She smiled brightly and ignored me. “Just stick this under your tongue.” She was poking a plastic-wrapped thermometer into my mouth.

My fury was mounting, fueled by the helplessness of lying there attached to the ceiling while being ignored.

“I can tell you what my temperature is: it’s rising by the second. Will you kindly get someone to call the police for me?”

“Now let’s calm down. You don’t want to get excited: you’ve had some concussion.” She forced the thermometer into my mouth and started counting my pulse. “Dr. Herschel will be by later and if she feels it’s wise for you to start talking to people she’ll let us know.”

“Were there any other survivors?” I asked her over the thermometer.

“Dr. Herschel will tell you what you need to know.”

I shut my eyes while she solemnly wrote my vital statistics into the chart. Patient continues to breathe. Heart operates. “What’s my temperature?”

She ignored me.

I opened my eyes.

“What’s my pulse?” No answer. “Come on, damn it, it’s my body—tell me what it’s doing.”

She left to spread the good news that the patient was alive and disagreeable. I shut my eyes and fumed. My body was still weak. I went back to sleep.

When I woke up the third time my mind had cleared. I sat up in bed, slowly and still painfully, and surveyed my body. One problem shoulder. Knees covered with gauze—doubtless badly scraped. Bruises on the right arm. There was a table at the bedside with a mirror on it. Also a telephone. If I’d been thinking instead of yapping earlier I would have realized that. I looked at my face in the mirror. An impressive bandage covered my hair. Scalp wound: that accounted for the headache, though I didn’t remember hitting my head. My eyes were bloodshot but my face wasn’t damaged, thank the Lord—I’d still be beautiful at forty.

I picked up the telephone and stuck it under my chin. I had to raise the bed to use it, since I couldn’t prop the phone against my right shoulder while lying down as long as the left one was attached to the ceiling. Pain shot through my left shoulder as I moved but I ignored it. I dialed Mallory’s office number. I had no idea what time it was, but my luck was in: the lieutenant was there.

“Vicki, you’d better not be calling to sweet-talk me. McGonnigal told me about you horning in on the Kelvin investigation. I want you out. O-U-T. It’s just my bad luck it happened in Boom Boom’s apartment.”

Ah, Bobby. It did me good to hear him ranting. “Bobby, you’ll never believe this, but I’m in the hospital.”

There was silence on the other end as Mallory collected his thoughts.