Since rising at five, Liz had been going over some of the things she might say when she visited the Striker team later this morning. At their third group session two days before, the elite but very young soldiers were still in shock as they mourned the loss of Charlie Squires. Rookie Sondra DeVonne was taking his death especially hard, sad for Charlie's family and also for herself. Through tears, the Private had said that she'd hoped to learn so much from him. Now all that wisdom and experience was gone. Not passed on.

Dead.

"Where is the freakin' phone?" Liz snarled as she kicked aside the newspapers by the kitchen table.

Not that she was afraid the caller would hang up. At this hour it could only be Monica calling from Italy. And her roommate and best friend would not go away until she got her messages. After all, she'd been gone nearly an entire day.

And if Sinatra calls, thought Op-Center's Staff Psychologist, you want to be able to get right back to him.

For the three years they'd been living together, Liz's workaholic freelance musician friend had done all the nightclubs and weddings and Bar Mitzvahs she could get. She'd been working so hard, in fact, that Liz had not only ordered her to take a vacation, but had kicked in half the money to make sure she could go.

Liz finally found the phone sitting on one of the kitchen chairs. Before picking it up, Liz took a moment to change worlds. The dynamics between Liz and each of her patients were such that she created separate worlds in her mind for each of them, and inhabited those worlds fully in order to treat them. Otherwise, there would be spillover, lack of focus, distractions. Though Monica was her best friend, not a patient, it was difficult sometimes to make a clear distinction between the two.

As Liz slipped into her Monica world, she checked the message list from under the Chopin magnet on the refrigerator door. The only ones who had called were Monica's drummer, Angelo "Tim" Panni, and her mother, both of whom wanted to make sure she got to Rome okay.

"Pronto, Ms. Sheard!" she said as she clicked on the phone. A telephone hello was one of the two Italian words she knew.

The decidedly masculine voice on the other end said, "Sorry, Liz, it isn't Monica. It's Bob Herbert."

"Bob!" Liz said. "This is a surprise. What's happening in the land of Freud?"

"I thought Freud was Austrian," Herbert said.

"He was," Liz said, "but the Germans had him for a year. The Anschluss was in 1938. Freud died in 1939."

"That's almost not funny," Bob said. "It looks like the Fatherland may be flexing its muscles for a new era of empire-building."

She reached for her cigarette. "What do you mean?"

"Have you watched the news this morning?" Herbert asked.

"It doesn't come on till six," she said. "Bob, what the hell happened?"