“Do they have him?” Pia demanded. Her face was flushed. She was out of breath in her excitement.

“I don’t know, Pia. You need to calm down. We hope the guy is okay, right?”

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry, Paul. I’ve just been going crazy at work thinking about that jogger. It is driving me insane not to have any answers, I’m not the patient type. I need answers.”

“I know you do, Pia, you’ve told me enough times,” said Paul. He smiled at Pia. He was calmness personified, making Pia’s anxiety that much more pronounced. “I’ve talked to our in-house counsel, and she is on her way in. I seem to have lost Mr. Noakes’s contact information, so he is not on his way. Oh, well. We have two Boulder police officers here, and I have told them that there might be a disturbance. I said that we’re expecting a cardiac patient who’s going to need attention but who might possibly be essentially kidnapped by a third party. Actually I didn’t use the word kidnapped. I just said that other people might come and demand to take custody and have the patient discharged against our medical advice. I’ve also asked for our Mandarin translator to be called in, and she is on her way. That’s about all we can do for the moment.”

Paul was wearing a radio headset, which was linked into the communications between the EMTs and the ER. He pressed the TALK button and asked the ambulance driver his ETA to the scene of the accident. Pia couldn’t unscramble the static-ridden half of the conversation that Paul was having. When he finished, he turned to her.

“They’re there. It’s David and Bill, the same guys who were with the runner, which is good. We’ll find out if the man is presenting the same symptoms.”

“What can they see?” Pia questioned nervously. “Tell them to get the patient into the ambulance right away.”

“Give them a chance! They have to stabilize him, see what’s going on. You know the drill. Excuse me a second, Pia, I really have to check on another patient.”

Paul marched from the reception area of the ER over to a nearby bay where there was a lot of activity. Pia looked at her watch every thirty seconds and back at Paul. Pia was too far away to hear what was being said. After what seemed to Pia like a long fifteen minutes, Paul came back and smiled at her.

“Okay, let’s check in. They should be on their way back.” Paul called up the ambulance, and relayed what the EMT was telling him.

“Okay, you’re still at the scene. Initially very similar signs, yes . . . Apparently unresponsive . . . You performed CPR . . .”

“Ask about the tattoos,” Pia said.