"What about you?"
"I think we've given it our best shot," Marissa said.
"I guess we'll just have to try our ruse in the daytime when the clinic is open."
Turning back, the two women hurried over the walkway. They didn't want to be seen from the street. But before they got to the overnight clinic side, Wendy stopped.
"Wait a sec," she said.
"This seems to be the only connection between the two buildings."
"So what?" Marissa said.
"Where are the pipes for water and heat and electricity?"
Wendy asked.
"They can't have built separate power sources for both buildings. It would be too impractical."
"You're right!" Marissa said.
"Let's try the stairwell again."
Returning to the stairs, the women descended to the basement level and cracked the door. The corridor beyond was poorly illuminated, and as far as they could tell, deserted. They listened for a few moments but heard no noises. Entering cautiously, they began to explore.
Most of the doors off the main corridor on the side facing the main building were locked. The open ones turned out to be storage areas. Eventually, to their encouragement, the corridor itself turned in the direction of the main building.
Advancing to the corner, they cautiously peered around, then abruptly pulled back. Someone was coming toward them. Almost at the same moment they began to hear the sound of approaching footsteps as they echoed in the narrow hallway.
Panicking, Marissa and Wendy ran back toward the elevators.
There wasn't much time. The footfalls were getting louder. Frantically, they began trying the doors along the way, hoping to find one that wasn't locked.
"Here!" Wendy whispered. She had discovered a cleaning closet filled with a slop sink and mops. Marissa slid inside and Wendy followed, pulling the door closed behind her.
The two women held their breath as the footsteps bore down on them. They had no idea if they had been seen or not. When the footsteps passed their door without hesitation, Marissa and Wendy breathed a sigh of relief. They heard the elevator doors open, then close. Then silence.
"Whew," Wendy whispered.
"I don't think my nerves can take much more of this slinking around."
"It's a good thing whoever that was didn't see us," Marissa said.
"I doubt if our doctor's coats would help us down here."
"Let's get out before I have a heart attack," Wendy said.
Marissa gingerly opened the door. The corridor was clear.
Venturing out, they returned to where the corridor took a bend toward the main building. No one was in sight.
"Okay," Marissa said.
"Let's go." The corridor dipped down and then up again. Thick exposed pipes ran along the left wall and along the ceiling.
At the end of that corridor, they came to another fire door.
This one wasn't locked. Pushing through, they entered the basement of the main clinic building.
A red Exit light marked the door to the stairwell. Feeling progressively more and more nervous, Wendy and Marissa entered and hurried up two flights, passing the ground floor where the janitorial staff had been working on the marble.
At the door to the second floor, they paused and listened for sounds of activity. Thankfully the place was as quiet as a mausoleum.
"Ready?" Wendy asked, putting her shoulder to the door.
"As ready as I'll ever be," Marissa said.
Wendy cracked the door against its automatic closer. The hall beyond was dark and the fluorescent light from the stairwell spilled out onto the vinyl flooring in a bright, shiny puddle. After listening again for a moment, they quickly stepped from the stairwell and let the door close quietly behind them.
The light was extinguished with the closing of the door. They waited for their eyes to adjust; there was still a bit of light coming from the streetlights outside. Once they could see again, it didn't take them long to get their bearings. They were just beyond the main elevators, near the waiting room of the in-vitro unit. This was an area of the clinic the women knew only too well.
Edging slowly down the corridor, they advanced to the waiting room itself. There the illumination was somewhat better.
Marissa and Wendy skirted the receptionist's desk, making a beeline for the doorway to the main corridor. This gave access to the doctors' offices, examining rooms, procedure rooms, and the in-vitro laboratory.
The first door they opened was to an examination room. In the dim light spilling in from the hall, the room took on a particularly sinister aspect. The stainless-steel table gleamed in the darkness, and with its stirrups, it appeared more like a medieval torture device than a piece of medical equipment.
"This place gives me the creeps in the dark," Wendy said as they circled the room.
"My thoughts exactly," Marissa said.
"Besides, there's no terminal in here."
"Let's check the doctors' offices," Wendy suggested.
"We know there will be a terminal in each of those."
Farther down the corridor there were a few dim lights from glazed laboratory doors; otherwise the whole clinic was dark.
They moved quickly but carefully, Marissa trying the doctors' offices on the left while Wendy tried those on the right. All were locked.
"They certainly are careful," Marissa said.
"I swear this place seems more Re a bank than a clinic."
"I don't think any of the offices will be open," Wendy said,. stopping halfway down the hall.
"Let's go back and try ultrasound.
I think each of the units has terminals."
"I'll try the rest of the offices," Marissa said.
"You go to ultrasound."
"Oh no!" Wendy said.
"I'm not going anyplace by myself I don't know about you, but I'm really spooked in here."
"Me too," Marissa said.
"The idea of coming in here sounded a whole lot better before we got in."
