I was conscious by the time I was wheeled to a bed. The drugs and a throb in my shoulder both kept jerking me awake whenever I dozed off. When the resident came in at six, I was awake in that dull, grinding way that comes from a sleepless night and puts a layer of gauze between you and the world.

She’d been up all night herself, handling surgical emergencies like mine; even though her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep, she was young enough to perch on the chair by my bed and talk in a bright, almost perky voice.

“When the window blew apart, a fragment of the frame shot into your shoulder. You were lucky it was cold last night—your coat stopped the bolt from going deep enough to do real damage.” She held out an eight-inch piece of twisted metal—mine to keep, if I wanted it.

“We’re going to send you home now,” she added, after checking my heart and head and the reflexes in my left hand. “It’s the new medicine, you know. Out of the operating room, into a cab. Your wound is going to heal nicely. Just don’t let the dressing get wet for a week, so no showers. Come back next Friday to the outpatient clinic; we’ll change the dressing and see how you’re doing. What kind of work do you do?”

“I’m an investigator. Detective.”

“So can you stop investigating for a day or two, Detective? Get some rest, let the anesthesia work itself out of your system and you’ll be fine. Is there anyone you can call to drive you home, or should we get you into a cab?”

“I asked them to call a friend last night,” I said. “I don’t know if they did.” I also didn’t know if Morrell could manage the trip down here. He was recovering from bullet wounds that almost killed him in Afghanistan this past summer; I wasn’t sure he had the stamina to drive forty miles.

“I’ll take her.” Conrad Rawlings had materialized in the doorway.

I was too sluggish to feel surprised or pleased or even flustered at seeing him. “Sergeant—or, no, you’ve been promoted, haven’t you? Is it lieutenant now? You out checking on all the victims of last night’s accident?”

“Just the ones who raise a red flag when they’re within fifty miles of the crime scene.” I couldn’t see much emotion in his square copper face—not the concern of an old lover, not even the anger of an old lover who’d been angry when he left me. “And, yeah, I’ve been promoted: watch commander now down at 103rd and Oglesby. I’ll be outside the lobby when the doc here pronounces you fit to tear up the South Side again.”