Robin Cook - Death Benefit

“Pia, this is crazy,” George said. Reluctantly he came in after her. It was dark, and very quiet.

“Relax. The security cameras are out, they’ve been working on them again for days. Who’s going to come in now? I just want to check the refrigerated storage facility in the biosafety lab and take a peek at the logbook. And before you say it, I know the CDC has probably investigated all that. They might have even taken the logbook. Be that as it may, I need to make sure they didn’t miss anything.”

Pia turned on the minimal light necessary. It was a small lamp by the communal coffee machine. She then quickly checked her own office, and Rothman’s. George trailed after her like a shadow. As far as she could tell, nothing had been disturbed in either office. Pia pointed out Rothman’s desk to George. The in-tray, the few files, the pictures-everything was just so.

“See how orderly he is?” said Pia.

All George could think about was getting out of there. An air circulator kicked on and George jumped half out of his skin. He followed Pia to the biosafety level-3 room and they donned the protective gear once more. Pia used the coded punch pad to reach the lab itself. Since there were no windows, Pia turned on the overhead lights. The ventilation system was still running and there was an eerie calm in the place. Pia checked the logbook, which the CDC had not taken. There were the usual entries; the next to last one was Panjit Singh, when he went in that morning to set up. Then there was Rothman and Yamamoto’s entry. There was nothing abnormal. She then went to the refrigerated storage unit. Using a separate keypad, she was about to open it when she heard a noise that caught her attention.

“Did you hear that?” she whispered intently to George.

“Hear what?” George said nervously.

Pia held up a hand and went to the door and cracked it open. There were quiet sounds but unmistakable-voices in the lab outside. Voices getting louder.

“In here . . . c’mon,” she said urgently.

“Shit,” George said under his breath. He’d heard the voices. “Shit on a brick,” he mumbled to himself.

Silently but urgently Pia waved for him to follow her. George saw where they were heading and beat it out through an emergency exit in the far corner of the lab. The door complained when he pushed it open as it hadn’t been opened since it was installed back when the lab was last renovated. It had also been made airtight.

Pia followed close behind George. She might have stayed and faced the music had she been there by herself, but she was well aware of George’s utter fear of authority. Where that had come from, she had no idea.

The unit’s emergency door led to the lab storeroom where Pia and George pulled off their protective gear and stumbled out into the main part of the microbiology department that housed Rothman’s lab. Staff on the evening shift at the microbiology clinical lab were curious to see two young people running by, then stunned to see them followed a minute later by three figures in full hazmat gear.

Microbiology led into the anatomy department and George and Pia crashed through the connecting doors and into the familiar surroundings. As first-year students they had spent a good deal of time in the department. George was leading, but he didn’t know exactly where he was going. All he knew was that he wanted to avoid getting caught. He ducked into the darkened anatomy room, dimly illuminated by night-lights. For the benefit of the current first-year students who were taking anatomy at the time, the room was well stocked with cadavers, most covered with oilcloth shrouds. Several torsos sat upright on the head teaching table. They’d been cut across the upper chest and then halved in a sagittal section so that half the gullet and half the brain were visible. George was eye-level with the torsos, the exposed whites of their eyes seeming to glow in the half-light.

George and Pia ducked behind the long teaching table, but there was nowhere to hide. A moment after their arrival, the banks of ceiling lights flickered and came on. Three security guards in hazmat suits stormed into the room. Pia stood up and George, very reluctantly, followed suit.

The security men were angry, demanding Pia’s and George’s identification cards. They then made several calls on their radios before turning back to the students. George was cowering, Pia taking it all in stride. “You’re coming with us,” said the nearest figure to George, grasping his arm and marching him out of the room. Pia was escorted out behind him.

The group wended their way past the few onlookers in the clinical microbiology lab and down to the street via a service elevator. George’s mind was racing but he couldn’t think of any way Pia could talk her way out of this. As they walked across the campus, the group attracted a lot of stares and comments from passersby. Some of them wondered if they were watching some med-student prank.

George and Pia were taken through a featureless corridor in the hospital bowels to the security department. They walked past a bank of TV screens being monitored by two bored-looking men, down another corridor and into a small office with a handwritten sign on the door: DUTY OFFICER. Standing up, watching a couple of monitors mounted on the wall, was David Winston, the man who’d taken charge in the lab earlier that day. He recognized Pia, having helped her when she fainted in the street.

“Ah, you again. I see you’re feeling better than when I last saw you.”

“Mr. Winston,” Pia said. “My friend and I were just retrieving some of my belongings from my office.”

Winston referred to a list on a clipboard resting on his desk.

“Miss Grazdani, and . . .” He looked at George.

“George Wilson.”

“George Wilson. Not on my list. You a fourth-year student as well?”

George nodded.

“Well, you’ll be taking antibiotics too,” Winston said. “Folks, there’s a protocol we use in these situations. You broke into a secure, potentially contaminated area. I actually saw you do it myself, sitting right here. The cameras might not be operating inside the lab, but outside they work just fine. So I see two people go into the lab, and I have to send three of my guys in full body gear to go in and find you. And it turns out to be you two. So the protocol is, I make a call to the dean of students, who loves to hear from me, as you might imagine. It’s just a heads-up because my next call is to my friends at the Thirty-third Precinct, and I’ll have a full and frank conversation about criminal trespass.”

George was aghast. If the police got involved, he was screwed.

“I don’t know why you guys went in there, and I’m not going to ask. The CDC might have cleared it, but the caution tape was still over the door. Especially you, Miss Grazdani, as you were specifically told the lab would be off-limits. Frankly, I’m dumbfounded. But I’ve never understood medical students since I took over this job heading the center’s security.”

Pia started to speak, but Winston held out his hand to silence her and called the dean of students. He explained the situation. He then listened for a good two minutes and hung up the phone.

“She’s coming down. I don’t know who I’d rather deal with if I were you, the dean or the Thirty-third.”

Winston showed George and Pia into a small side room and closed the door. George was too agitated to speak; Pia started pacing around the room. She couldn’t sit still. After what seemed like an age but was in fact thirty minutes, the door opened and a tall, dark-haired woman in sweats and a ski jacket came in and shut the door behind her. Her name was Helen Bourse. She had been dean of students for almost a decade and was well liked but hardly a pushover.