Romy, capped, masked, and garbed in surgical green, stood between Betsy and Joanna at the stainless steel sink and learned how to scrub. Betsy's other scrub nurse had begged off, refusing to leave her five-year-old son to open his Christmas presents without her. That left Romy to fill in.

"Work the lather into the skin," Betsy was saying, her voice slightly muffled by her surgical mask, "especially between the fingers and around the nails."

"I don't know if I can do this," Romy said. She was shaking inside. "It's not the blood or the cutting, it's just that I've never even seen - "

"You'll be fine," said Joanna to her right. "I'll handle the technical stuff. The most you'll have to do is hang on to a retractor while - "

"She's crashing!" cried an accented voice from the operating room. "Something's happened!"

"Oh, God, her uterus!" Betsy said. "It's ruptured!" She grabbed three packets of sterile gloves and handed them out. "Just put them on! Forget about gowns and sterile procedure. We'll worry about sepsis later. Right now we've got to move or we'll lose her!"

The next ten minutes were a crimson-tinged blur through which Romy watched Betsy and Joanna work like a single four-armed organism. Their communication seemed almost telepathic as Joanna would slap an instrument into Betsy's palm as soon as she thrust out her hand. Romy repressed a cry of anguish as Betsy cut quickly through Meerm's abdominal wall, releasing a torrent of blood that gushed down her flanks and soaked the table. Joanna said something about a uterine artery and Betsy was calling for suction but Romy's eyes were locked on the glistening bloody dome of Meerm's uterus floating in that sea of red. And the surreal aspect of being able to glance up at the TV monitor suspended in a corner and view the scene from a different angle. And then Betsy was cutting into that muscular sack, reaching through the slit and pulling out a limp, bloody, silent baby. She held it up by its feet, slapped it once, then again, and with that the little arms jerked outward and the baby emitted a piercing cry. And then Betsy was clamping and cutting the cord as she called for Zero or Patrick, she didn't care who, to get down here and take charge of this baby because she needed everyone here to help her stop Meerm's hemorrhaging before she died.

Seconds later, Patrick, looking even more frightened than he had after they'd been run off the Saw Mill, stumbled through the doors into the OR.

  "What do Ido ?" Patrick said as Joanna deposited the squirming, squalling, scrawny, blood-slippery bundle of baby into his arms. It terrified him. God, what if he dropped it? "I don't know a thing about babies! I've never - "

"No Butterfly McQueens allowed," the nurse told him. "Madhuri will talk you through it." Then she turned back to the furious activity on the operating table.

Patrick turned to the anesthetist. "Madhuri?"

"Take it to the table over there," she replied in a voice that was at once lilting and rapid fire. "There's a basin of warm water. Rinse it off, wipe it down, and then wrap it tightly in one of the blankets."

"But - "

"Hurry! Get it wrapped up! You don't want hypothermia! I'd help you but I can't leave - " She glanced at a monitor and called out, "Heart rate up to one-sixty!"

Gingerly cradling the slippery baby in his arms, Patrick stepped to the cleaning table and placed it on a towel. And now, as it screamed and thrust out its skinny limbs, he could see that it was a girl. He dipped a towel in the basin of warm water and began wiping away the blood and clinging membranes. This caused an escalation in the wails. She was so small, so fragile looking. He hoped he didn't rub too hard and break something, but he kept it up, working as quickly as he could. As soon as she was reasonably clean, he found a soft blanket at the rear of the table and wrapped it around her.

He looked over to Madhuri to ask, Now what? but she was busy hanging a new IV bag, a small, red one, on an IV pole so loaded with infusion bags it looked like a Christmas tree. The baby was still crying so he lifted her into his arms - he felt a little more confident now that she was dry and blanket wrapped - and held her tight against him.

Amazingly, her wails tapered off. And now that he had a chance to look at her, he marveled at how human she looked. He'd never seen a real live newborn. He'd seen photos, of course; whenever the associates at his old firm had entered fatherhood, they always brought in pictures taken right after birth showing these homely, scrunched-up elfin faces that everyone pronounced beautiful. But this babywas beautiful. Maybe because she hadn't been extruded through a birth canal. A nice symmetrical face, a tiny nose, little bow lips, a light down of hair on her head but none on her body. Damn, she looked human. More so than some of those associates' kids.

He turned to look at the operating table and met Romy's dark eyes, the only part of her face visible between the cap and the mask.

"How's Meerm doing?" he asked.

Betsy stood next to Romy, and answered without looking up. "I clamped the big bleeder but she's not out of the woods yet. She damn near bled out. We've got packed red cells and volume expanders running full blast, and that should bring her pressure back."

"Patrick," said Zero's voice over the loudspeaker, "hold up the baby so we can get a good view."

Patrick turned, loosened the blanket, and lifted her toward the camera lens pointed his way from the balcony. Zero had got the video system working in time; now he seemed to have mastered it. Patrick glanced at the monitor and saw himself, viewed from above, holding the baby.

"Boy or girl?" Romy asked as Patrick turned back their way.

"Girl. A beauty."

Betsy's head snapped up. "Abeautiful girl?"

"A real doll."

Patrick saw the confusion in Betsy's eyes and was framing a question about it when Madhuri began shouting.

"V-fib! She's in V-fib!"

  Oh, no! Zero felt a pang as he saw the sudden frenzied activity around the operating table on the computer screen. You can't lose her. She just became a mother.

He watched with growing dismay as Betsy performed CPR on Meerm's chest, then applied the defibrillator paddles, shocking her heart again and again. His eyes drifted from the painful scene to the thumbnail feeds he'd accessed from the hospital's security cameras - an easy task once he'd got the hang of the program. Almost five in the morning and all quiet at Nassau County Community Hos -  Zero stiffened as he saw two Jeeps and a van pull up at the emergency room entrance. No audio, but the way the vehicles rocked on their springs meant they'd been moving fast.

Most likely nothing, he told himself, but he kept watching, and his gut began a quick crawl when he saw six men in full SWAT gear pile out onto the pavement. He couldn't see their faces through their lowered visors but he spotted "FBI" on the back of one of them. He didn't believe that for an instant. This was SIRG through and through, and maybe Portero himself.

He glanced at the OR feed - Betsy was still laboring over Meerm's inert, supine form - then at his upload indicator for the digital movie of the birth. Almost complete. But now he had to slow the invaders, mislead them, divert them.

As Zero slipped the ski mask back over his head, he had an idea...