Heat waves shimmered upward and outward from the blindingly white walls of County Medical Center. Inside their quivering cocoon, the sprawling hospital seemed to shiver unnaturally in the blistering noon sun.

Mary Cason parked her small foreign-make car in the space marked “STAFF,” pausing only long enough to run up the windows. Prudently, she left a small opening at the top to prevent the glass from checking in the fierce heat.

“Not that it wouldn’t be worth wetting the upholstery, just to get a good rain, “she told herself recklessly. “And it isn’t even summer, actually.”

Everything about this Central-Florida city rubbed Mary the wrong way. She didn’t like having to live away from the shore. for one thing. The smell of salt water was far more invigorating than this orange-blossom-laden atmosphere the people here were so lyrical over. Cloying, she considered it.

How much did she owe to the living, how much to the dead? There was only one possible answer for Vicky, not only as a nurse but as the daughter of Dr. Sam Blair…

Emergency Call…

Vicky Blair, R.N., knew her mother would never ask her to give up her job in San Francisco and come home if she didn’t need her desperately. But it was difficult to convince young Dr. Fred Harlan, who wanted her all to himself. It was especially difficult since the trouble at home concerned Vicky’s kid sister, Jean, and the boy she loved, Johnny Rushton. A descendant of one of Rushton City’s oldest and richest families, Johnny had also inherited the family’s streak of mental instability — or so his sister, Cora, wanted everyone to believe. She had a lot of people convinced — including, to Vicky’s disappointment, Fred Harlan. Most important, she had finally convinced Johnny, who had told Jean he could not — would not — see her again. Vicky knew Johnny was not a victim of hereditary madness. She could prove it — in court, if come to that, because the revelation that would “clear” Johnny would dishonor the memory of the finest man she had ever known: her father…