It was different for Jackpot. For a guy like him, Emergency medicine was a gateway that led to both worlds. It could get him the money and the respect that his middle class parents had always wanted for him, and still allow him to help the people like Mrs. ______ who had little more than their pride to sustain them. He'd never be as rich as the Riversides, but he had always felt like he might make just enough of a difference in the world to be remembered for it.

He'd imagined retiring with testimonials ringing in his ears -- had been driven, now and then, by the thought of what history would see in Mrs. Jackson's little boy. But he'd never really given serious thought to what Stanley might have wanted as a testimonial. The newspaper reporters would be down there grinding out stories -- how would they describe Stanley? Jackpot tried to think of words, but all he could see was images. Stanley directing new patients for testing; Stanley offering yet another assortment of baby pictures; Stanley fussing at the bulletin board, trying to get the announcements arranged neatly; Stanley holding a cafeteria tray and eyeing an empty chair at a table where Gloria and Ernie and Jackpot were dining, uncertain of his welcome, even after all this time; Stanley trying to give his prepared speech on the hospital's nuclear plans, and giving up to speak from his heart...

"We'd miss him," Jackpot told the wind. "I'd miss him."

There were enough other staff people hanging around, waiting for news, that he kept having to respond to condolences, and she was almost ready to escape. Nanny Mil had swept into the blood bank long enough to pull Gloria aside and tell her to come to Stanley's office when she was free, and Gloria had told one of the candy stripers to get Jackpot there, but she hadn't been able to get free herself yet. Every time she tried to leave the area, Riverside Senior would find some excuse to pull her back. She edged toward the corridor, and he raised his voice to her again.

"Oh, please, Miss Brancusi, could you bring me a cup of coffee?" He gave her a look that was so patently manipulative she wanted to slap it off his face, and she decided then and there not to take another minute of it.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Riverside, but I'm fresh out of change. I'll go see if the cafeteria can send something up," she said, and headed down the corridor, ignoring it when he demurred the necessity behind her.

She went down to Stanley's office and knocked.

"Come in," Nanny Mil said, after opening the door to check on her identity. "Miss Brancusi, come in."

"Here, have a sandwich," Thelma Krackin said, steering her to a chair and putting a plate with a fragrant reuben and chips onto her lap.

EJ was sitting at Stanley's desk, with the remains of a similar plate and a box of chocolates, and little Stanley was sleeping in the playpen that his father kept stashed in the closet. "Any news?" EJ asked.

"Well, the blood helped," Gloria said. "And I heard one of the OR nurses saying that Trapper was figuring on two more hours."

"Two more hours?" EJ repeated, finding another chocolate and stuffing it into her mouth nervously."

"That's good," Gloria hastened to assure her. "A shot like that at point blank range -- I've known patients that were in OR for seven or eight hours or even more."

"But it's been nearly four hours already, hasn't it?" Thelma asked.

Gloria looked at her watch, and was surprised to see that Thelma was right. It had been five hours since Hogg had come in, and nearly nine since she had had lunch. Suddenly, she was so hungry she could hardly bear it, and she picked up her sandwich to take a bite while she nodded her answer to Thelma.

EJ shuddered. "I can't stand thinking about the operation," she said. "It's all I can do to keep myself from bursting in there."

"So think about something else," Thelma advised.

"I can't think about anything but Stanley," EJ protested.

"I know," Thelma said. "But that's not what I meant. Don't think about him in there on that operating table. Think about him doing something else. Tell us about the first time you ever saw him. Was it love at first sight?"

EJ blushed a little. "Well, not exactly. But I did think he was cute. He was so indignant about his old dentist having moved away. And I did trick him into coming in to be seen." She thought about it. "Love at third sight, maybe. When he'd gotten all his fillings done, he wanted to get all his teeth crowned, just so he could have a reason to keep coming by."

Gloria nodded, remembering. "It may not have been love at first sight for Stan, but it must have been something. It took dynamite to get him to go to the dentist, but after he met you, he just about danced out the door. I hadn't seen him that happy since..." she paused, a little flustered, but figured that she might as well go on, "Well, not since he'd thought he'd found his real mother." She shrugged apologetically at Thelma. "I'm glad you turned out to be a good friend for him, since then."

Thelma looked uncomfortable. "Well, we didn't start out on the right foot, but Stanley's such a good kid... I liked him from the moment I met him. But I guess I let the possibility of owning my own place get in the way of my good sense."

"That was my fault," Nanny Mil owned. She'd gone over to stand near the playpen and was looking down thoughtfully at the sleeping baby. "I should have known better. I just couldn't believe that thirty years of living with his father wouldn't have destroyed the boy's innate generosity. I thought we'd have to pull off a scam, and the only button I could think of to press was the maternal one. He missed his mother so much after she left. Although why, I couldn't tell you. She'd hardly paid more attention to him than his father had." She made a small gesture at the playpen. "This one's got his hands. That's just they way my Boo-boo's hands looked when he was that age."

"How old was Stanley when you first saw him?" EJ asked, curiousity eating her. With a Nanny like Mildred Winthrop, how had Stanley avoided having fun?

