He opened his eyes and saw the creamy gloss surface of a ceiling and knew at once he was in a hospital. Without moving his head he let his fingers explore the clean smelling sheets, the hospital bed gown tied around his neck.

A footstep sounded. A nurse looked down at him with a quiet smile. "Feel all right?" she asked.

He dipped his head in an almost imperceptible nod. The nurse went away. There was a swish of wind as the door closed behind her, but he didn't bother to turn his head to look.

After several minutes the swish of the door sounded again. More than one pair of footsteps came toward the bed. Two men, probably doctors, looked down at him.

"How's the patient today?" one of them asked.

"Today?" Lin echoed. "How long have I been here?"

"Almost a week."

It came flooding in. He could remember hours of torturous pain during which he cried for them to put him out of his misery, of at least two terrible nightmarish scenes where he was surrounded by gleaming chrome things, and the awful odor of ether.

"I remember now," he said weakly. "Will—will I live?"

"If you'd asked us that yesterday we'd have said no," the doctor said, "but—" He shrugged.

"How badly am I hurt?" Lin asked the doctors.

"Pretty badly," one of them said with grave frankness. "Broken back. Severed spine. If you live you'll never walk again."

"But I probably won't live?" Lin said.

The doctors didn't reply.

"The girl," Lin said, "the one who was driving the other car? Was she hurt?"

"Yes. Pretty badly. But she'll live."

"What's her name?"

The two doctors looked at each other. One of them said, "I believe she gave her name as Dorothy Lake."

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