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lowered the drape. “You can take out my gangrenous intestine anytime.”
    Several nurses and Lydia echoed the praise.
    John Doe still remained teetering on the edge of death and was facing a multitude of potentially lethal complications if he managed to survive the hours immediately post-op. But Will felt exhilarated. The hundreds of decisions he had dealt with, instinctively or after deliberation, were holding up.
    He helped transfer the man to a recovery-room bed and watched approvingly as the nurses reconnected the myriad of fluid and monitoring lines.
    Maxine, the exhausting hours at work, the alimony and support payments, the periods of loneliness, the truncated time with the twins, the pressures from managed care—as long as practicing medicine could deliver as it had tonight, he would somehow find the strength to deal with the rest.

CHAPTER 3
    At five in the morning Serenity Lane was dark and still. Posed in front of the vast picture window over the kitchen counter, Cyrill Davenport carefully fork-split a Thomas’ English muffin and set the toaster oven for precisely two-point-five. Davenport was nothing if not precise—obsessive, he knew some at the company called him, but he didn’t care. He was the president and chairman of the board of the Unity Comprehensive Health HMO, and they weren’t. He could see little through the darkness beyond the window but had no trouble envisioning his yard—nearly two rolling acres of grass, gardens, walkways, majestic boulders, and ten varieties of mature trees. Not bad for someone who had to wheedle a scholarship just to attend a small state school. Now the student center at that school bore his name—his and Gloria’s.
    It had been a mistake to include her name on the building, he thought now. He unwrapped a soft pat of custom-prepared butter, sliced it precisely in two, and spread each piece in concentric circles beginning at the center of the muffin halves. If he had donated a detox to the school, Gloria’s name should definitely have been on it—but otherwise, most resoundingly not. The Cyrill Davenport Student Center—that’s how it should have been. He poured eight ounces of the chilled orange juice he had squeezed the previous evening into a Waterford goblet and sipped it down as he finished the muffin. No matter, he acknowledged. Gloria gave great parties, kept a magnificent house, and handled the help impeccably. So what if she was too sloshed most of the time to be much of a wife?
    Davenport pulled on his overcoat and set his dishes in the sink. This day was to be a most significant one for Unity Comprehensive Health. Depson-Hayes, one of the largest electronics-manufacturing corporations in the Northeast, was on the verge of shifting its total coverage package to Unity. By mid-morning, the announcement would be made, and the seven different HMOs that had been covering the D-H employees—including several who had been pressuring Unity to join in their merger—would be shit out of luck.
    It had taken statistics and promises—a boatload of each—to convince the health people at D-H that care would not suffer despite a striking reduction in the premiums they and their employees would have to pay. Now it would be up to Davenport’s lieutenants to see to it that Unity’s hospitals and physicians made good on those promises. Davenport knew he was asking the impossible, but this was one instance, like horseshoes and hand grenades, where close would be good enough. There could be problems and complaints from the D-H policyholders, even serious ones—just not too many of them. Fortunately, although he would never broadcast the fact, both the state and federal governments had taken significant steps backward when it came to holding HMOs responsible for medical catastrophes incurred by their insured. Clearly, the powers that be understood that the HMOs and other health insurers were merely trying to make the system work by keeping costs in line. If the physicians