“Hooo-whee,” he whispered, gazing after her.

The thirty-six hours that followed were not good. That night he prepped four people for surgery, a job he loathed; shaving a patient’s belly or scrotum, with unexpected moles to nick and unsuspected blemishes to slice off and mocking little hair follicles that eluded the keenest Weck blade, was quite different from shaving one’s own familiar if homely face. He assisted Silverstone faithfully at an appendectomy Monday morning and as a reward was allowed to snare and snip an evil set of infected tonsils.

He came off-duty Tuesday at eight and was on the beach at 10:30. The morning was overcast and blowy and there were very few people when he got there. He watched the gulls and learned a lot about delicate aerodynamics. About 11:30 the sun broke through and he wasn’t so cold anymore and by the time he came back from lunch some people had begun to arrive, but it remained breezy and there was no trace of the girl.

He spent the early afternoon stepping over legs, searching for sensual brown ones. But he didn’t find the right pair, so he practiced his crawl and sidestroke and took naps, periodically starting awake to sit up and stare around the beach. Finally he picked up a six-year-old named Sonia Cohen and they built Jerusalem out of the sand, an interfaith project that was destroyed by a Roman wave at 4:07. The little girl sat down by the waters and wept.

He left the beach at the last possible moment, returning to the hospital with enough time only for the quickest of showers and reporting for duty at the ward with sand from Sonia’s shovel still gritty on his scalp.

The ward shift was dull but easier to tolerate. By then he had accepted the fact that he would never see the girl again, and he had convinced himself that she couldn’t have been as spectacular as he remembered her. On Thursday night that cretin Potter self-diagnosed a virus, which probably meant he had something else, and ordered himself to bed. Adam shuffled the duty roster with the result that Spurgeon drew four hours of Emergency Room duty.

When he got there he found Meyerson sitting dully on a bench, reading a newspaper.

“What do I have to know, Maish?”

“Very little, Doc,” the ambulance driver said. “Just remember that if somebody comes in who looks as though he’s about to sign off, admit him to one of the wards, fast. Old unwritten rule.”

“Why?”

“During peak hours this joint is packed. Sometimes patients have long waits. Very long waits. Word gets around that somebody kissed off in Emergency, the first thing lots of people are going to think is anybody could die in that goddam place before they take care of you.”