by Adams, M. L.
“Um, one question though,” I said. “Where do we have to go?”
“The hospital,” she answered. “It’s time to get that medical record.”
19
An hour later, we arrived in Denver. It was a few minutes after five. Having spent all night thinking about how to hack the CPH network, Sarah used the drive to take a nap. I spent most of it stealing glances at her out of the corner of my eye. And wondering what in the world I had gotten myself into.
“So, you didn’t really have plans tonight?” Sarah asked after she woke up.
“You sound surprised.”
“I don’t know. Guess I figured you were popular. Going with Katherine to homecoming and all.”
“Was popular,” I said. “But even then, it was only because I played football. Now? I’m a social pariah. In fact, you’re taking a huge risk being seen with me.”
Sarah laughed. “Nah. I don’t really care what people think. Besides, pretty sure the school has moved on.”
“Doubt it,” I said. “Wait until they find out if any games are forfeit before you decide that.”
“Forfeit? They don’t have to forfeit any.”
Keeping one eye on the road, I turned to her and asked, “What?”
“You didn’t know? First time offense for the school. No games forfeited. They posted it on student intranet a few days ago.”
A weight, albeit a tiny one, lifted off my shoulders. “Um yeah, don’t visit that too often,” I said.
Again, Sarah laughed.
We wound through a series of side streets, then pulled into the hospital’s visitor parking lot. One look at the building, which I hadn’t seen in five years, and my stomach acid started to churn.
Cancer.
Amputation.
Chemo.
I took several slow, deep breaths to calm things down. Just like the CPH nurses taught me to do during the chemotherapy treatments. It helped. A little.
“You okay?” Sarah asked.
“Not a big fan of this place,” I said. “Too many bad memories.”
Sarah gazed out at the building. “I’m so sorry, Ben,” she said. “I didn’t think of that when I asked you to come. I can go inside by myself.”
“It’s okay,” I replied, shaking my head. “I’ll be fine.”
I climbed out of my Jeep and took another long look at the building. Stark white walls. Narrow slits for windows. It looked more like a prison than a hospital.
Sarah walked up and stood next to me. “Ready?”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go. I know of a good place we can set up.”
We walked through the main entrance and past the reception area. At the elevator bank, Sarah pressed the up button. We got off on the fourth floor and made our way down the hall to the right. Everything about the place had an air of familiarity. The pale, green walls and white, tile floors; the clean, antiseptic smell tinged with the hint of medicine. I remembered everything.
“This place is like a maze,” Sarah whispered.
“It is a maze,” I replied. “Before my chemo treatments started, my sisters and I would spend hours and hours exploring. You’d be surprised how much of the hospital isn’t even used.”
I led Sarah down another long hallway, made two additional turns, and stopped in a small waiting room. Across from the room sat a vacant reception and office area. The waiting room was small, could maybe fit six people, and had an old wood-cased television resting near the far wall. Judging by the amount of dust on the coffee table and couch, I was certain my sisters and I were the last ones in it.
“Cozy,” Sarah said.
“Yeah. Spent a lot of time here. My sisters and I could play games or watch TV in peace for hours. Never saw anybody. Figured it was a good place for us to go.”
As Sarah sat on the couch, I walked over to the television, which had no remote, and turned it on. I clicked to a sports news network just for show. The picture was grainy and seemed to be missing a few colors. I then walked back to the couch and sat next to her. The old cushions caused me to slide into Sarah’s leg. I was about to push myself over a bit, but when she didn’t say anything or move away, I decided to stay put.
“Okay,” she said as she pulled her laptop out of her bag. “The hospital will have some guest Wi-Fi that is relatively unprotected. Unfortunately, it’s useless to us. We are looking for the employee wireless network, which won’t be broadcasting.”
“Is that why we’re here?”
“You got it,” Sarah replied. “During my research, I learned that CPH has a state-of-the-art firewall. Hacking in externally is nearly impossible. However, on a message board I frequent, a few other hackers noted that CPH is using an older Wi-Fi network that has a couple of known vulnerabilities. No guarantees we can get in this way, but it’s a good place to start.”
After her computer booted, she launched a program I didn’t recognize.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A little program I wrote. It’s a combination sniffer and penetrator application. Should do the trick.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Sniffer and . . . penetrator?”
Sarah laughed, and said, “Yeah, I know, sounds bad. Basically that’s hacker lingo for an app that detects wireless networks and then probes them for vulnerabilities.”
“Any chance security can find out where we are?”
Sarah shook her head. “Nah, I doubt they will even detect it. Worst case, they block the attack or shut the network down. No chance they could trace it back to us here though.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and decided to keep quiet and let Sarah do her thing. I watched as she loaded another application that, in her words, searched for firmware vulnerabilities in the router. It then used a brute-force algorithm to scan for administrator pin codes. I rubbed my head, which was already starting to ache from all the computer talk.
Sarah seemed to sense my discomfort, and said, “Ya know, for a cyborg, you sure are technically challenged.”
