Robin Cook - Shock

"You don't understand how nervous I was," Joanna said. "I'm lucky I was able to do anything in that room."

"How much more time would it have taken?" Deborah questioned.

"Not long," Joanna admitted. "But I'm telling you I was terrified. It's been a hard lesson, but I've learned that I'm lousy at committing felonies. You understand what we are doing is a felony, don't you?"

"I suppose," Deborah said absently. She was clearly disappointed.

"If worse comes to worst, and we are caught," Joanna said, "at least if we can prove we were just after information about our own eggs, I think we'd be treated leniently. But we certainly wouldn't be if we were caught breaking into their research protocols no matter what the rationalization."

"Alright, maybe you have a point," Deborah said. "Anyway, I've another plan. Give me the Wingate blue card!"

"Why?" Joanna asked. She eyed her roommate questioningly. She knew Deborah could be impulsive.

Before Deborah could respond Joanna's food arrived. The waitress served it and left. Deborah leaned forward again and told Joanna the story of her search for the eggs' origin by investigating the dumbwaiter shaft. She told about finding the blank, highly polished, stainless-steel door, completely out of place in the decrepit, antiquated basement kitchen. When she was finished she said simply: "I want to see what's behind that door."

Joanna finished chewing her mouthful of salad and swallowed. She gazed at Deborah with exasperation. "I'm not going to give you the Wingate card!"

"What?" Deborah blurted.

Joanna shushed her before looking around to see if Deborah's outburst had attracted any undo attention. Luckily it hadn't.

"I'm not going to give you the Wingate card," Joanna repeated in almost a whisper. "We're here to find out about our eggs. That has been the goal from the beginning. No matter how compelling you believe finding out what they're doing around here is, we can't afford to put what we're here for in jeopardy. If that door down in the basement has a card swipe like the server-room door and you go in there, there's a good chance someone is going to be alerted just like with the server room. And if that happens my intuition tells me that we'll be in deep trouble."

Deborah returned Joanna's stare irritably, but as the seconds ticked by her expression softened as did her indignation. Although she didn't like to hear it, what Joanna was saying had the ring of truth. Still Deborah felt frustrated. A few minutes earlier she had thought she had two equally promising avenues of approach to what she thought was an important mystery. Her intuition was loudly proclaiming that at best, the Wingate Clinic was involved in ethically questionable research, and at worst it was breaking the law.

As a biologist who was aware of many of the biomedical issues of the day, Deborah knew that fertility clinics like the Wingate operated in a medical arena without oversight. In fact, the desperate clients of such clinics frequently begged them to try untested procedures. In such an environment no patients minded being proverbial guinea pigs, and they blithely dismissed possible negative consequences for themselves or society in general as long as there was the slightest possibility of producing a child. Such patients also tended to put their doctors on a pedestal that encouraged the doctors to believe, in a kind of intellectual conceit, that ethics and even laws did not apply to them.

"I'm sorry I didn't do more," Joanna said. "I suppose I let you down. I wish I hadn't been such a basket case in the server room. But I did the best I could under the circumstances."

"Of course you did," Deborah said. Now she felt guilty about having gotten upset at Joanna who actually had accomplished a rather heroic task. For all of Deborah's bluster, she sincerely questioned if she'd have been able to do what Joanna had done even if she had the computer know-how. Entertaining Randy had been an nuisance, not a stressful challenge.

"What we should really be discussing is where we should access the donor folder," Joanna said, taking another bite of her lunch.

"Explain!" Deborah said.

"I'd really be more comfortable doing it from home tonight via the modem," Joanna said. "It would be safer, but there are problems."

"Such as?"

"If our download of a secure file is detected, they could trace it back to our computer through our Internet provider."

"Not good," Deborah said.

"There's also the chance that if we wait, my access could be discovered and eliminated before we take advantage of it."

"Now you tell me," Deborah complained. "This I wasn't aware of. What are the chances of it happening?"

"Probably not terribly high," Joanna admitted. "Randy would have to have some reason to look for it."

"Sounds like we have to do it here," Deborah said.

"I agree," Joanna said. "Sometime later this afternoon. But I think we should plan on leaving immediately afterward. If Randy detects the download and figures out it is coming from within the network, he'll find the pathway. Then it wouldn't take him long to trace it to Prudence Heatherly's workstation."

"Which means we have to be long gone," Deborah said. "All right, I get the picture! Now, are you finished eating?"

Joanna looked down at her half-eaten soup and salad. "Are you in a rush?"

"I can't say I'm in a rush," Deborah said, "but the entire time I've been here, including the half an hour or so with my new friend Randy, the security chief has been staring at me."

Joanna started to turn around but Deborah quickly reached out and gripped her wrist. "Don't look!"

"Why not?"

"I don't know exactly" Deborah admitted. "But he gives me the creeps, and I'd rather not even acknowledge that I've noticed he's been looking at me. For all I know it's this damned dress again. What was a lark initially has become a pain in the ass."

"How do you know it is the security chief?"

"I don't know for certain," Deborah admitted. "But it stands to reason. Remember yesterday when we were trying to get in and the trucks were in the way? It wasn't until he came out and ordered the uniformed guy to let them in that the Mexican standoff was resolved. When we drove in he was standing next to Spencer. Do you remember him?"

"Not really," Joanna admitted. "Remember, my attention was taken by Spencer at the moment, when I had the distorted idea he reminded me of my father."

Deborah chuckled. "Distorted is right! But we're getting away from the issue. What about your food? You haven't taken a bite for the last five minutes."

Joanna tossed her napkin onto the table and stood up. "I'm ready! Let's go."

EXCEPT FOR FREQUENTING THE DINING ROOM, KURT HERMANN seldom went into the Wingate Clinic proper. He preferred to remain in the gatehouse, or on the extensive grounds, or in his apartment in the staff village. The problem was, he knew some things went on in the clinic that he did not countenance, but thanks to his military training he could compartmentalize his thinking. By not going into the clinic, it was like out of sight out of mind, and he just didn't think about it.

But there were occasions when entering the main part of the clinic was required, and his current preoccupation with Georgina Marks was one of them. Using his contacts and the few facts from her employment application form plus the registration of the car she drove, he'd put out requests for information about her. What had come back so far was confusing if not intriguing. He had originally intended to approach her in the dining room during lunch, but he had changed his mind. It had been obvious that she'd set her talons on the adolescent computer fellow with whom she'd arrived, and the last thing Kurt wanted to weather was a rejection from the kind of person she was.