“I can’t answer them.” He searched for the waitress, who was ignoring him. He had decided that he wanted another drink after all.

The doctor went on: “You’re an intelligent man. So no matter what you believed when you started, somewhere our testimony convinced you that I hadn’t caused her paralysis. But you continued. Why?”

“You’re presuming you convinced me,” Mitch said thickly. “And you didn’t.” He reminded the doctor that civil cases weren’t criminal trials, that the defendant wasn’t necessarily innocent until proven guilty. He sounded phony, to himself. “A civil case isn’t built on reasonable doubt. It’s built on a preponderance of evidence. That, we submitted, I think.”

The doctor’s gray eyes were unblinking. “You don’t think that at all,” he said softly.

“I won’t discuss it,” Mitch insisted. And then, stupidly: “Your witnesses were guessing. Your lab was guessing. They didn’t know. They should! You don’t know. She’s paralyzed. You couldn’t prove how it happened.”

“She’s paralyzed, all right. But we proved how it didn’t happen. To you, I’m sure. And maybe your partner. And to that so-called doctor you imported. To the judge? I don’t know. Not to the jury, I’m sure.”

“Well, it’s a jury trial,” said Mitch. “Waitress, goddamn it, come over here, will you?”

She didn’t hear him, turned and sauntered to the kitchen. He slammed his hand on the table angrily. Christ, he was coming apart. He should have left the moment the doctor sat down. He saw himself explaining why he hadn’t to the Committee on the Canons of Ethics. “Doctor,” he blurted, “I’ve been polite, but we can’t discuss this any further.”

The doctor nodded, put his hands on the table. They were stubby, Mitch noted, not the traditional surgeon’s hands, though reputedly among the surest in the city. For a moment they lay there, silent accusers. The doctor slid back his chair but still he did not rise. “You know, I saved her life.”

She had gone in for an everyday procedure and come out a physical vegetable, but Bernie had made that point. “I’ll concede that,” Mitch said hoarsely.

“I’m rewarded with ruin. Have you thought of the effect on other doctors?”

“I’ve told you, damn it, I can’t discuss it.”

“Will it make them more careful? They’re already careful. They know that whatever happened to my patient, it wasn’t overmedication, as you contend, or a severed nerve, or whatever else your Baltimore quack dragged in. No, just bad luck. An Act of God. Maybe psychosomatic! Or a bite from a housefly who’d been to a stable, or a mosquito, or a blood clot ready to go adrift, or undiagnosed paresis that came to life by chance.”

“Doctor,” broke in Mitch, “if you’re not going, I will.”