All afternoon Neil progressively chastised himself for having handled Jennifer so badly, to the point that he began to accuse himself of exhibiting the immature, selfish behavior he’d blamed on her. He had even gotten to the point of believing she’d acted entirely appropriately by walking out and not looking back. By then he had good reason to suspect that had she done otherwise, he probably would have dug in his heels and made an even bigger fool of himself.

Impulsively, Neil stood up, sending his desk chair rolling backward on its casters to collide with the door. Taking a fresh white coat from the hook behind the door, he pulled it on and went out to the central desk. He asked the first nurse he could corner if she knew whether Clarence Hodges had left. He was officially off duty the same time as Neil, but like Neil, he rarely left on time. Happily, Neil was told he was in one of the bays, sewing up a laceration. For Neil’s benefit, the nurse pointed to the appropriate curtained area.

“Wow!” Neil exclaimed when he looked over Clarence’s shoulder. Clarence was in the process of sewing a right ear back onto the side of a patient’s head. He was doing a meticulous plastic repair with what looked like hundreds of tiny sutures of gossamer-like black silk thread. Neil had recruited Clarence. He had been a classmate of Neil’s in high school. For college they had chosen rival schools, with Neil going to UCLA and Clarence to USC, but for medical school both had chosen UCLA. What made them special friends was their shared love of surfing. “That’s quite a laceration!”

Clarence leaned back and stretched. “Bobby here and his skate-board had a little argument with a tree, and I think the tree won.” Clarence picked up the edge of the drape and looked in at his patient. He was surprised to find him asleep. “My goodness, I guess I have been at this for a while.”

“Why didn’t you have one of the plastic-surgery boys come down and handle it?” Neil asked.

“Because of Bobby,” Clarence said, as he got another stitch in the claws of his needle holder. “When I suggested that, he said he was going to leave, despite his ear hanging off by a few threads of tissue. He said he’d been here so long he wasn’t going to wait. He wanted me to do it even though I told him I wasn’t a plastic surgeon. He was persistent and even stood up from the table as if he was heading for the door. So to make a long story short, that’s why I’m doing it.”

“Do you mind if I ask your opinion about something while you work?”

“Not at all. With Bobby sleeping, I could use the company. Of course, two seconds ago, I didn’t know he was sleeping.”

Neil rapidly told Jennifer’s story, which Clarence listened to without comment while he continued to reattach Bobby’s ear. “So that’s it in a nutshell,” Neil said when he’d finished.