I laughed. She was dead on, of course. When I was younger, I always preferred exploring the CyberLife campus or throwing the football around with some of the friendlier security guards. The extent of my computer knowledge was social media and video games.
Five minutes later, Sarah’s laptop signaled it was done. She grinned as we both looked at the screen. Displayed was the homepage for the CPH Employee Intranet.
“Nice,” I said.
“Don’t get too excited yet,” she replied. “I doubt they give regular employees access to patient records. That will be another layer deep and we’ll need a new set of credentials.”
I watched as she clicked on a link titled Patient Records. As expected, a new username and password prompt appeared.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Don’t worry,” she replied, a slight smile on her face. “I know the intranet application they are using pretty well. It’s um . . . similar to what our school uses.”
“Seriously?”
The corner of her mouth rose. “We just need to wait for a doctor or nurse to call up some patient records over the wireless network. Then we’ll borrow their credentials and do it ourselves.”
She opened a new application on her laptop. “Which is what this little guy is for.”
Ten minutes later, the laptop beeped again. Sarah’s huge grin was all I needed to see.
We were in.
Using the borrowed credentials, Sarah entered my name in the search field. She clicked SUBMIT and my profile appeared. “There you are,” she said. She downloaded my record to her desktop. Once it was saved, she clicked the file and opened it.
“That easy?” Ben asked
“Yep,” Sarah replied. “Since your record is older, before the hospital went all-digital, it’s just a scanned PDF document.”
The first page displayed my name, social security number, address, and a variety of other pieces of personal information. The file was definitely mine. Next to my name was a picture
of me when I was ten.
“Ah, so cute,” Sarah said, grinning.
I blushed at the picture, taken just before I was diagnosed. Before I lost all my hair. “Gee, thanks,” I replied.
She pushed the laptop in my direction, and said, “You drive.”
I scrolled through the pages, pausing several times to read the details. Some of the handwriting was illegible. But I was surprised how much I picked up. After ten minutes of searching, I sat back on the couch and sighed. “I don’t see anything unusual in here, Sarah. Had cancer. Lost my leg. Got poked with a lot of needles. Nothing I didn’t already know.”
Sarah rested her chin in the palm of her hand. “Well what did you expect? Some note from the doctor saying you didn’t have cancer?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Guess I spent a lot of time thinking about getting my record, and not much about what I would do once I had it.”
“Is this your doctor?” She asked, pointing at a name on the screen.
I leaned forward. “Yeah, Dr. Kaiser. He’s the one who diagnosed me. Handled my surgery ,too.”
“What about this other one? Dr. Carter?” She pointed at a second name that was prominent in my record.
I searched my memory. The name sounded familiar. “Maybe,” I said. “But I can’t put a face with the name.”
Sarah flipped back to the browser and opened the employee directory. She ran a search on Dr. Kaiser, which returned a single result. She opened the profile and a pang of familiarity struck me when his photo displayed. It was not a face that gave me good memories.
“That him?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Looks like he left the hospital about six years ago. Not long after your surgery. Doesn’t say where he went.”
“Huh, didn’t know he left,” I said. “Keeping tabs on this place hasn’t been high on my priority list.”
“Let me search a couple of these other names on your record,” Sarah continued. “Why don’t you use your phone and see if you can find out where Kaiser went.”
“Good idea.”
I pulled out my phone and opened the browser. I searched Dr. Leonard Kaiser and Denver. Various profiles and a list of news articles appeared on my display. I didn’t need to click on any of them to realize it was bad. The first hit read:
Dr. Leonard Kaiser, 46, dies in small plane crash
I clicked the link and read. The small picture included with the article confirmed it was the right Kaiser. A second picture showed a small plane smashed into a cornfield east of Denver. I tapped Sarah’s shoulder and turned the phone so she could see it. Her eyes flashed wide as she read the page title.
“Wow, that sucks,” she said. “But at least I had better luck with Carter. Look.”
The laptop screen displayed a profile for Dr. Allen Carter, the other name shown prominently on my medical record. As with Kaiser, I recognized the photo right away.
“I remember that guy.”
“This is strange though,” Sarah said. “There is almost no detail about him. Nothing about the department he was in or how long he worked for CPH. No address either. Most of the fields are blank.”
“He was around a lot just before and after my surgery,” I said. “Never said much, so I didn’t get to know him like some of the other staff.”
I angled past Sarah and pulled the laptop closer. I opened a search engine and ran a search for Dr. Allen Carter. Even using several combinations of key words, there were no relevant hits. “So, my record doesn’t show anything weird. One doctor is dead and the other doesn’t seem to exist. Maybe this was a dumb idea to begin with.”
Sarah turned to me, and said, “You give up too easy. Your record is eighty pages. We’ll go through it again later. And there has to be more information on this Allen Carter guy somewhere. Right?”
Before I could answer, the sound of an elevator chime made us both jump. We hadn’t heard or seen anyone in more than an hour. What are the odds? I thought. Did the hospital IT staff detect our hack?
I reached around Sarah and slammed the laptop shut. Loud footsteps walked from the elevator and into the hallway just outside the waiting room.
“What do we do?” I whispered.
