Quinn was looking at the monitors at the nurses' station. A man came up and took out a badge. "I'm Detective Taggart, Port Charles P.D. I need to talk to one of your patients."

"Which?"

"Zander Smith."

The gunshot wound. The police are here, she thought, suppressing a smile.

"You can talk to him," she said, "but he won't talk back. His current condition won't support it."

"Okay," the Detective said slowly, "can I leave you my card and have you call me when Mr. Smith wakes up?"

"Of course," she said, noticing that the detective said the word "Smith" in the most sarcastic possible way, as though he thought that it were not a real name. She said as much.

"I don't believe it for a minute. It's an obvious alias. Think about it, Miss, Miss," he looked at her name tag. "Miss Connor. And I know Zander Smith. If Zander wanted an alias, that's the one he'd think of immediately, and so the one he'd go with."

"It doesn't make any difference from the medical care end," she answered.

"Oh, true. Make sure you take good care of Zander Smith. Can't have anything bad happen to Zander Smith."

"You say that as if you were saying 'Ted Bundy'" Quinn could not suppress a giggle. "I've seen the patient, he looks about 16, what has he done? On second thought, don't tell me. I don't want to have even a subconscious prejudice against a patient. I have to do the best I can for him."

"You do that, Nurse Connor, but just make sure you watch out. Don't take things for granted when you are in a room with Zander Smith."

That evening, watching cars at the track, Quinn told Paul about this interesting exchange.

"Don't you read the newspapers?" Paul said. "That is exactly the name of the kid who was dealing drugs at PC High and pretending to be a student there, he is more than 16, you're just seeing him asleep and he looks younger than he is. And Dr. Quartermaine's daughter was a student there at the head of the class, and she fell for him while she was working after school for his lawyer, she wants to be a lawyer or some such thing, and she kept visiting him in jail. Anyway, naturally her family had a fit about it and tried to get a restraining order, but she made it impossible. Somehow. Either she came of age or disobeyed them or both."

"Fascinating. How long ago was this? Where is the daughter now? I didn't even know they had one."

"I don't know, not around, it seems. Maybe they shipped her off to the convent."

"Where are his parents?"

"I don't know. They never got mentioned in the papers. Though I could see them not wanting to draw too much attention to the job they did raising their progeny."

"This can't have been long ago."

"Not too long ago. I think she just graduated from PC High."

"Odd. A family with so much money, yet they didn't send their daughter to a private school."

"They are the most disorganized people on Earth. I think he's only head of the hospital because of who he knows. She may be a good doctor for all I know, but her personal life has got to be a mess. There has always been so much gossip. Their kids all always out of control one way or another."

"Their sons are alright to talk to. A.J. is friendly. The one that's a doctor is ok, if quiet."

"To talk to. But keep it at that. A.J. has problems with alcohol going way back. He even was driving and got in an accident where Jason was injured really badly, and got two years behind in medical school trying to recover. And they have a lot of antipathy between the two of them."

"I only have to deal with her. As a cardiologist, she has patients in intensive care almost always. I don't have to deal with the head of staff any more than anybody else. Dr. Jason, I think is a pediatrician, right? Even if he has patients in intensive care, they're in the pediatric ICU."

"Well aren't you set up to stay away from the baddies, my little nurse! But you'll see them now for sure."

"Why?" Quinn tried not to think of Sean. Paul had never used the "little nurse" nickname before. And she had always hated it.

"Besides Jason, not a one ever keeps their personal life out of the office. They'll be in there, alright, telling you what to do with Zander Smith. Even the old grandfather will come in there and tell you what to do. Mark my words."

Quinn shrugged. "He's Dr. Jones' patient, I'm just going to go with what Dr. Jones says."

"That assumes they respect the rules of ethics. They could easily try to get to you to go around Dr. Jones. You're in exactly the position they will see as vulnerable."

A car whizzed by.

"Thanks for the warnings," she said. "I think I'll run one of the cars. A drive at 100 m.p.h. is starting to sound like a cake walk compared to work."