e two-bit elevator
was nerve wracking; hospitals always have such poky elevators. But
eventually it came and we trundled aboard. The pilot was no big-dome. He
smiled at Nurse Farrow and nodded genially at me. He was probably a
blank, jockeying an elevator is about the top job for a non-psi these
days.

But as the elevator started down, a doctor came out of one of the rooms
on the floor below. He took a fast look at the indicator above the
elevator door and made a dash to thumb the button. The elevator came to
a grinding halt and he got on.

This bothered me, but Farrow merely simpered at the guy and melted him
down to size. She made some remark to him that I couldn't hear, but from
the sudden increase of his pulse rate, I gathered that she'd really put
him off guard. He replied in the same unintelligible tone and reached
for her hand. She held his hand, and if the guy was thinking of me, my
name is Sing Hoy Low and I am a Chinese Policeman.

He held her hand until we hit the first floor, and he debarked with a
calf-like glance at Nurse Farrow. We went on to the ground floor and
down the lower corridor to the end, where Farrow spent another lifetime
and a half filling out a white cardboard form.

The superintendent eyed me with a sniff. "I'll call the car," she said.

I half-expected Farrow to make some objection, but she quietly nodded
and we waited for another lifetime until a big car whined to a stop
outside. Two big guys in white coats came in, tripped the lever on back
of the wheelchair and stretched me out flat and low-slung on the same
wheels. It was a neat conversion from wheelchair to wheeled stretcher,
but as Farrow trundled me out feet first into the cold, I felt a sort of
nervous chill somewhere south of my navel. She swung me around at the
last minute and I was shoved head first into the back of the car.

Car? This was a full-fledged ambulance, about as long as a city block
and as heavy as a battleship. It was completely fitted for everything
that anybody could think of, including a great big muscular
turbo-electric power plant capable of putting many miles per behind the
tail-pipe.

The door closed on my feet, and we took off with Farrow sitting right
behind the two big hospital attendants, one of whom was driving and the
other of whom was ogling Farrow in a calculating manner. She invited the
ogle. Heck, she did it in such a way that I couldn't help ogling a bit
myself. If I haven't said that Farro