Spurgeon had another ten minutes. He sauntered over to Emergency himself.

A black boy—probably sixteen years old—sat on the wooden bench alone in the dimly lit corridor. He looked at Spurgeon. “You a specialist?”

“No. Just an intern.”

“How many doctors they need? I hope she’s going to be all right.”

“I’m sure they’ll take good care of her,” he said carefully. “I just came down for coffee. Want some?”

The boy shook his head.

He dropped the dime and the nickel into the machine and then withdrew the filled cup and sat on the bench near the boy. “Accident?”

“No . . . uh, it’s personal. I explained it to the doctor inside.”

“Oh.” Spurgeon nodded. He sipped the coffee slowly. Someone had abandoned a Daily Record on the bench. The tabloid was only slightly wrinkled from buttock-pressure, and he picked it up and read the baseball stories.

Jack Moylan came out of Emergency two doors down from where they were sitting. Spurgeon thought he heard him laughing as he walked away down the hall. He was certain he saw Moylan shake his head.

“Remember, now, I’m a doctor,” Spurgeon said. “If you tell me what happened, maybe I can help.”

“They got a lot of colored doctors here?”

“No.”

“We, uh, were parked, you know?” the boy said, deciding to trust him.

“Yuh.”

“We were doin’ it. You know what I mean?”

Spurgeon nodded.

“It was the first time for her. Not for me.

“The, uh, thing came off me and stayed in her.”

Spurgeon nodded again and sipped coffee, keeping his eyes on the cup.

He started to explain about douching, but the boy stopped him.

“You don’t understand. I read all about that. But we couldn’t even reach it to get it out of her. She became, wow, hysterical. We couldn’t go to my brother or her mother either. They’d kill us. So I drove her straight here. The doctor inside there has been calling in specialists for almost an hour.”

Spurgeon took a last swallow, draining the coffee, and set the cup carefully on the newspaper. He got up and walked into Emergency.

They were in an examining room with the curtains drawn. The girl had her eyes closed. Her face, turned to the wall, was like a clenched brown fist. She was on the table in lithotomy position, with her feet in the stirrups. Potter, peering through an otolaryngologist’s head-mirror covering one eye, was using a thin flashlight as a pointer, delivering a learned lecture to an intern standing behind the girl’s head. The intern was from anesthesiology. Spurgeon didn’t know his name. He was convulsed with silent laughter.

Potter looked frightened when the curtain parted, but when he recognized Spurgeon he grinned. “Ah, Dr. Robinson, I’m glad you were free for consultation. Dr. Moylan sent you?”