"You think you've got _what_?" Stone Aimes sounded like he'd just won the lottery. "For the patient who was 'terminated'? My God, Ally, you're incredible." "Possibly. But what I know I am is very worried. For one thing, if this is the person you're looking for, the one who got dropped from the trials, it's somebody you've probably heard of, and for another, I've just had a series of very disturbing experiences. . . ." She'd called him on her cell phone the minute she cranked up her Toyota to return to the city. She couldn't get away from the Dorian Institute fast enough. After leaving Karl Van de Vliet, she'd taken the elevator up to the second floor to check in on Nina. "What's all the excitement?" her mother had asked. "One of the nurses just told me that a deranged woman with a gun barged into the lobby looking for Dr. Vee. Then she shot herself." "It's nothing, Mom. Everything is all right now." She hadn't wanted to upset Nina, but she was convinced Karl Van de Vliet had just done some major lying. His uneasy body language told her he knew a lot more about Kristen Starr than he was admitting; for that matter, Debra Connolly probably did too. "Well, thank goodness," Nina had said. "Are you going to start the procedure for your heart today?" "Not yet. I want another day to think about it. But tell me how you're doing really. I mean, are you comfortable with how everything's going here? You can still stop if things don't feel right." Ally half wanted to get her out of the Dorian Institute immediately. She didn't know what either of them had stumbled into. She just knew now that, along with the possibility of miracles, the Dorian Institute had a lot of questions that needed straight answers. She no longer trusted Karl Van de Vliet. She had seen his facade crack momentarily and what lay beneath it made her very uncomfortable. Furthermore, she thought he realized she knew he was lying. And it seemed to make him even more desperate to keep her there. "Ally, what a silly thing to say. Of course I want to stay." She'd fluffed up her pillow and reached for the TV remote. "Some of the smoke has already been blown out of my mind. I'm feeling clearer by the minute." There's surely got to be some "placebo effect" at work here, Ally thought. But still, she does seem more aware. "Okay, Mom, I'm going back into the city now. But I'll be here tomorrow and every day to check on you. Just don't . . . don't let them do anything to you that seems strange." With that, she had given Nina a kiss on the forehead and taken the marble stairs down to the first-floor reception. It was now time to find Kristen Starr. The nurse at the desk was a woman named May Gooden. The main floor had returned to normal after all the excitement, with patients passing through as they came back from the cafeteria. Ally had decided to try a long shot and see if she could pry out any information about Kristen from the patient files. She asked point- blank.