Close to her I could see how much gray was in her hair; for some reason that made me cry as well. “I thought you would chew me out.”

She blinked back her tears. “Later. When you’re strong enough to fight back.”

“She mustn’t have too much agitation, Dr. Herschel,” the nurse said.

Lotty pushed herself to her feet. Despite the gray hair, she still moved with easy agility. I smiled foolishly at her. She didn’t stay long but the next evening she returned with Morrell. The two together told me my story.

A state trooper had found me on the Belmont exit ramp to the Kennedy around three on Sunday morning. The boxes that tumbled out of the back of the truck when CO Polsen drove off had saved my life: a motorist, swerving to avoid them, noticed me lying in the road and called the cops. The state troopers rushed me to Beth Israel, where Dr. Szymczyk—the same surgeon who’d been on call the night I found Nicola Aguinaldo—patched me together.

I had been luckier than Nicola on several counts. When Hartigan kicked me, I’d managed to twist away enough so that my ribs took the main force of his blow. He had badly bruised my intestine and I had developed a severe infection, which accounted for my fever, but when the state trooper found me, the wound had only just begun to perforate the peritoneum. Nicola already had such advanced peritonitis when I came on her that she didn’t have much chance for survival.

And then, unlike Nicola, I was in good physical condition and I was used to defending myself, so that despite the jolt from the stun gun—which was what Hartigan shot me with—I was able to shield myself from the worst of his blows. I had apparently managed to put my hands over my head, so that the kick that knocked me out broke the fingers in my right hand but didn’t do serious damage to my skull.

“You were lucky, Vic,” Lotty said. “But you also don’t have the habit of victims.”

“But how did I end up here instead of in the hospital? The Grete Berman Institute is for torture victims, isn’t it? That isn’t really me.”