“You sleep.”

“After I see you.”

“Okay,” she said in a little while. She sounded happy to surrender, he thought optimistically.

“Big night on the town.”

“Listen,” she said. “I have an idea for a wonderful evening. The Boston Symphony is broadcasting tonight from Tanglewood. I’ll bring my portable radio and we can spread a blanket on the grass of the Esplanade and listen to the music.”

“You’re trying to save me money. I can afford a better evening than that.”

“More expensive but not better. Please. It will give us a chance to talk.” She agreed to be ready at six so they would have more time.

“You’re crazy,” he said, loving the blanket part.

By Sunday afternoon his anticipation was at its crest. It was a quiet day. Thinking ahead, he took care of all the routine detail work early, so nothing would develop into a tardying nuisance. There was a big old clock over the nurses’ station with hands at twenty-five minutes to five, like the hands of a Charleston dancer paralyzed immediately after fanning his knees. Eighty-five long minutes, he thought. He would shower and change and leave the hospital protected on all fronts, Banned, Crested and Lavorised, beard shaved, face lotioned and powdered, shoes shined, hair beaten down and hopes high, to pick up Gaby Pender.

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The great building was like a sleeping dog, he thought; it could nap contentedly, but sooner or later . . .

The telephone purred.

The old bitch was already awake, he thought wryly and answered it: Emergency, with three burns cases. “Coming,” he said, and went. In the elevator he continued to worry, concerned now lest this would turn out to be something that would make him late for his date.

The smell of fire met him in the hallway.

There was a man and two women. He saw that the women were not too badly off, and they had already been sedated; score two points for the Emergency Room resident, the kid named Potter, who needed the credits. He had performed a trach on the man, probably his first—(add one point for guts and then deduct five points: in this case he should have waited another couple of minutes and done it in the operating room) and was busily and shakily fussing with an aspiration catheter, trying to suction secretions.

“Has Meomartino been called?”

Potter shook his head, and Adam telephoned the Surgical Fellow. “We could use some help down here, Doctor.”

Meomartino hesitated. “Can’t you handle it alone?” he said crisply.

“No,” he said, and dropped the telephone receiver back into its cradle.

“God, look at all this stuff I’m pulling out of the lungs,” Potter said.

Adam looked and shouldered him aside. “Those are gastric contents from the stomach. Don’t you realize he’s aspirated?” he said in disgust. He began cutting whatever clothing it was possible to pull away from the seared flesh. “How did it happen?”