Before I could react, Sarah turned and climbed onto my lap. She put her arms around my head and pressed her lips against mine.
“Sarah,” I tried to say, eyes wide.
“Shut up,” she mumbled.
She kissed me so hard I fell back into the couch. She followed, pressing harder.
Still in shock and more than a bit confused, I opened my lips to say something. Sarah’s tongue entered my mouth, which stopped any further protest. Once I recovered, I kissed her back, softly at first, then harder. I slid my hand through her hair and onto the back of her head. All thoughts of whomever was in the hall vanished from my mind.
At least until something banged loudly against a nearby wall.
“Okay you two,” said a gruff voice. “This isn’t make-out point. Cut it out.”
Sarah pulled back and bit her lip. She looked away from me with a hint of embarrassment in her half-smile.
Still in a mild state of shock, I glanced over her shoulder and into the eyes of a security guard. He was older, maybe in his mid-60s, and was methodically slapping a wooden baton into the open palm of his hand.
“Um, sorry, sir,” I said.
The guard narrowed his eyes at me. I realized my hand was resting on Sarah’s hip, so I quickly pulled it away.
“Yeah, we’re really sorry,” Sarah said. She turned fully around to face the guard, but remained on my lap. The guard’s eyes softened when he eyed Sarah. “We were visiting my cousin and . . . well . . .”
After a few moments, the guard relaxed. “All right,” he said. “But don’t let me catch you two again. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.” Sarah climbed off and grabbed her laptop from the table. She stuffed it into her bag and took my hand. “Come on, let’s go.”
I glanced at the guard as we passed. He scowled and clearly wanted to smack me on the head with his baton.
We walked quickly down the hall, hand in hand. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, but I wasn’t sure if it was from the close call with the guard or the kiss. It wasn’t until we stepped into the elevator when Sarah finally let my hand go.
As we rode the elevator down, we both stared straight ahead at the closed door.
“Um, sorry about that,” she said. “It was the only thing I could think of.”
“No problem,” I said. “I thought it was a great idea.” I kept my lips pressed tightly together, trying to suppress a smile.
She turned and gently punched my arm.
“I bet you did.”
20
“Carter doesn’t have any online profiles,” Sarah said. “Nothing at all. He’s a ghost.”
The second we climbed into my Jeep and left the hospital behind, Sarah had booted her laptop. I used the quiet time to process what had happened at the hospital. Not Kaiser’s death. Or even the mysterious Allen Carter. Something else was on my mind.
“Well, I know he exists,” I said. “Probably have a ton of pictures him . . . if you need proof.”
Sarah turned to me. “Ton of pictures?”
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “My sister Amanda was really into photography back then. She took pictures of everything. Drove the hospital staff crazy.”
Sarah scrunched her face.
“What?” I asked.
“Just thinking. Does she still have the photos?”
“Don’t know. Probably.”
“Can you call her?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s go to my work,” Sarah said. “I need some coffee. And it’s usually pretty quiet there on Friday night.”
We arrived at Dragonfly Coffee just after seven in the evening. The shop was small and decorated in typical coffee shop fashion, with large, over-stuffed chairs, local art on the walls, and a small stage for music or poetry in the corne
r. The lights were dim and an alternative rock station played softly on the stereo. I immediately liked the place. It was quieter and cozier than the Starbucks near our school.
There were two customers, sitting together at a small table by the window. A bored looking barista, who Sarah introduced as Ted, sat behind the counter wearing headphones and reading a book. While Sarah chatted with him and ordered our drinks, I called my sister Amanda.
“Ben?”
“Hey, sis,” I said. Her voice was hard to hear. It sounded like she was in a bar or club.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m out with friends. One sec.”
I heard footsteps as the background noise slowly faded. A moment later, she said, “That better?”
“Yeah, that’s good,” I replied.
“Ben, I heard about Megan.”
I sighed. Several minutes after I hung up with my mom, she had called both of my sisters to enlist their help in checking up on me.
“Yeah, sorry I didn’t call you back,” was all I could think to say.
“I can’t believe it, Ben. Are you . . . okay?”
“Yeah, I’m all right,” I said. “Look, I don’t really want to talk about it.”
After a pause, Amanda replied, “Sorry. So what’s up?”
I explained what I needed. Amanda told me she kept all her photos in an old online photo account. She gave me the username and password.
“You sure you’re okay, Ben?” she asked again as I was about to hang up.
“Yeah, sis, I’m okay.”
“I can come home this weekend if you need me to.”
Amanda went to school at Boston University. Coming home wasn’t as simple as she made it sound. But I appreciated the offer.
“You don’t need to. I’m fine. Really.”
“Okay, Benjamin. Call me if you need anything else. Okay?”
I said that I would and then hit END on my phone, just as Sarah walked up with two cups of coffee.
“That was fast,” she said, handing me a cup.
“Yeah, she was out with friends,” I replied. “In a hurry I guess.”
As Sarah took a sip from her mug, I used her laptop to log into my sister’s photo account. She whistled softly as the screen filled with thumbnail images.
