Pandemonium

stubbornly refuse our help.” Her voice, too, was as he remembered it: cigarettes and Switzerland. The driver, a trim, fortyish man dressed in a tuxedo, hefted an oldfashioned wooden wheelchair from the car’s voluminous trunk and set it up beside the car. “Hi, I’m Frederick,” he said. He’d just gotten Dr. Wolff into the chair when headlights slewed into the entranceway. A small white MG

skidded to a stop just inches from the Mercedes’ rear bumper. A young woman in a sleek red dress hopped out from behind the wheel and ran around the back of the sports car, somehow managing to move gracefully in six-inch clogs. “Sorry I’m late!” she said. Her black hair seemed to shine in the rain. The dress was some kind of silky wrap, tied at the hip, that threatened at any moment to become not a dress at all.

“And this is Margarete,” Dr. Wolff said.

Frederick leaned close to Dr. Randolph’s ear. “We’re getting a bit wet,”

he said.

Dr. Randolph came to himself and hopped forward to lead them through the sliding doors. “We’ve got her locked in one of the observation rooms. I told her we lost the keys, as you suggested on the phone, but she’s not very happy. She’s, uh, throwing a bit of a tantrum.”

“What does she look like?” Margarete asked.

“Just like in the papers—little girl, maybe ten years old, white nightgown. Beautiful long curls.” He turned right and led them into the oncology wing. “She looks like Shirley Temple.”

“Has she kissed or touched any of the patients?” she asked.

“One, we think,” Dr. Randolph said.

“You think?” Frederick said.

“We’re not sure if the girl did it, or if the excitement was too much for the woman. She was very old.” He suddenly realized what he’d said, but Dr. Wolff didn’t seem to take offense. “Anyway, we can’t get in there with her.”

“She’s still in the room with the patient?” Dr. Wolff said. Dr. Randolph winced inwardly. “We had no choice. That was the room the girl was in when we found her.”

They heard pounding, then shouting. A high-pitched voice yelled, “Or else, mister!”

A small crowd of nurses, orderlies, and patients had gathered in the hallway outside the room, but they were standing well back from the door and the door’s little window. The door shook every time the girl inside kicked it. Frederick said, “Step aside, please! Thank you!”

“Dr. Randolph?” Margarete said. He turned and forced his eyes to stay on her face. The neck of her dress seemed to plunge almost to her navel.

“We need to get these people out of harm’s way,” she said. He nodded.

“So why don’t you do that?”

“Of course, of course.”

After Dr. Randolph had cleared the hallway—twenty feet of it, at least—

he came back to find Dr. Wolff paging through a small notebook, and Margarete and Frederick conferring in low voices. Were they married? he wondered. Dating? Perhaps they were only colleagues.

“It’s the Long Island girl, all right,” Frederick was saying. “I’d recognize those cheekbones anywhere.” He leaned against the wall beside the door, arms crossed. “God only knows how she gets across the city barefoot and in a nightgown with nobody seeing her. Or into the damn hospital.”

“No one reads our alerts,” Margarete said.

“Dr. Randolph does,” Dr. Wolff said without looking up. He hadn’t realized she’d seen him return. “And for that we are thankful.”

Inside the room the girl kicked and yelled something Dr. Randolph couldn’t make out.

“We have to move before the demon damages the girl,” Dr. Wolff said.

“So the question: temporary or permanent?”

“She’s done this for three years,” Margarete said. “She’s paid her dues.”

“I agree,” Frederick said.

“Temporary or permanent what?” Dr. Randolph asked. “Exorcism?”

“Let me out of here!” the girl yelled.

“To use a word freighted with misunderstanding,” Frederick said.

“But why wouldn’t you choose permanent?” Dr. Randolph sounded exasperated. Dr. Wolff opened her purse. “How heavy would you say she is, Doctor?

Forty pounds? Forty-five?”

“About that.”