Robin Cook - Shock

Then Randy had another idea. Maybe he'd say something to weird Kurt Hermann. The security chief had had Randy program his computer so it, too, recorded any and all openings of the card-swipe doors. That meant that Kurt already knew Dr. Wingate had been in the server room. What the security chief didn't know was that the doctor had only been in there for two minutes and had left the door open.

"Oh crap!" Randy said out loud. Worrying about all this was as bad as work. What he really wanted to do was get back on line with SCREAMER, so he tipped forward and grabbed his mouse.

"MISS FINNIGAN!" DEBORAH CALLED OUT. SHE WAS standing in the laboratory supervisor's doorway. She'd knocked on the jamb, but the depth of Megan Finnigan's concentration on her computer had precluded her from responding. But Deborah's voice had penetrated, and the woman looked up with a startled expression. She then hastily cleared her screen.

"I'd prefer it if you knocked," she said.

"I did knock," Deborah responded.

The woman tossed her head to rid her face of her bothersome strands. "I'm sorry. I'm just very busy. What can I do for you?"

"You encouraged me to come to you if I had any questions," Deborah said. "Well, I have a question."

"What is it?"

"I'm curious about where the eggs come from that I've been working on. I asked Maureen, but she said she didn't know. I mean, it's a lot of eggs. I just didn't realize they were available in such numbers."

"Availability of eggs has been one of the major limiting factors in our research from day one," Megan said. "We've devoted a lot of effort to solve the problem, and it has been one of Dr. Saunders and Dr. Donaldson's major contributions to the field. But the work is as of yet unpublished, and until it is, it is considered a trade secret." Megan smiled patronizingly and gave her head another one of her signature tosses that so annoyed Deborah. "After you've worked here for some reasonable period, and if you are still interested, I'm sure we can share with you our successes."

"I'll look forward to that," Deborah said. "One other question: What species are the eggs I've been working on?"

Megan did not answer immediately but rather returned Deborah's stare in a manner that made Deborah feel as if the lab supervisor was gauging Deborah's motives. The pause was long enough for Deborah to feel uncomfortable.

"Why are you asking this?" Megan questioned finally.

"As I said, I'm just curious," Deborah responded. Megan's responses to her simple questions were answers in themselves. Deborah felt she was not going to get a straight answer and at that point wanted to leave. She had the sense that her further questioning would only draw unwanted attention.

"I'm not immediately sure which protocol Maureen is working under," Megan said. "I'd have to look it up, but at the moment I'm too busy."

"I understand," Deborah said. "Thank you for your time."

"Don't mention it," Megan responded. She smiled insincerely.

Deborah was relieved to return to her microscope. Going to the supervisor's office had not been a good or particularly productive impulse. Deborah went back to work but had managed to enucleate only one oocyte when her curiosity, heightened by her short conversation with Megan, got the best of her again. Merely looking at the mass of oocytes in the microscopic field begged the question about their origin, especially if they were human eggs as Deborah suspected.

Leaning back, Deborah gazed over at Mare, who was ignoring her as she'd essentially been doing since the verbal skirmish with Paul Saunders over the eggs' identity. A quick glance around the huge lab convinced Deborah that none of the dozen or so people toiling away were paying her any heed either.

Grabbing her purse as if she intended to go to the ladies' room, Deborah slid off her stool and headed out into the main corridor. Believing she'd only be working at the Wingate for that one day, she decided the eggs' origin was too much of a mystery to ignore. She didn't know if she could sleuth it out, but she thought she'd learn what she could while she had the chance.

Deborah walked down the corridor in the direction of the central tower until she reached the last of the three doors leading from the corridor into the lab. Leaning into the lab, she could see Mare a good distance away, hunched over her scope. To Deborah's immediate right was the walk-in incubator where Mare had been going for the petri dishes full of eggs. Deborah went to its glass door, slid it open, and stepped inside.

The air was warm and moist. A large wall-mounted thermometer and humidistat indicated it was exactly 98.6°F with one hundred percent humidity. Shelves for the petri dishes lined both sides of the narrow room. At the rear was the dumbwaiter, but it was a far cry from its initial incarnation when it had served to bring food up to the wards from the institution's basement kitchen. It was made of stainless steel instead of the usual wood, with a glass door and glass shelves. For a dumbwaiter it was large, about the size of a highboy chest of drawers. It also had its own auxiliary heat and humidifying source to make sure it, too, stayed at the proper temperature and humidity.

Deborah pushed on the dumbwaiter to see if it would move enough to give her a view down the shaft, but it was rock solid. It was obviously a highly engineered piece of equipment. Deborah stepped back and eyed the unit. She guessed the back of the shaft was common with the wall of the main corridor.

Leaving the incubator, she went back out into the main hall and gauged where the dumbwaiter shaft was located. Then she paced off the distance to the stairwell near the fire door to the central tower. Using the old metal stairway, she climbed up to the third floor. When she opened the door she was surprised.

Although she vaguely remembered Dr. Donaldson saying the vast old institution, save for the small portion occupied by the Wingate, was like a museum, she was unprepared for what she was looking at. It was as if sometime in the nineteen-twenties everybody, professional staff and patients alike, had just walked out leaving everything behind. There were old desks, wooden gurneys, and antique-appearing wheel chairs lining the dark hall. Huge cobweb-like strands hung like garlands from Victorian light fixtures. There were even old, framed Currier and Ives prints hanging askew on the walls. The floor was covered with a thick layer of dust and pieces of plaster that had fallen from the shallowly vaulted ceiling.

Superstitiously Deborah covered her mouth and tried to breath shallowly as she paced off the distance from the stairwell. She knew intellectually that any of the tubercular organisms and any of the other miasma that had at one time roamed the halls were long gone, but she still felt vulnerable and uneasy.

Once she had an approximate fix on where the dumbwaiter shaft was, she entered the nearest door. Not unexpectedly, she found herself in a windowless room which had served as a butler's pantry complete with cupboards full of institutional dishes and flatware. There were even some old warming ovens with their doors ajar. In the semidarkness they looked like huge dead animals with their mouths open.

The dumbwaiter shaft's doors were where she expected them to be. They were designed to open vertically like a freight elevator, but when Deborah pulled on the frayed canvas strap, it was obvious there was a fail-safe mechanism to keep them locked until the dumbwaiter itself had arrived.

Brushing her hands free of the dust, Deborah retraced her steps back to the stairwell and climbed to the fourth and top floor. She found the situation the same as on the third floor. Returning to the stairwell, she descended to the first floor.

When Deborah emerged from the stairwell, she knew instantly that the eggs did not come from there. The first floor had been renovated even more dramatically than the second floor to house the Wingate Clinic's clinical operations, and at that time of the morning it was in full swing with a constant flux of doctors, nurses, and patients. Deborah had to step to the side to allow an occupied gurney to go by.