Well, the doctor said, in at least one sense she was already lucky. They wouldn’t have to put her under complete anesthetic for the biopsy. She’d get a local and be back home by afternoon.

“Why?” she asked, relieved. “I thought it would be a lot more complicated than that.”

Her questions, she recognized, standing back, always sounded weirdly dispassionate, as if this were happening to someone else. She figured it was probably her training as a reporter. But maybe it was just a defense.

Well, came the explanation, during the preliminary exam the CAT scan had picked up a slightly enlarged lymph node near the spine, directly above the area of concern. They would be able to take a tissue sample from there instead of having to go into the bone; a far more dramatic procedure that would have required the participation of an orthopedic surgeon. In any case, soft tissue is always easier to work with than bone—easier to process and more readily converted into microscope slides.

New questions came immediately to mind: Could an enlarged lymph node really be taken as a positive sign? Was the point here merely the ease of this procedure or her long-term health?

But this time she let them pass.

There were three others in the room, in addition to her private physician: an anesthesiologist, his assistant, and a nurse. All seemed pleasant enough and she had been assured they were trustworthy. The room itself was in a secluded wing of the facility; she could hear none of the usual hospital noises in the corridor outside, not even the sound of footfalls.

The first shot of Xylocaine, delivered with a small needle, was designed to anesthetize the skin. It made possible the second—a three-inch needle from hell that went directly into the muscle.

The talk in the room was about, of all things, TV. She admitted she had always been a big fan of medical shows, St. Elsewhere in particular, and wondered how accurate they thought it was. Not very, they said—except the nurse, who found the show’s depiction of doctor-nurse relations right on target. Which led to a discussion of differences in the way women and men see the world. And that, in turn, led her to her son and daughter.

Anything but the matter at hand.

She had to wait five minutes—to be certain the anesthetic had kicked in—before she was helped into the CAT scanner and carefully positioned by the doctors.

She was aware that many other patients hated this enclosed cylinder, finding it claustrophobic. But she didn’t. “You know, I’m actually getting to like it in here,” she told them. “It’s like being in the womb.”

But now she had to stop talking: the procedure demanded absolute stillness.

The screen the doctors watched so intently showed everything—her internal organs, her skeletal structure. But their total focus was on the long needle, moving slowly toward the node. It took several minutes for the needle to travel the six centimeters.

“Got it,” said her personal physician softly.

He pulled back on the syringe attached to the needle and sucked in a tiny bit of tissue. The sample they needed was no larger than the head of a pin.

Five minutes later she was out of the machine and in bed. They made her stay there two hours for observation and would have kept her longer, if she’d let them. “Listen,” she insisted, “I got lots of better things to do.”

In fact, the anesthetic had done wonders for her disposition. She was in less pain than she’d been in weeks.

The results would not be in for another twenty-four hours.