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fix on something familiar or bolster themselves with a shot of approval. He was a lucky bastard if a husband is what he really was. But something was missing. Definitely something was missing.
    Harry heard a rattle at the other end of the phone line.
    “Dr. Weiss here,” said an impatient voice.
    “Doctor, this is Harry Lewton. My mother—”
    “She’s not doing as well as we’d like. She’s still running a temperature, and the portable X-ray we took during the night shows a worsening of her pneumonia. I’m going to add imipenem, an IV antibiotic. That should give us better coverage for anaerobic bacteria.”
    “How serious is this?”
    “Aspiration pneumonia is a leading cause of death in patients with Parkinson’s disease.”
    What an impersonal prick, thought Harry. “If there’s some kind of test or treatment she needs, make sure you do it,” he said. “I’ll pay whatever insurance doesn’t cover.”
    Dr. Weiss ignored Harry’s offer. “We have her on ten liters of oxygen right now. We’re watching closely for any signs of respiratory fatigue.”
    The internist’s voice was suddenly drowned out by the opening banjo lick of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” Harry’s cell phone’s ringtone. In one movement, Harry snatched the phone from his belt and shook it open. There was an incoming text page. Harry had been expecting a message from the VP for finance, but this was something very different. When he held the screen up to the light, he saw, in plain block letters:
    FMMC CRITICAL STATUS. VERIFY THREAT PARCEL ENDO LOBBY. AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS 0830. MAINTAIN STRICT SILENCE. DO NOT EVACUATE. ALL OPERATIONS MUST REMAIN NORMAL. PENALTY FOR DISREGARD CATASTROPHIC. GOD IS GREAT.
    “Aw, Christ!” he muttered. “You gotta be shittin’ me!”
    “Excuse me?” said Dr. Weiss.
    “Sorry, I didn’t mean you. It’s a … it’s a text page. Look, I’ve got something I have to deal with right now. Can we talk later, after I’ve had a chance to see my mother for myself?”
    “Yes. Let’s do that.”
    “Bye, then.”
    Harry read over the message several times, making sure that he hadn’t gotten it wrong. Was it a joke? A bona fide threat? The hospital got prank calls all the time, but he had yet to get one on his personal pager. He scrolled up and down, but there was no callback number. By reflex, he turned to his computer and accessed Logline, the com tracker that could be used to trace calls going to any phone or pager within the hospital. The page had come from within the hospital.
    Briskly punching the number, he heard one ring and then the sound of a woman’s voice. “Neurosurgery.”
    “This is Harry Lewton, in security. Did you just text-page me?”
    “No, Mr. Lewton.”
    “Whose line is this?”
    “This is the office of Dr. Richard Helvelius.”
    “Well, somebody just paged me from this telephone.”
    “I didn’t page you.”
    The snippiness in her voice irked him. “And you are?”
    “Aileen. Aileen Zimmerman, Dr. Helvelius’s administrative assistant.”
    “Who else is there?”
    “No one. Not at 7:30 A.M . I’m just opening up the office. Dr. Helvelius is in surgery.”
    “I know that, goddamn it. The whole country knows it. It’s a national event.”
    There was a long pause on the other end of the line. At last the woman’s voice came through, tautly. “How can I help you, Mr. Lewton?”
    “Could anyone else have been using this phone within the last five minutes?”
    “No. As I said—”
    “Well, if you think of someone who may have, call me back.”
    Harry slammed down the phone. Jesus! It would be a hell of a trick for Dr. Helvelius to page him while prepping for surgery on live TV. Logline must have gotten the number wrong. Make a note of that for the system support people. A fourteen-million-dollar upgrade, and still more bugs than a bayou in July.
    Endo Lobby. That could be either the Endocrinology Clinic or the Endoscopy Clinic. If the call had really come from