And here she was in a hospital bed and they’d pumped her stomach. She remembered now that they’d told her about that before she fell asleep again, thanks to something very nice they’d given her. At least her stomach was calm. In fact, her belly felt hollow, scooped out, shrunk down to nothing at all. It hurt, but it was a dull ache, as if she’d been hungry for too long.

She remembered now that after they’d pumped her stomach, she lay on the hospital gurney feeling like she’d been bludgeoned with several baseball bats. Just on the edge of blissful drugged sleep, she remembered all those mad eyes staring at her from behind ski masks in her dreams, breathed in the smell of the exhaust from the big dark car that had nearly flattened her into the concrete.

It was so very dark. She turned her head just a bit and saw a flashing red light. What was that?

Then she heard a movement. Someone was in the room, close to her. She nearly stopped breathing.

She whispered around that miserable tube down her throat, “Who’s there?”

A man, she knew it was a man, and his breathing was close to her, too close.

“Nicola.”

Thank God, it was John. Why had she thought it could be Elliott Benson? There was no reason for him to be here.

She started crying, she couldn’t help it.

She felt his hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right, Nicola. You’ll be fine. You must stop crying.”

But she couldn’t.

He rang the bell. In just a moment, the door opened, flooding the hospital room with light from the hallway. Then the overhead light in the room went on.

“What’s the problem, Senator?”

“She’s crying and she’ll choke if you don’t get that tube out of her throat.”

“Yes, we have an order for that, once she is awake.” She was standing over Nicola now, saying, “This isn’t fun, is it? Okay, this won’t be pleasant, Nicola, but it’s quick.”

After the tube came out, her throat felt like it was burning inside.

The nurse said, “Don’t be alarmed about the pain in your throat. After all that’s happened, it’ll be sore for a couple more days.” The nurse took a Kleenex and wiped her eyes, her face. “You’ll be just fine now, I promise.”

She got the tears under control. She took a dozen good-sized breaths, calmed her heartbeat. “What happened?”

“Probably food poisoning,” John said. “You ate something bad, but we got you to the emergency room in time.”

“But what about you? Albia? Are you ill?”

“No, we’re fine. So is Elliott.”

“It appears,” the nurse said as she took Nicola’s pulse, “that only you ate whatever was bad.” She eased Nicola’s arm back under the covers. “The senator believes it might have been a raspberry vinaigrette. You’ve got to sleep now. Senator Rothman will see to everything.”

And she wondered, why hadn’t John or Albia or Elliott gotten ill from the food?

John kissed her forehead, not her mouth, and she didn’t blame him a bit for that. She wished she could have something to get rid of the dreadful taste, but she was so tired, so empty of words and feelings, that she just closed her eyes.

She heard John say to the nurse, “I’ll be back in the morning to speak with the doctor, see that she’s discharged. Oh, no, I can’t. I have a meeting with the mayor. I’ll send one of my people to see to things.”

They continued speaking, in low voices, into the hallway. The overhead light clicked off. The door closed.

She was shut into the blackness again. But she knew this time she was alone and it was warm here, nothing to disturb her except that small nagging voice in her head: food poisoning from vinaigrette dressing? What nonsense. She’d eaten so little of everything because she was excited about Albia’s birthday, the gift she’d given her, and she wanted desperately for Albia to be her friend, to accept her. She wondered as she fell back into sleep if she would have died if she’d eaten more.

She’d had food poisoning before, on a hunting trip with her dad, when she’d eaten bad meat. It hadn’t been like this.

The next morning, the doctors couldn’t say exactly what had made her sick. They’d taken blood tests, said they would analyze what was in her stomach, and tested both the senator and his sister, but nothing was found.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Beasley, John’s cook and housekeeper, had already thrown all the food away, washed all the dishes. No way to know, the doctors said. Finally they’d let her go.