“Nice job they did on her,” the plastic surgeon said, adding his notes to the chart. She'd already been in surgery twice that evening. Once with him, and the other time with the orthopedic man to put a pin in her elbow. “She must have really pissed someone off.” It was nothing short of amazing that they hadn't killed her.

“Maybe it's her cooking,” Peter said without smiling. It was the kind of humor that kept them going. They saw too much of this, car accidents, people who jumped out of windows and survived despite their best efforts not to, and near-fatal beatings. What Peter hated most was seeing the children. The trauma unit was not a place that left you many illusions.

“Have the cops seen her yet?” the plastic surgeon asked casually, handing the chart back.

“They took a lot of pictures of her after we got the arm set. It wasn't pretty.” And it still wasn't. Neither of them had any way of gauging what she had once looked like.

“Think she'll make it?”

Peter Mason whistled before he answered. His whites were still covered with her blood, the list of her injuries seemed endless, and their X rays showed a fair amount of earlier damage, maybe a car accident, it was hard to say. But what had been done to her this time had been damn near fatal. Her liver and kidneys were in bad shape too from being kicked, it seems like there wasn't any part of her that wasn't damaged. “I'd like to think she'll make it,” Peter Mason said optimistically, but he really didn't think she would. The head injuries just added one more complication. The rest would have been enough to kill her. Even one of her eyes had been affected.

“I hope they get the son of a bitch who did it,” the plastic surgeon said amiably, and went home to dinner.

“Probably her husband,” Peter muttered to himself. He had seen that before too. Husbands or boyfriends who were jealous or drunk or came unhinged for some minor reason that made sense to them and seemed to justify taking another life in order to soothe their egos. He'd seen too much of this in the past ten years. He was thirty-five years old, divorced, and afraid he was getting bitter. His wife had left him because she said she couldn't stand it anymore. He was never home, always on call, and even when he was with her, he wasn't. He was always thinking about his patients, or running out the door to save the victims of a car crash. She stuck it out for five years and left him for a plastic surgeon who only did face-lifts. And he wasn't sure he blamed her.

He checked on Gabbie himself several times that night, and everything seemed stable. She was in the trauma ICU along with a woman who had jumped out of a third-story window and landed on two children and killed them. There was a drug overdose in the bed next to hers who had fallen onto the tracks of the IRT subway, and wasn't going to make it. But Gabbie was still a question. She could survive, if she fought hard enough, and wanted to, and if she came out of the coma.

The nurses said several people had called about her from the boardinghouse where she lived, but there was no next of kin, and no husband. Only a boyfriend apparently, and he hadn't been heard from. Peter wondered if he had done this to her, and figured it was more than likely. Intruders didn't put that much energy into it. This guy had pulled out all the stops and hit all the bases. The only thing he hadn't done was set fire to her.

“Any change?” he asked the nurse in the ICU, and she shook her head.

“She's just hanging in there.”

“Let's hope it stays that way,” he said. It was midnight by then, and he decided to take a nap while it was quiet. You never knew what was coming. They worked twenty-four-hour shifts in the trauma ICU, and his was just beginning. “Call me if anything happens.” They exchanged a smile, and whenever she worked with him, she really enjoyed it. He was a nice guy and better-looking than she would ever have admitted to her husband. He had shaggy good looks, with rumpled brown hair and dark brown eyes the color of chocolate. But he was tough, too, not always easy to work for, but a hell of a good doctor.

He disappeared into the room he used when he needed some sleep. It was a supply room where they kept chemicals and a spare gurney, but it was useful.

And for the rest of the night, the nurses watched Gabriella. She never stirred, never moved, and she seemed to be barely breathing, but the monitors showed her vital signs were constant. They did another EEG in the morning, and it seemed normal, but she still hadn't come out of the coma.

And at the boardinghouse, the mood was heavy. Mrs. Boslicki gave everyone bulletins as they left for work, and promised to call them if anything happened. It was the worst thing that had ever happened in her house other than the death of the professor. They were all aware of the fact that Steve hadn't come home that night, and he hadn't called her. Mrs. Boslicki reported his disappearance to the police that morning. The police had talked to everyone the night before, and asked a lot of questions about Steve. And it was interesting to realize how little they all knew about him. They knew he'd gone to Stanford and Yale, lived there for eight months, was unemployed, and was Gabriella's boyfriend. Beyond that, they knew nothing. But the police had taken a stack of messages from his phone calls, which Mrs. Boslicki was holding for him in her kitchen. But when she talked to the police that morning, even they knew nothing.

And by that afternoon, the reports from the hospital were depressing. There was no change in Gabriella's condition, and when Mrs. Rosenstein spoke to Dr. Mason, he didn't sound optimistic. He said the outlook for her was “guarded,” whatever that meant. She was still listed in critical condition, and still in a coma. There was nothing more to say, but he promised to call if anything happened.

Peter was supposed to be off duty that afternoon, but the doctor supposed to be on this shift had called in, his wife had gone into labor, and he was upstairs in labor and delivery helping to deliver his first baby. So Peter agreed to cover for him, which meant he was stuck here for another twenty-four hours. He was used to it and he had nothing else to do these days, but it was exactly the kind of thing that had cost him his marriage.

“Anything new?” Peter checked in at the desk when he came back from the cafeteria, and was told that two new cases had come in, a ten-year-old boy they'd transferred to the burn unit after a bad fire in Harlem, and an eighty-six-year-old woman who'd fallen down a marble staircase. In other words, nothing exciting.

