What was really bothering Paul, however, was a feeling about Nano and the accident, made worse by the fact that no one from Nano’s administration had shown up. Try as he might, Paul could not remember much just before the accident nor immediately after, which was why he thought he’d suffered traumatic amnesia. All he remembered was waking up in the ambulance with the siren screaming, and this lack of memory left him with a vague feeling of foreboding that kept nagging at him, making him question if it truly had been an accident, and if it hadn’t, whether there was some complicity on the part of Nano.

This was Paul’s second day back at work, but with these thoughts, he was finding it hard to focus on the ER. On top of that, he was worried about Pia, despite what he had said to George. He hoped to God that she would be the same person when she woke up. But even that had a slight downside, having come to understand her mild paranoia, her tenacity of purpose, and how prone she was to conspiracy theory. What was worrying him was the fear that when she woke up, she would resume her search for answers to all the questions she had about Nano, only with even more vigor, especially if she shared Paul’s questions about what caused their car to go off the road.

Paul had initially told the police about his vague sense that the accident had not been an accident, meaning Pia’s vehicle might have been forced off the road. But he recognized that this idea was not given a lot of credence, and he could understand why. Then a day after the accident, two officers had quizzed Paul more closely, especially on the reasons why Pia was driving so fast since it had been ascertained she’d been traveling at approximately fifty-five mph in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone. Paul had been honest and had explained that he and Pia were trying to intercept a van that had taken a patient before the individual could be loaded into an ambulance, a fact that the police had confirmed. Paul had also told them about the previous incident in the ER involving the Chinese runner and Mariel Spallek coming to collect him and sign him out against medical advice. Paul’s natural reticence and caution kept him from mentioning any of Pia’s suspicions about Nano, as he didn’t know how much credence to give them himself.