The Mask

beyond her grasp.
    At the end of the afternoon visiting hours, as Carol was heading toward the elevators on the third floor, she encountered Dr. Sam Hannaport in the corridor.
    “Haven’t the police come up with any leads at all?” she asked.
    He shrugged his burly shoulders. “Not yet.”
    “It’s been over two days since the accident.”
    “Which isn’t all that long.”
    “It seems like an eternity to that poor kid in there,” Carol said, gesturing toward the door of 316.
    “I know,” Hannaport said. “And I feel just as bad about it as you do. But it’s still too soon to be pessimistic.”
    “If I had a girl like her, and if my kid turned up missing for even one day, I’d be pushing the police hard, and I’d make damned sure the story was in all the papers, and I’d be pounding on doors and making a nuisance of myself all over the city.”
    Hannaport nodded. “I know you would. I’ve seen how you operate, and I admire your style. And listen, I think your visits with the girl have an awful lot to do with keeping her spirits up. It’s good of you to take all this time with her.”
    “Well, I’m not angling for a testimonial dinner,” Carol said. “I don’t think I’m doing any more than I have to do. I mean, I’ve got a responsibility here.”
    A nurse came along, pushing a patient in a wheelchair. Carol and Hannaport stepped out of the way.
    “At least Jane seems to be in good physical shape,” Carol said.
    “Like I told you on Wednesday—there were no serious injuries. In fact, because she is in such good condition, she presents us with a problem. She doesn’t really belong in a hospital. I just hope her parents show up before I’m forced to discharge her.”
    “Discharge her? But you can’t do that if she has nowhere to go. She can’t cope outside. For God’s sake, she doesn’t even know who she is!”
    “Naturally, I’ll keep her here as long as I possibly can. But by late tonight or tomorrow morning, all of our beds are probably going to be full. Then, if the number of emergency admissions is greater than the number of discharges already scheduled, we’ll have to look around for a few other patients who can be safely released. Jane’s bound to be one of them. If some guy’s brought in here with a cracked skull from an auto accident, or if an ambulance delivers a woman who’s been stabbed by a jealous boyfriend, I can’t justify turning away seriously injured people while I’m keeping a perfectly healthy girl whose worst physical problem is a contusion on her left shoulder.”
    “But her amnesia—”
    “Is something we can’t treat anyway.”
    “But she has nowhere to go,” Carol said. “What would happen to her?”
    In his calm, soft, reassuring voice, Hannaport said, “She’ll be okay. Really. We’re not going to just abandon her. We’ll petition to have her declared a ward of the court until her parents show up. In the meantime, she’ll do just as well at some minimal-care facility as she would do here.”
    “What facility are you talking about?”
    “Just three blocks from here, there’s a home for runaway and pregnant teenage girls, and it’s far cleaner and better managed than the average state institution.”
    “The Polmar Home,” Carol said. “I know it.”
    “Then you know it’s not a dungeon or a dump.”
    “I still don’t like moving her out of here,” Carol said. “She’s going to feel as if she’s being shunted aside, forgotten, and left to rot. She’s on very shaky ground already. This’II scare her half to death.”
    Frowning, Hannaport said, “I don’t like it much myself, but I truly don’t have an option. If we’re short on bed space, the law says we’ve got to consider degrees of need and take in those patients who have the most to lose by being denied care or by having treatment delayed. I’m in a bind.”
    “I understand. I’m not blaming you. Dammit, if someone would just come forward to claim her!”
    “Someone might, any minute.”
    Carol shook her head. “No. I’ve got a feeling it’s not going to be that easy. Have you told Jane yet?”
    “No. We won’t make the petition to the court sooner than Monday morning, so I might as well wait until tomorrow to explain it to her. Maybe something'll happen between now and then to make it unnecessary. No use worrying her until we have to.”
    Carol was depressed, remembering her own days in a state-run institution, before Grace had come along to rescue her. She had been a tough kid, street-smart, but the experience had nevertheless scarred her. Jane was bright and