And more out of routine than because anything was happening, he decided to check on Gabbie. He watched the monitors for a minute or two, and then examined her gently. But when he did, he saw an expression of pain flit across her face, and stopped to watch her. He touched her again, and saw the same thing happen, and it was hard to tell if she was coming out of it, or if it was just a reflex. He looked at the chart and read her name again, and moved a little closer to her.

“Gabriella?… Gabriella… open your eyes if you can hear me.” There was nothing. He put a finger into her hand then, and curled her own fingers around it, and spoke to her. “Squeeze my finger, Gabriella, if you can hear me.” He waited an instant and was about to take his finger away, when the smallest movement of her fingers touched him. She had heard him, and he couldn't help smiling at her. These were the victories he lived for, that he had given up a marriage and most of his life for. It wasn't much, but it was what made his life worth living. He tried it again, and this time her touch seemed stronger, “Can you open your eyes for me?” he asked softly. “Or blink a little. Squeeze your eyes shut, or open them… I'd like to see you.” There was nothing for a long time, and then slowly the lashes fluttered, but her eyes never opened. But it meant that she heard him and her brain had stopped swelling. And it also meant their work was just beginning. He signaled to one of the nurses from where he was standing, and when she joined him, he told her what had happened.

“We're heading for first base. Why don't you talk to her for a while and see what happens. I'll come back and check her later.”

He then went to check on the woman who had fallen down the marble staircase, and found her in remarkably good condition. She was mad as hell to be there at all, had broken her pelvis and a hip, and she demanded to be sent home immediately. She said she had an appointment at the hairdresser the next morning. And Peter was still smiling when he left her. She was outrageously crotchety and aristocratic, and he could just imagine her hitting him with a cane, if she'd had one at her disposal. He had promised to send her home as soon as she could manage with a walker. But she had to have surgery on the hip in the morning.

And after doing some paperwork, it was nearly midnight when he got back to Gabriella. “What's new on Sleeping Beauty?” he asked the nurse easily, and she shrugged. There had been no further response from her all evening. Maybe it had been a reflex, or maybe she was just so beaten up, she wanted no part of the world anymore. She had withdrawn into a place where no one could touch her. Sometimes that happened.

He sat down in the chair next to her, and the nurse left, and he put his finger in her hand again, but nothing happened. And she looked more than ever as though she were in a deep coma. He was just about to give up on her when he saw her move her arm in his direction, and stretch out two fingers toward him. Her eyes were closed, but he knew that she had heard him.

“Are you talking to me?” he asked gently. “How about saying something to me?” They needed to know if she could speak, and eventually if she could reason. But right now a word, a look, a sound would have been enough for him. “How about singing me a little song or something?” He had a funny, easy way with patients in the most devastating circumstances, which made both his patients and his nurses love him. And his remarkable skill in bringing people back from the dead, or damn close to it, had won him the respect of his colleagues.

“Come on, Gabriella, how about it? The ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ maybe? Or what about Twinkle, Twinkle’?” He sang it to her, softly, and very off-key, and a nurse wandering by grinned at him. He was a little crazy, but they loved him. “What about ‘ABC? It's the same tune, you know. I'll do ‘ABC,’ you do Twinkle, Twinkle?” And as he chattered on to her, suddenly there was a soft moan and a sound that was anything but human.

“Which one was that?” he asked, sensing victory beckoning him, and wanting to snatch it quickly. “Was that ‘ABC’ or Twinkle, Twinkle’? I recognized the tune, but I didn't quite catch the lyrics.” She groaned again, louder this time, and he knew she was coming back to them. This was no reflex. And this time, her eyelids fluttered, and he could see that she was trying to open them, but her eyes were still very swollen. And very gently, he reached down and tried to help her. And just as he touched her, her eyes opened slowly. All she saw was a blur, but she could see the outline of someone standing there. She couldn't see the tears in his eyes as he watched her. He wanted to shout, “Gotcha!” By sheer will, if nothing else, they had snatched her back from the dark recesses of death. And maybe, just maybe, she was going to make it.

“Hello, Gabriella. Welcome back, we missed you.” She groaned again. Her lips were still too swollen to speak clearly but he could see she was trying. There were a lot of questions they wanted to ask her, about what had happened and who had done this to her, but it was much too soon now. “How do you feel, or is that a really stupid question?” This time she nodded, and then closed her eyes. Moving her head was excruciatingly painful. She moaned at him again, and opened her eyes a minute later. “I bet you do.” He could give her something for the pain eventually, but having just come out of the coma, he didn't want to get her all doped up yet. She was going to have to live with it for a while longer. “Do you think you can say anything to me yet?… I mean other than sing Twinkle, Twinkle.’ “ He could see she was trying to smile at him, but the grimace she made instead was much too painful.

“Hurts,” was the one word she finally came up with. It was a cross between a groan and a whisper.

“I'll bet it does.” He couldn't begin to imagine where, there were so many possibilities to choose from. “Your head?”

“Yes…” she whispered, and sounded a little less croaky. “Arm… face…” There weren't too many places on her body that hadn't been battered. But she was also coherent enough now that he knew there were other questions he had to ask her. The police were due back in the morning. They had been keeping close tabs on her. It was the worst assault they'd seen in years, and they wanted to catch the guy who did it.