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illnesses or blood-clotting problems?'
    'No.'
    'Right. Here we go, then, Lisa. First of all, I want you to breathe in a little more of the oxygen.. .just breathe normally.' As he placed a rubber mask over her mouth Lisa decided that she liked Dr Frazer, that she trusted him implicitly. And he had a wonderful bedside manner. Out of the corner of her eye she saw his hands on the IV tubing, saw him position the needle of the syringe in one of the rubber ports.
    For a second she felt a moment of panic, then Leonora was beside her, smiling calmly, reassuringly.
    'Everything's going to be OK, Lisa.' Dr Frazer's soothing voice cut through her momentary fear. 'When you wake up you'll be in the recovery room. You'll probably still have a stomach tube in place. Not to worry about it. OK? Breathe away. .. Just concentrate on breathing. . .in and out.. .that's it.'
    Unaccountably she thought of Marcus Blair as she listened to the calm, professional voice instructing her— she thought of his kindness, of the warmth of his hand. Would he be waiting for her as he had promised?
    Then she felt herself sliding away, her eyelids heavy, the overhead lights blurred. 'Oh, my baby.. .my baby.' The anguished cry of longing broke from her. It was a primitive, instinctive cry from a need to protect her baby, in spite of her total helplessness. Now it was all out of her control—the whole situation. There was nothing she could do but trust those around her.
    With all the fervour of her being she longed to hold that unseen baby in her arms, that baby that had already begun the epic journey of its life—the fight for survival. Like her, it had no alternative and because of that there was an unbreakable bond between them which would last for ever. She also shared a bond with all the women who had gone before her who had given birth from the dawn of human history, and with all the women who would come after her as long as the human race survived. With them, she risked her life.
    'Marcus.' She whispered his name, the name of the man whose image was in her brain now. He was the one who had been there for her when she so desperately needed someone. With an awful, sober clarity she knew now that that was what really mattered in the end.
    'Sweet dreams,' someone said.
    The words floated over her as she drifted into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER TWO
    'You have a daughter, a beautiful daughter.'
    The lights were very bright, throwing no shadows. As Lisa opened her eyes the people and things in the vast room seemed distanced from her, as though she were looking at it all through the wrong end of a telescope. People moved about here and there in front of her. Disorientated, she looked around her, not knowing where she was. She was propped up in a semi-sitting position on a stretcher.
    A hand touched her cheek, gently moving her head round so that she found herself looking at a face that was very close—a man's face. 'Hi, I'm Marcus Blair. Remember me? It's all over. You're in the recovery room now,' the voice articulated slowly. 'Everything's fine. You've got a lovely girl. She's OK.'
    Very slowly Lisa found herself coming back to a sense of time and place, of moving out of a momentary confusion. The remarkable thing about a general anaesthetic was that there was no awareness of the passage of time, not like a natural sleep. Now it seemed like a split second only had passed since she had seen Dr Rudy Frazer injecting the Pentothal into her IV tubing. Yet there was pain—of a different type—attesting to an unaccounted-for interval of time.
    Over her nose and mouth a clear plastic mask delivered moistened oxygen. She could hear the bubbling of the vaporizer as her mind slowly identified the sights and sounds around her. There was a plastic airway in her mouth and Lisa found herself gagging on it. A hand reached forward to extricate it carefully from between her lips.
    There was a peculiar taste in her mouth, coupled with the unmistakable odour of anaesthetic gases