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found her in a shaken state. After she’d fed her a little brandy and gotten her to open up, Beth learned that Luisa had just received some medical test results. She’d been feeling exhausted, listless, for the past few weeks, and was catching colds on a regular basis, as well as starting to bruise easily. So she’d gone to her physician to get checked out, and he’d run a series of blood tests.
    Luisa had cancer. Chronic myelogenous leukemia.
    The good news, as Beth was able to tell Luisa, was that this was a kind of cancer that could be successfully managed with drugs, giving a normal life expectancy in the vast majority of patients. And Luisa started on the treatments, at first quite successfully.
    It turned out to be a highly unusual form of CML, as Luisa didn’t have the typical chromosome nearly all sufferers possess. As a result, the drugs didn’t work quite so well as expected, and a few days ago Luisa had fallen sick and had been admitted to the oncology ward.
    When Beth visited her during a break in her shift yesterday, Luisa was sitting up, looking pale and drawn but able to summon a smile. She was feeling better, her white cell count had stabilized, and the attending haematologist had said she could probably go home in a day or two.
    And now... this . Luisa, dead from a cardiac arrest.
    It didn’t make sense.

Chapter 7
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    ‘W hat happened?’ said Beth. She was sitting in the staff room of the oncology ward. The sister, Debra, had brought her a mug of sweet tea and she sipped it gratefully.
    Debra had gone to find the attending physician, who happened to be on the ward at the time. His name was Reissman, and he sat opposite Beth, looking gloomy.
    ‘It’s the damnedest thing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘She was better. I’d swear it on a stack of holy books. No signs of infection. Cell counts stable, including platelets. Her EKG was completely normal. All set for discharge tomorrow. Then, around lunchtime, she goes into V-tach. Just like that. Crash team were there pronto, but they couldn’t save her.’ He ran a hand through his mop of black, curly hair. ‘There’ll be an autopsy, of course. Somehow I doubt it’ll tell us anything.’
    ‘She’s got parents. A brother.’ Beth felt the tears brim and spill over. She wiped her face on her sleeve, angry with herself. Doctors weren’t supposed to show emotion.
    ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Reissman, handing her a box of Kleenex. She grabbed a wad. ‘They’re on their way from San Diego.’
    Beth would make a point of coming in tomorrow to see them, even though it was her day off.
    ‘Dr Reissman?’ she said. ‘Will you let me know if you learn anything? About how she died?’
    ‘Sure, Beth.’ He jerked his head at the door. ‘Now go home. You look exhausted.’
    Usually after a grueling shift, Beth would take the subway home. Her apartment was in Lincoln Square, all the way across town from Kips Bay where she worked, and though she was physically fit and enjoyed exercise, there came a point when you just had to give in to your body’s demand for rest. Today, though, Beth stumbled past one subway station after another, not seeing the crowds around her, not taking in the crazy sights and sounds and smells of the metropolis she loved.
    All she could think of was her friend, normally so full of life and joy, now cold and dead. Unexpectedly, senselessly so.
    And Beth hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye.
    She walked the streets for an hour, roving in an approximate circle, somehow always finding herself back where she started. The fatigue was beginning to drain down into her legs, her very bones. Beth knew that if she didn’t get herself home soon, she’d end up being transported to hospital on a gurney. And she didn’t want to spend yet another night at her place of work.
    She headed for the nearest station, stopping automatically at a newsstand to pick up a copy of the New York Times . Cocooned in the hospital for a