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for the constriction that would signal marked narcotic effect. The pupils were small, but not yet pinpoint.
    “Three more of morphine,” he said. “Please get me a phlebotomy bag. We’re going to take some blood off him. Get ready to intubate him if we have to.” He toweled the man off again. “Mr. Miller, you’re doing great. Try to slow it down just a little bit more.”
    “Excuse me,” the resident whispered, astonished, “but you’re going to take
blood
off him?”
    “We are.”
    “But … but nobody does that anymore.”
    “You’re doing better and better, Mr. Miller,” Harry said. He turned to the resident. “No one does this anymore, huh? Well, we do, Sam,” he said. “Especially when someone’s hematocrit is as elevated as this man’s. Just because a method’s not high-tech doesn’t mean it’s useless. Trying to get fluid off him with diuretics often isn’t as effective as what we’re about to do. And in someone whose blood is already this concentrated, diuretics are quite a bit moredangerous. Any fluid you get off with diuretics will just concentrate his red cells even more. If those red cells get thick enough, sooner or later a vessel could clot off. Pressure, please?”
    “Holding at eighty. Easier to hear,” the nurse said.
    Harry nodded to Steve Josephson, who inserted the large phlebotomy needle into a vein with a dexterity belied by his thick fingers. Instantly, a column of blood glided down the tubing and began to fill the plastic collection bottle.
    The reversal of Clayton Miller’s pulmonary edema was spectacular.
    “I … I’m breathing … a … little … better …,” he managed after just a minute or so.
    “What do you think, Steve? Another hundred cc’s?”
    “If his pressure stays up, I would say maybe even two hundred.”
    Harry adjusted the needle slightly, and the flow of blood increased. For another minute, there was only silence.
    “Oh my God,” Miller said suddenly, filling his lungs with a long, grateful swallow. “Oh my God, I’m better … much better.”
    He was still breathless, but much less so. The cardiac pattern on the monitor had slowed to one hundred. The shape of the complexes now appeared quite normal. Two nurses exchanged looks of exuberant relief. The resident stepped between the two GPs.
    “This is incredible,” he said. “I don’t know what to say. Mr. Miller, Dr. Corbett and Dr. Josephson really came through for you—for me, too.”
    The older man managed a weak thumbs up.
    “Listen,” the resident went on, “I heard about that committee they formed to alter your privileges. If you need me to write them about what went on here this morning, I’ll be happy to.”
    “It may be a little late for that,” Harry said, “but why don’t you drop Dr. Sidonis a note just the same. He mightactually read it, as long as it starts with the greeting ‘Your Grace.’”
    There was a soft noise behind them. The three of them looked toward the doorway just as a stony-faced Caspar Sidonis turned and stalked off toward the amphitheater.

CHAPTER 2
    “Green Dolphin Street.” The Wes Montgomery arrangement. The tune started up in Harry’s head almost as soon as he had settled into a seat in the last row of the amphitheater. “Green Dolphin Street.” Harry tapped out a riff with his fingers on the metal armrest. He loved music of all kinds, but he was a fanatic for jazz. He had played bass since junior high school and still sat in with a combo when he had the time. Over the years, he had come to appreciate that “Green Dolphin Street” tended to pop into his head when he was keyed up—tense, but ready for action. He had hummed it heading into organic chemistry exams, and later on throughout his family practice boards. And of course, during the war, it seemed he was always listening to it either on tape or in his imagination. Now, for the first time in a hell of a while, it was back.
    “Full house, Harry,” Doug Atwater said,