“What happens to some poor bastard in the future with a patient like mine? She comes out of anesthetic, and the next day she’s paralyzed, dying. He wants to stay in practice. For his family’s sake, or to save lives, or to make money, or whatever. Will he work night and day to save you a potential plaintiff?”

“What?” croaked Mitch. “You mean he’ll let the patient die? That’s ridiculous!”

“Your confidence in my profession is touching,” said the doctor. “I wish I had the same in yours.” He rose. “Because, suppose I hadn’t been able to save her? The issue would now be a hospital bill, some funeral arrangements, a doctor’s bill. Fifteen hundred, two thousand? Not enough to make the papers, even if her husband had sued.”

“We’d have advised him to sue,” Mitch said, weakly.

“Maybe,” the doctor said softly. “But thirty percent contingency fee of two thousand dollars is six hundred bucks. Who would have taken the case?”

The restaurant murmur fell away. The background music faded with the clink of silverware. In one of the moments of silence which falls on any public place at the wrong instant, Mitch heard himself say, stuffily and much too loudly: "I’d have taken the case.”

“Good. I wondered.” He looked into Mitch’s eyes and then headed back to his table.

Mitch got up, glared at the startled waitress, strode to the cashier’s desk, and slapped down a five-dollar bill for the drink. He left without waiting for change.

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

He swung in giant arcs twenty-five feet above the water, astride the spreader. The seas were rising. To hang onto the mast he had to face leeward, toward the sail, one foot dangling forward of the mast and one aft. To scan the swells to windward he had to twist his upper body completely, straining his belly-muscles and the ligaments in his back. He could not search the area hidden by the sail until it had passed by and lay off his port quarter.

His toes had rubbed raw on the sail, his bare scrotum stung with salt from the yardarm, and the constant twisting to see had slipped a familiar needle of pain into his back. He tried to shift position, swinging his leg over the yard so that both feet hung forward. He almost pitched off, so he hoisted the foot back.

He checked his watch. It was 6:40 A.M. He was reaching the northern limit of search. If she had fallen overboard just after he had gone to sleep, she was in these waters. She could be no further up the track. But he resisted the turn south along a trail already searched. He decided to stay on course another fifteen minutes, in case his dead-reckoning was off.