 p.m." a virtual traffic jam of compressed, energetic spheres.