CHAPTER 33

In the cab on the way uptown Noah had made two phone calls, one to the hospital’s automated system to find the patient’s floor and room, and the other to an old and trusted acquaintance who was now on her way to meet up with him at Lenox Hill.

Over a long‑ ago summer Ellen Davenport, of the East Hampton Davenports, had become his first real friend who was a girl. It was a new thing for him, because though they’d hit it off immediately, they both also seemed to realize that dating each other was the last thing they should ever do. They’d actually tried it once just to be sure, and the discomfort of that terrible evening was matched only by its comic potential when the story was retold by the two of them in later years.

Now Ellen was a second‑ year neurology resident at Mount Sinai Hospital across town. His call had caught her at the end of a twenty‑ six‑ hour shift, but, true to form, she’d told him that she’d be right over without even asking why.

As he walked down the hallway of the ward he saw three things: the crowd of people overflowing from the double doorway of the floor’s small chapel, a smaller knot of visitors waiting outside a single room down near the end, and Dr. Ellen Davenport, still in her wrinkled scrubs, waving to him from an alcove near the elevators.

Ellen gave him a hug when he reached her, and then held him away at arm’s length and frowned. “You look like hell, Gardner. ”

“Thanks. ” He was preoccupied, looking over the people milling through the hall, every bit as afraid that he might see Molly as that he might never see her again. Some of these people were looking back at him, too, and by their manner it seemed they knew who he was.

“Hey. ” Ellen snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. “I mean it. You look like you need to lie down. ”

“I need for you to do me a favor, ” Noah said. There was a slight tremor in his hands as he retrieved the medicine from his pocket, shook out a pill into his palm, and swallowed it dry.

Ellen took the vial from him, rattled it, and held it close to her eyes. She looked at him again with a little more concern than before. “If you’re going to ask me to score you some methadone, I left my prescription pad in my other pants. ”

“That woman in the room down the hall there, ” he said. “I need for you to help me‑ I don’t know, line up a specialist, make sure everything’s being done. I just want her to be taken care of. ”

“They’re pretty good at that sort of thing here, Noah. ”

“Ellen, listen to me‑ ”

Whatever Noah had been about to confess, he was interrupted by the approach of a stranger. It was an older woman, frail and thin as dry reeds, and from the corner of his eye he’d seen her come from the direction of that room near the end of the hall. The woman nodded her respect to Ellen, turned to him, and then spoke with a gentle gravity in her voice that said more than the words themselves would convey.

“She’s awake now. Somebody told her you were here, and she says she wants to talk to you. ”

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