To help with the process, Pia downed two ibuprofen tablets, drank two glasses of water, and took a shower. As the hot water further revived her, Pia went over her options. Again, she took the position contrary to her own and challenged her concerns as to what she had witnessed over the last few days and asked if there couldn’t be a rational, innocent explanation for all of it. And again, presumably with humans involved, possibly as subjects of experimentation, she couldn’t convince herself there was and that she should do nothing.

Pia decided she needed a sounding board. She first thought of George, but there was too much personally invested, on his side, for that to be an efficient use of her time. Two years previously in medical school, he had been helpful, even if it was his negative energy that Pia sometimes fed off. He’d pointed her in the right direction for the polonium discovery, although he had done so inadvertently. Today if she called, he’d want to talk about his recent visit and what it meant, and how they needed to make better contact, blah, blah, blah. That was the last thing Pia wanted to discuss. Pia truly liked George, even if he was hopelessly conservative. The problem was that she knew she could never be what he thought he needed. She also knew instinctively that he’d oppose her doing any kind of investigation of Nano and would be unable to understand her need to do so.

Then she thought of Paul Caldwell, and when she did, she remembered she’d promised to call him by midmorning, otherwise he promised he was going to alert the police. She quickly checked the time. It was beyond midmorning; in fact, it was after eleven. Frantically she called him.

“Pia, how are you?” he said with no preamble. He’d obviously seen her name on his phone’s screen.

“Paul, thank God I got you! I almost forgot to call you. You said you’d call the police if I didn’t. You haven’t, have you?”

“No! And I would have tried you before I called them.”

“Good,” Pia said with relief. “Are you in the ER?”

“No, actually I’ve just left there. I filled in on the night shift for one of my partners with a sick kid. I’m on my way home, but I was going to call you when I got in. I hesitate to ask, but how did it go last night? Did you get a good night’s sleep with the Temazepam?”

“I just woke up,” Pia admitted. It sounded to Pia like Paul was teasing her, so she ignored his question. She also didn’t fill in the part about going to bed at five A.M. “Listen, I was wondering if we could have a chat sometime today. In person; the sooner, the better.”