He leaned back with a sigh and pulled on his Brooklyn Lager. Okay, patients frequently got dropped from clinical trials because some underlying condition suddenly manifested itself and made them unsuitable trial subjects. In fact, that was preferable to keeping them in a study when they were no longer appropriate. But the thing about clinical trials was, there always had to be a compelling, fully explained reason for terminating a test subject. Otherwise you could just "terminate" non-responsive participants and skew the results. No reason was given here. He thought again about the "one week of sunshine," and as a long shot checked to see if anyone had been admitted this week. Nada, but again that was reasonable. The entire study was wrapping up. Which meant, in short, that he had nothing to work with in terms of people. All he had were dates and encrypted names. What now? He finished the beer and was preparing to go off-line when a drop-down screen flickered NEW DATA. He was being directed to the new applicants' "sunshine" page. He clicked back, then stared at the screen. A name had appeared. He couldn't believe his luck. For some unknown reason, they must still be adding new test subjects at this late date in the trials. NINA HAMPTON. Finally he had a name. This was an incredible stroke of... Wait. A second name was appearing now, the letters popping up one by one as they were being typed in. He rolled the mouse to print, and felt his hopes surge. Then his heart skipped a beat. The second name was . . . ALEXA HAMPTON. Jesus, could it be? No way. Too big a coincidence. But wait, the other was Nina Hampton. Isn't that the name of her Brit mum? That unredeemable piece of work. Impossible. If it was the Ally Hampton he knew, she was a woman he still thought of every day. It went back to when they were both undergraduates. She was taking a degree in architecture at Columbia and he had just switched from premed to the Columbia School of Journalism. Wasn't there a Cole Porter lyric about an affair being too hot not to cool down? They undoubtedly were in love, but they both were too strong-willed to cede an inch of personal turf. It was a combustible situation. When they decided to go their own way, it was done under the agreement that they would make a clean break and never see each other again. Be adult and hold your head high and look to the future. No recriminations and no second thoughts. In respecting that agreement, he had gone out of his way not to keep track of her. He particularly didn't want to know if she'd gotten married had a family, any of it. Thinking back now, he remembered that she had had some kind of heart condition. She refused to talk about it, and now he couldn't remember exactly what it was. But that could possibly explain her entry into the clinical trials, though it didn't clarify why she was only being added now, at the last minute. If it was actually her.