She'd now carried the imagined pregnancy-the product of rape and a mental breakdown-through the two years of padded cells, shock treatment, chemotherapy, and psychoanalysis. So powerful was her obsession that her menstrual periods had altered and her abdomen had that visible bulge.

Of all the doctors, only Gramling had helped her to a measurable degree. And to him, the case was a chaffing frustration, a challenge to his science, his ingenuity...