“I don’t care what shape I’m in,” I told Lotty irritably. “Just sign my discharge and let me out of here. I’ll leave in my nightgown if I have to.”

Lotty cocked an eye at the crumpled chewing-gum wrappers and cigarette pack on the floor. She raised both eyebrows as a stream of profanity poured from behind the closed curtain while an intern tried to conduct an exam.

“The floor head told me you’d been rough on your roommate yesterday and that they were giving you someone more suited to your personality. Did you vent your anger by handing her a few punches?” She started probing my shoulder muscles.

“Ow, damn you, that hurts. And the word you want is throw, not hand. Or land, maybe.”

Lotty used her ophthalmoscope on my eyes. “We gave you X rays and a CT scan after we stabilized you on Wednesday. By some miracle you don’t have any cracks or breaks. Some more physical therapy over the next few days should help your sore muscles, but don’t expect them to recover overnight—tissue tears can take as long as a year to heal if you don’t rest the muscles properly. And yes, you can go home—you can do the therapy as an outpatient. If you give me your keys, I’ll have Carol bring you some clothes at lunchtime.”

I’d tied the keys through the laces of my running shoes before setting out on Wednesday. Lotty had rescued them before giving orders to trash what clothes I’d still been wearing on arrival at Beth Israel.

She stood up and looked at me gravely. When she spoke again her Viennese accent was pronounced. “I would ask that you not be reckless, Victoria. I would ask it except that you seem to be in love with danger and death. You make life very hard for those who love you.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. She stared at me for a long moment, her eyes very dark in her angular face, then gave her head a little shake and left.

My twenty-four-hour character summary wasn’t too appealing: a coldhearted bitch in love with death and danger who drove timid cosmetic surgery patients to the nursing staff for refuge. When an orderly came by an hour or so later to take me down for physical therapy, I went along morosely. The normal hospital routine, which depersonalizes patients at its expense, usually drives me into a frenzy of uncooperative sarcasm. Today I took it like a good little lump.

After my physical therapy I myself took refuge from my vituperous roommate, waiting in the lounge for my clothes with a stack of old Glamours and Sports Illustrated. Carol Alvarez, the nurse and chief backup at Lotty’s clinic, arrived a little before two. She greeted me warmly, with a hug, a kiss, and little exclamations of horror over my ordeal.

“Even Mama has been praying to the Blessed Mother for your safety, Vic.” That was something, indeed—Mrs. Alvarez usually looked on me with silent contempt.