Michael Palmer - The Last Surgeon

“I do. One of the brochures in the medi-spa lobby said it’s been that way since before I started working here ten years ago.”

“So, since you’re an employee of Shelby Stone Memorial, you should be able to access the electronic medical records for the spa, assuming the two facilities share the data. We can start by looking at medi-spa patients from four years ago and work our way back from there.”

“We have a computer near the nurses’ station. Let me see what I can do.”

Jillian exited the lounge and followed the circular corridor to the nurses’ station, where they had recently installed a computer kiosk. She parked herself in front of the kiosk, which was really just a laptop computer locked inside a black metal case, providing employees access to various applications including shift and medication schedules, room assignments, and of course, electronic medical records. The psych floor was one of the first to get trained on the new EMR system, affectionately known among the nurses as the Even More Redundancy application.

Jillian logged in to her account, but accessing records other than those of her own patients was clearly an ethical breach. She launched the EMR application and clicked on the pull-down menu for “Facility Name.” As Nick had suspected, there was an entry for the Singh Medical Spa and Cosmetic Surgery Center, in addition to other facilities connected to Shelby Stone Memorial. When she tried to access those records, however, Jillian got a PERMISSION DENIED pop-up dialog box, followed by a loud and somewhat startling error beep. Logging off quickly, and smiling sheepishly as if she had made an inadvertent mistake, Jillian returned to the nurses’ lounge.

“I can’t get access.”

“So much for Plan A,” Nick said.

“But wait, there actually is a Plan B. Let’s go down and check on Ray. Then I can scrounge maybe twenty minutes if the floor is still quiet. We can take a trip down to the records room and see if we can get those files the old-fashioned way.”

“There still is an old-fashioned way?”

“Last I heard.”

Within the hour, the neurosurgery resident told them, Ray Goodings would be in the OR having a drainage procedure. Then the hard work would begin-finding a way to get him off booze and into recovery.

“Turns out shipping him to the psych ward in error may have saved him,” Jillian said.

“Maybe this experience will scare him into sobriety, providing he even remembers it.”

“Every time an alcoholic stops drinking, there’s a possibility that this will be it, and he’ll never have to stop again.”

“I like the way you think, nurse.”

Taking the patient elevator down to subbasement level two, the pair emerged into a windowless, dank, and eerily quiet hallway.

“Makes Manny Ferris’s bedroom seem like a suite at the Four Seasons,” Jillian muttered. “This area used to be the very center of the hospital. I have to come down here less and less as the changeover to EMRs progresses, but I really hate it when I do. I think the records room-what’s left of it-is the last door on the right.”

They proceeded along the dimly lit corridor with their eyes adjusting to the gloom as they went.

“Who on earth works down here?” Nick asked.

“I’ve only met him a couple times. The Mole, they call him,” Jillian said, “but his real name is Mollender. Saul Mollender, I think. I heard that when the whole EMR unit was created and moved to the top two floors of the Corwin Building, he just stayed.”

“A dinosaur.”

At the corridor’s end was a classroom-style door with a frosted-glass windowpane, upon which, painted in peeling letters, were the words RECORD ROOM. Jillian opened the door without bothering to knock. It was a cavernous space, made somewhat claustrophobic by a drop ceiling and row upon row of stacked cardboard storage cartons and tall metal shelving units, a number of which were still packed with color-coded patient records. The only other furniture in the room was a slate-colored fiberboard desk, positioned directly in front of the entrance.

Saul Mollender sat in his chair behind the desk. There was a large stack of records piled neatly on top of the otherwise uncluttered surface. No photos, no pictures on the wall, no calendar. The topmost patient record folder was flipped open and Mollender, cadaverously thin, with graying hair and wire-rimmed glasses, appeared to be entering data from it into his computer.

“Can I help you?” he asked, not bothering to look up from his work. His voice was nasally and his tone unfriendly.

“Yes,” Jillian said. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but-”

Mollender cut her off. “No, you’re not really sorry. You’re here, aren’t you? If you were really sorry, you would have acted on that fact and left me alone.”

For a moment, Jillian was speechless.

“Well, yes, but what I mean to say is that I’m trying to access some records, but the system won’t allow me.”

“Name?”

“Of the patient?”

At this Mollender groaned and closed the file he was examining. As he looked up at Jillian, he took off his oval spectacles, the lenses nearly as large as his owl-like eyes.

“ Your name.”

“Jillian. Jillian Coates, R.N. Seventh floor.”

Mollender put his glasses back on and keyed her name into his computer.

“What records?”

“The patient?”

Again, Mollender groaned.

“Do you see this stack of paper?” he said. He tapped his index finger repeatedly on the file of folders. His tone seemed even more annoyed than before.

“Yes.”

“Well, these aren’t going to key themselves into our system, despite what the optical character recognition software people seem to think. So, I don’t really have time for your lack of clarity, Ms. Coates. Facility . What facility’s records are you trying to access?”

“Oh, right. The records are from the Singh Medical Spa and Cosmetic Surgery Center. It’s jointly owned by-”

Mollender cut her off again. “I know what it is. But you can’t see them.”

“Yes, I know I can’t see them, that’s why I’m here.”

“No, by ‘can’t see them’ I mean not authorized to see them. Do not have the proper permission-that kind of can’t see them.”

“But aren’t the records in our system?”

“Well of course they are,” he said, as though she had just asked if air was necessary to breathe. “They’re in our system assuming they’re not more than ten years old, and my dwindling staff and I haven’t keyed them in manually yet. Manual data entry, if you didn’t already know, is very error prone. Which is why DISTRACTIONS ARE DEADLY, or did you not read the sign.” He pointed behind them, where a handwritten sign taped to the door read precisely that: distractions are deadly. “But despite our archaic methods of record management, we have what is known as a firewall. Ever heard of it?”

“Computer security,” Nick said.

“Who’s the boy genius?” Mollender quipped.

“Dr. Nick Garrity,” Jillian said, no longer bothering to disguise her growing irritation. “So what can I do to get access to the files?”

“Well, you could go get a job there. I hear they’re hiring.”

“Cute,” Jillian countered. “Now I understand all those employee-of-the-month awards on that empty wall over there.”

She found herself purposely leaning over Mollender’s desk, getting into his personal space. The man really was pathetic. She had never hit a person before, but the Mole was inspiring such thoughts.

“What else can we do?” Nick asked.

“It’s a firewall, sir,” Mollender reiterated. “That means no access unless authorized. So unless in your spare time you or Ms. Nurse here are hobbyist computer hackers, you’re S.O.L.”