“I googled the clinic; its trauma unit is top notch. Cosmo couldn’t be in a better place,” Harry said.

Lizzie stopped eating for a moment and looked at the two men sitting across from her. “Yes, it is the best. I just wish it were Cowboy who had operated on Cosmo. Simon is good, don’t get me wrong, but I would have preferred to have Cowboy perform the surgery.”

“By Cowboy I assume you are referring to the string bean Dr. Wylie,” Jack said. “Why do you call him Cowboy?”

Lizzie smiled wanly as she went back to the mound of noodles in her soup. “That’s what Cosmo calls him. They’re great friends. He’s six-foot-eight, did you know that? He eats nonstop. I think he has the same kind of metabolism that Maggie Spritzer has. The guy is so in demand, he could charge anything he wanted for his expertise in the operating room. Here’s the kicker, though—most of the surgeries he performs are freebies. He even pays his own airfare when he travels out of the country to perform his one-of-a-kind surgeries. He’s not into money or the trappings that go with it. His only goal in life is to save lives. You saw how he was dressed. That’s Joe making a statement. Take it or leave it. That was some really good soup, Jack. Call the hospital, Harry, please, to see if there’s any change.”

“Lizzie, it’s just coming up to seven in the morning. You know how busy hospitals and clinics are this early in the morning. I called right before you came down,” Jack outright fibbed. “No one answered. Get dressed and we’ll head on out. But before you do that, you have to tell us what happened. Everything, Lizzie, don’t leave anything out, even if you think it’s not important. We’ll be the judge of that. We’re all here now, so it’s personal with us.”

Lizzie sighed. “Honestly, Jack, I don’t really know. I’m not sure anyone really knows. It happened late in the afternoon . . . I guess it’s five days ago by now . . . I’ve sort of lost track of time. Fiveish. I got a call from the clinic saying my husband had just been brought in and that he had been shot multiple times. I was home. Little Jack is away at camp, so I was cooking dinner, you know, foods Cosmo and I like that Little Jack won’t eat. It was supposed to be a special dinner for just the two of us. I had the kitchen TV on but wasn’t paying attention to it. I keep it on more for sound than anything else. With LJ gone,” she said, “the house is just way too quiet.

“The phone rang, and a male voice told me that Cosmo was being rushed into surgery. I was so stupid, Jack. I just stood there and went about cleaning up the kitchen, putting everything away, turning off the stove. It was as if I heard what the voice said but I didn’t believe it. I actually poured myself a cup of coffee, sat down, and drank it. Who does something that stupid after a phone call like that? Me! Me! I did that. It wasn’t until I finished the cup of coffee that I came to my senses. It hit me full force. I was out of here in a nanosecond, driving like a bat out of hell. I don’t think it took me ten minutes to get there, park, and go up to the waiting area. No one would tell me anything. Even when I raised all kinds of holy hell, they still wouldn’t tell me anything other than that if I didn’t calm down, they would make me go down to the first floor. I could tell they meant it, so I had no choice but to settle down. I was a basket case. Me! Do you believe that?