"Not more than ten minutes," the older woman replied, coming over to settle into a chair. "He was born at home -- doctors made house calls then -- and I had been engaged by Riverside Senior just before he'd left for Brazil, so I had been living there for oh, three weeks, before the baby arrived. Of course, Mrs. Riverside had her own nurse, she'd had a terrible time with the pregnancy, and I was just meant to tend the baby, but I had been helping out in the meantime. If I hadn't been sent out to call for an ambulance, I'd likely have been in the room during the birth. But as it was, the other nurse had just wrapped him in a blanket when I came back, and she handed him to me so that she could help the doctor try to stop the bleeding."

"She was hemorrhaging?" Gloria asked, horrified. "What happened? What did they do?"

Nanny Mil shrugged. "I don't really know. I was told to see to the baby, and not get in the way, and as I was much younger then, I did as I was told, and took little Stanley to the nursery that I had been getting ready for him. I believe the doctor had to operate right there and then, and when Mrs. Riverside was taken to the hospital she was kept there for nearly four months by a series of infections. If the elder Mr. Riverside, Stanley's grandfather, hadn't had the pull to get her penicillin, I doubt she would have lived." She smiled, reminiscently. "Now Roger Riverside -- you would have liked him. He used to come to the nursery and take little Boo-boo onto his shoulders and play with him, and tell the most outrageous stories..."

EJ was shaking her head. "You mean to tell me that Stanley never saw his mother until he was four months old? His own mother?"

"He didn't see his father until he was eighteen months old," Nanny Mil pointed out. "And neither one of them spent much time at home. Stanley Senior had war business or steel business or any business that would take him out of the country. And the Van Platt -- she was always off to Palm Beach or the desert, taking one rest cure or another. If it hadn't been for his grandparents taking an interest, little Stanley wouldn't have had anyone but me, most of the time. But his grandmother died at the start of '48, and his grandfather just lost interest in living with her gone. Without the old man pressuring them to make a go of it, Cynthia and Stanley Senior's differences got larger and larger. I can't exactly blame her for running off to Mexico. It would have taken a stronger woman than she was to stand by and watch her husband philandering. But she took the blame, for all of his blonde chasing, and my Boo-boo cried himself to sleep for weeks. I don't know that I wasn't angrier with her for making him cry or for being important enough to him to cry for. I'd only ever seen her console him once, and that was at his grandmother's funeral." Mildred frowned thoughtfully. "I still don't know if he cried when I left."

"How old was he then?" Gloria asked.

"Six and a half," Nanny Mil said, with an old disgust overlaying her precision. "He could read by then and do a bit of simple arithmetic. And he had developed a touch of asthma, so the doctors thought it best that he be sent away from home. To boarding school. At six! So of course I had to find a new position. We corresponded, though."

"And you never saw him again until you came here?" Gloria asked.

"Oh, I saw him occasionally. The families which hired me are all from the same social standing, and there were times when his father would remember to send him along to someone's birthday party, or a riding meet, where I was attending with my new charges. Have you ever seen him on horseback?" She cocked an eyebrow at EJ.

EJ shook her head. "No. I know he used to play polo, but the ponies he liked best are too old, and he says he can't really justify the expense of a new string with the baby and all. His father still plays. He gives Stanley a pretty hard time about it. Is Stanley a good rider?"

"A centaur. He got that from his grandfather." Nanny Mil sighed, "At least when his father isn't around to criticize. At one gymkhana, I saw the boy go a perfect round -- on a very difficult course, mind you -- and when he pulled into the pocket his father tore strips out of him for having a grass stain on the left knee of his breeches. Naturally, the next round was a disaster."

"I've never understood that," Gloria said. "Stanley's so proud of his father, but we get people who come in and they've known old man Riverside for years, but they say they never knew he had a son."

"Well, I suppose Roger was hard on Stanley the first, too. But he was the youngest son, and a real disappointment after his brothers," Nanny Mil said. "Not like my Stanley, who always tried to please."

"I never knew Stanley had any uncles," EJ said. "He's never mentioned them."

"Stanley never met them. They both died before he was born," Nanny Mil explained. "Roger Junior was in the Navy, and his boat was sunk by a German U-boat. And Horace, he was killed in North Africa, during some kind of raid. Stanley the first was declared four F, which pleased his mother at least, and old Roger used to say that it was just as well, as otherwise he would have had to trust lawyers to see to his interests outside the country."

"There must be a lot of them," Gloria said. "Stanley's always finding out that his father has gone off one place or another."

"At least he always comes back," Thelma said, quietly. "I know I haven't seen as much of Stanley as any of you, but we've talked a lot. He always worries when you're out of town, EJ, although he says it's not fair to you to ask you to not go to important conventions or seminars. I think he worries that you might not come back -- like his mother didn't come back. She really hurt him. But Stanley Senior comes back each time he goes off. And I don't think that Stanley dares to ask for anything more than that."

They were all quiet for a moment, thinking, and EJ got up and went over to look down at her son. "You should see Stanley with the baby," she said. "He's besotted by every gesture, entranced by every smile. He'll change diapers, you know, even the stinky ones, if I'm busy, or tired. And he never comes to bed at night until he's told little Stanley that he loves him."