The chimes sounded again and relief showed in Liz’s face, but only momentarily. This time it was Helen Fultz. She let Helga take her coat and joined them in the living room but would take nothing stronger than tomato juice. The four of them sat and looked at one another and tried to talk and then mercifully the chimes began to sound regularly and the place filled. In a little while there were people standing all around and the noise was the kind made at parties. He found himself wondering if Peggy Weld had had a chance to weep yet, then as the host he began to drown in a pool of people.

Some of the house officers were married and brought their wives.

Mike Schneider, whose marriage was widely known to be on the rocks, introduced a slightly-obese redhead as his kissing cousin from Cleveland, Ohio.

In contrast, Jack Moylan was with Joan Anderson of the neat withers. The student nurse’s eyes were a little too bright, Meomartino thought, but she appeared none the worse for her earlier trauma.

“I’ve never been drunk, Rafe,” she said. “Can I change that tonight?”

“Be my guest,” he said.

“Change is the key word. Down with the establishment,” Moylan said, leading her to the bar.

Harry Lee, whom no one had ever seen with a girl before, was with Alice Tayakawa, the anesthetist.

Spurgeon Robinson, accompanied by a black Athena to whom he coolly introduced Meomartino, had arrived with Adam Silverstone and a small blonde with a Florida tan. Meomartino watched as their path crossed with that of the hostess.

His wife looked at her curiously. “How do you do?” she said.

“How do you do?”

The two women smiled at one another.

By 10:30 Meyerson had convinced Helen Fultz to try a screwdriver because orange juice contained vitamin C. Harry Lee and Alice Tayakawa sat in a corner and argued heatedly over the dangers of liver damage as a negative aspect of halothane anesthesia. “Have another,” Jack Moylan called to Joan Anderson, who was sufficiently advanced in her program to be performing a remarkable version of the limbo under a curtain rod that had descended to within two feet of the floor, while Moylan and Mike Schneider sat and studied her clinically.

“Narrow pelvis,” Moylan observed.

“Masters and Johnson should do a paper on the penis-receptivity of young nurses following an initial experience with death,” Schneider said as the girl’s back arched and, narrow pelvis pumping, she passed under the rod.

Moylan hastened to the bar to refill her glass.

“Can I get something for you?” Meyerson asked Liz Meomartino.

She smiled at him. “No, thank you,” she said.

“. . . And I sutured this slash in her deltoid,” Spurgeon was saying. “And I said to her, ‘So you got wounded in the fracas,’ and she said to me, ‘No, sir, in the shoulder.’”