Robin Cook - Host

“That’s odd. I wonder why.”

“I guess the designers felt the inmates wouldn’t be interested in a view,” Lynn said, making a stab at humor. “I suppose from the standpoint of heating and cooling, it is a lot more efficient. Maybe they also didn’t want the institute to stand out too much. I mean, it looks big enough the way it is, especially with so few windows, but no one can imagine how big it really is.”

“There’s more than six pages here,” Michael said, leafing through the entire collection before going back to the first page for a closer look.

“There are twelve pages,” Lynn explained. “The last six are the HVAC plans.”

“HVAC plans?” Michael asked with a crooked smile and an exaggerated quizzical expression. “Now, that’s going to come in handy.”

“Don’t be a wiseass,” Lynn snapped. She snatched the plans out of Michael’s grasp and put them down on the table. “You can be as sarcastic as you like, but mark my words: this little treasure trove is going to be a big help when we get in there.”

“ If we get in there,” Michael corrected. “There’s still the hurdle of the thumbprint touchscreen.”

“I’m going to work on it right after lunch.”

“The hell you will!” Michael said. “You were assigned patients today in the ophthalmology clinic. I had to see mine and yours this morning. I’m not going to cover for you this afternoon in dermatology. I hate dermatology. We’re lucky you weren’t missed this morning.”

“Okay,” Lynn said soothingly. “We can talk about it.”

“Bullshit!” Michael said. “We decided you’re going back to being a medical student. That means coming to the lectures and the clinic. You know what I’m saying?”

“Okay! All right,” Lynn said. She put her hand on Michael’s forearm to calm him down. “Don’t get so bent out of shape.”

“I won’t get so bent out of shape if you hold up your end of the bargain. We have a lot of powerful people who are on our case.”

“Okay, okay, enough already,” Lynn said. She motioned back at the floor plans and pointed out the two relatively large rooms labeled CLUSTER A and CLUSTER B. “That’s where I think the patients are kept on each floor.”

“How do you figure?”

“You told me that on Ashanti’s Shapiro electronic medical record it said Cluster 4-B 32. I think it’s her in-house address, seeing the size of those rooms. I think she’s on the fourth floor, in Cluster B, bed thirty-two.”

“Maybe so,” Michael said. He picked up the plans again, holding them up almost against his nose. He was studying the first floor plan.

“Do you notice the huge room in the center that is labeled recreation ?”

“It’s hard to miss, even at this scale. What the hell is it? There’s nobody getting recreation in the Shapiro Institute.”

“The clerk in the building department and I were trying to figure that out.”

“Is it on every floor?

“No, only on two floors, one and four, but the ceilings are three stories tall. The clerk thought they might be gyms for the staff. He said that they were about the right size for a men’s and a women’s basketball court.” Lynn gave a short, glum laugh. “He wasn’t being serious. Whatever they are, we’re going to have to check them out.”

Michael nodded in agreement. “Can we eat now? I’m famished.”

For a few minutes they ate in silence. Lynn was hungry, too, but after wolfing down her sandwich she said, “When I came out of the Charleston Building Commission I realized I was in the neighborhood of Carl’s father’s law firm. I decided to drop in and see if he was available.”

Michael put down his sandwich and stared at Lynn in disbelief. “Did you see him?”

“For a few minutes. He was off to a business lunch, which was good, so there was no trouble breaking it off.”

“What the fuck did you say? You do know we could be in a shitload of trouble for not reporting the break-in at Carl’s house and messing with the evidence.”

“I know, I know,” Lynn repeated. “I’m not an idiot. I told him that you and I had gone down to Carl’s house around midnight to feed the cat, and we found the cat was nowhere to be found and the front door was worse for wear but that nothing else was missing except the cat. That’s all I said. Well, I also let him know I have been using Carl’s car. I thought he should know about the door so he can have it fixed.”

“That’s hardly justification for taking the risk of talking with him and telling him we were there. What if he reports the front door to the police, and the police want to question us? That could be trouble. It could be more than trouble, because we are going to have to lie.”

“I played down the damage to the door, and even suggested it was probably one of Carl’s friends who was worried about the cat and didn’t know I was feeding it. I seriously doubt he’s going to be calling the police. There is too much on his mind, considering Carl’s medical situation.”

“Why take the risk at all?”

“Because there were two other things I seriously wanted to talk to him about. First was about Carl. I wanted to know if anything was said about Carl having an early serum blood protein abnormality.”

“Had they been told?”

“No, it had not been mentioned, which I find strange, since there had been a formal consult by a hematologist to look into it. Obviously it is now part of his EMR. I also wanted to ask if he and his wife were going to visit. I said that if there was any way I could be included, I would like to be.”

“What was the second reason you wanted to talk to him?”

“I wanted to ask him what we should do if we find out that Sidereal Pharmaceuticals is doing unethical drug testing on patients without their knowledge. I didn’t mention anything about the Shapiro Institute, for obvious reasons, or about the anesthesia looping and all that. But I thought he would be the best person to ask this general question since he had been a district attorney in his early career and is well connected with law enforcement above and beyond the local police. I thought he would know what we would need to do. If we find out something significant by going into the Shapiro, we might not have a lot of time to sit around on our asses deciding what to do. If this is the kind of conspiracy we think it might be, they probably have a lot of contingency plans in place if a couple of gadflies like us get in the way.”

“I wish you had asked me first what I thought about talking to him. I think it was premature and taking a risk, especially after last night.”

“Okay, sorry. I was in the area, and I thought we should be prepared.”

“I believe you,” Michael said. “But we’re in this together. Keep that in mind. So what did he say?”

“He said if we found something serious to come to him! Since Sidereal is a multinational company based in Geneva and doing business in all fifty states, he’d feel comfortable going to both the FBI and the CIA.”

Wednesday, April 8, 11:38 P.M.

What’s your take?” Lynn asked Michael. They were sitting on the same, semi-secluded park bench in the inner courtyard garden where they’d sat the previous afternoon, when Lynn bawled her eyes out after learning that Carl was going to be transferred. On this occasion, it was in deep shadows, thanks to being boxed in by trees and shrubbery. There were Victorian-style street lamps placed at wide intervals along the walkway from the hospital to the dorm, but none close enough to shed much light on the bench. From where they were sitting, they could see the door into the Shapiro Institute that Vladimir had used when he had taken Michael on his brief visit.