“We have one hour at most to administer the correct antibiotic and six to stabilize her blood pressure. If not—” Benedicta breaks off her sentence when she catches sight of me in the doorway. The tension in her body is palpable.

Marion pushes me gently toward the wall of the corridor.

“Let me see her!” I beg. “Please!”

“Not now, Sam. You realize this is a crisis?”

Yes, unfortunately I do. Crisis is an alternative word for catastrophe.

The automatic lift doors slide open and Dr. Foss appears, followed by God. God’s presence is a very, very bad sign.

He glances at me, only for the five seconds it takes for him to approach and pass me and enter Madelyn’s room, but in that time everything happens. In those five seconds that seem to stretch on for thousands of wordless years, life passes like a slow-motion video and my blood turns to ice. God’s message is that they don’t know what to do because they’ve never had to treat anyone like Maddie before.

God tells his team, “We have very little margin for error in our choice of therapy. A broad-spectrum antibiotic, please; an antifungal drug. Ask the pharmacists to prepare fresh antimicro-biotics. Raise the head of her bed—I don’t want her lying flat. Crystalloid fluid therapy. Start with thirty mil. We have to get her arterial pressure up. How far have we got with the blood cultures?” he asks last, quietly and calmly.

“Proceeding but not yet analyzed.”

“Have you removed the blood from the catheters? I hate those things, they’re only good for cultivating bacteria.”

“Yes, but the results are negative.”

“Marion, signs of sugar?”

She shakes her head. She’s in shock, her face as white as a sheet.

“I suspect it’s a bladder infection,” Dr. Foss interjects.

“The urine analysis doesn’t confirm that, Foss. How are her teeth?”

“Fine. Ultrasound reveals no lesions in the jaw or any other clue as to the source of the sepsis,” Benedicta says.

“And why the hell is it taking so long to do the blood cultures? Liquor, please!” God is raising his voice now.

Nurse Marion rolls Maddie carefully onto her side and disinfects a spot on her coccyx, and Dr. Foss, who has pulled on some gloves, inserts a hypodermic needle into her lower back. He extracts something and fills three little tubes.

God watches this very carefully and holds up the vial containing the spinal fluid to the light. “Crystal clear,” he says pensively. “Practically rules out meningitis.”

“Should we do a CT—” Foss begins.

“She’d fall apart on the way there,” God interrupts him. “And how could a foreign object have gotten into her system to cause this inflammation? She’s been here for over six months.”

“A wandering fragment from the accident, perhaps.”