I woke up with urgency still running in my veins. I opened my eyes and flinched. Someone had left a bunch of excess sunlight in the room I was in, and it was getting all over everything. I tried again, slowly. No use. The sunlight was there and I wasn't in the mood to clean it up. Get used to it, bud.

I saw things I recognized -- the cheap industrial-grade venetian blinds and Motel-8 reject curtains of the Watt Angus Memorial Hospital. My left hand, lying on a white sheet. I noticed my ragged fingernails. Pete O'Banion, his generous rump overwhelming the thin edge of a plastic hospital visitor's chair, turned backwards for comfort.

And Condolezza Schwartz, a little rumpled and without her makeup.

And...Sherry.

All three of them were watching me with grave concern and hopeful little smiles, and thier eyes bugged with undelivered thoughts and conversation. The prospect was more than I could take. The only thing missing was a couple of Cosmos and Aftah Whom.

I groaned and retreated into blackness, the only mercy available.