"Maybe we should go," Wendy said.
"We're not handling this well."
"Let's try ultrasound first," Marissa said.
"At least it's on the way out."
The women retraced their steps toward the waiting area. The sharp cry of a siren made them both jump. The siren got louder, then faded. They realized with relief that it was only a passing police car.
"God!" Wendy exclaimed.
"We really are in bad shape."
Passing by the receptionist's desk a second time, they tried the door leading to the ultrasound area. It was unlocked. Making their way down this narrower corridor, they began trying the doors to the three ultrasound rooms. They were able to open the very first door they tried.
"A promising sign," Marissa said. Since there were no windows from which they'd be seen, they turned on the light switch.
Marissa went back and closed the door to the waiting area and then the door to the ultrasound room.
The room was about twenty feet square and had two entrances: the one they'd just entered and another that connected to the lab. The ultrasound unit dominated the back of the room along with the examination table. All the complicated electronic components were built into a console that included a computer terminal.
"Eureka!" Wendy said as she stepped over to the terminal. She sat herself down on a stool with casters and pulled herself close.
"You don't mind, do you?" Wendy asked.
"Computers was my minor in college."
"Please," Marissa said.
"I was hoping you'd take over here."
"Keep your fingers crossed," Wendy said as she turned the terminal's power switch on. The screen blinked to life as it emitted an eerie greenish glow.
"So far so good," Wendy said.
"Ahbee!" Alan Fong, the uniformed security guard, exclaimed.
"You were right. The women have entered!" He spoke excitedly in Chinese, a Cantonese dialect to be exact. He pointed to a pinpo
int of light in the middle of a board below the TV monitors. The board was a schematic of the computer layout of the clinic.
"Where are they?" David Pao asked in the same dialect. He was considerably calmer than his cohort.
"They have entered the computer in one of the ultrasound rooms," Alan said. He punched up the ultrasound room monitors from his own computer terminal.
"Not that room," Alan said. He made another entry into the computer. The monitor screen remained blank.
"Trouble?" David Pao asked.
"Not that room either," Alan said. He entered the code for the third ultrasound room.
The monitor screen blinked. Then an image emerged. Wendy could be plainly seen seated in front of the computer terminal built into the ultrasound console. Marissa was standing next to her.
"Want me to record it?" Alan asked.
"Please," David said.
Alan slipped a tape into a VCR and electronically connected it to the appropriate monitor. He then pushed the Record button.
"How long?" Alan asked.
"It doesn't matter," David said.
"That's probably enough already."
Alan stopped the tape, ejected it, and then carefully labeled it.
"It is time to deal with them now," David said, taking some black leather gloves from his pocket and pulling them on.
Alan extracted his long-barreled revolver from his holster and checked the cylinder. It was loaded with soft-nosed bullets.
David's calm face showed the barest hint of a sarcastic smile.
"I hope they do not resist."
"Do not worry," Alan said with a broader smile.
"We can always make them resist."
"No trouble figuring this filing system," Wendy said.
"It's pretty straightforward. Here comes my record." Having typed up the appropriate commands, Wendy entered her social security number via the terminal's keyboard. As soon as she pressed the Execute button, the information-page of her Women's Clinic file filled the screen.
"What did I tell you!" Wendy said, obviously pleased. As she was about to advance to the next page, Marissa restrained her and pointed to the category of occupation.
"What's this 'health care worker'?" Marissa asked.
"A mild deception," Wendy explained.
"I didn't want them to know I was a physician. I was afraid it would get back to the General and my private life wouldn't be so private anymore."
Marissa laughed.
"I did the same sort of thing for the same reason.
"It's uncanny how we think alike," Wendy said.
"Now that we can call up individual records, what do you think is the best way to proceed?" Marissa asked.
"It's simple in theory," Wendy said.
"What we need is that diagnostic code the woman up in medical records said they had for granulornatous blockage of the fallopian tubes. We just have to find it. I'm hoping we'll come across it in my chart or yours.
It will appear as some kind of alphanumeric designator."
"We can use Rebecca Ziegler's record as well," Marissa said.
She got out the dead woman's social security number.
They scanned Wendy's entire record, paying particular attention to the page containing the pathology of her fallopian tube biopsy. By the time they'd reached the final page, they'd come across a number of possible candidates for the code designator.
Marissa jotted them down.
"Content-wise, there's nothing in here that I didn't already know," Wendy said.
"At least nothing that would tempt me to jump out the window. Let's go on to yours."
"Try Rebecca's first," Marissa suggested. She handed Wendy the social security number.
Wendy entered the number and executed. Instantly the computer responded by flashing "no file found."
"I was afraid of that," Marissa said.
"All right, go to mine."
She recited her social security number and Wendy entered it.
Soon Marissa's record was on the screen.
Wendy scrolled directly to the pathology page. Reading carefully, they spotted several notations they had also taken from Wendy's records.
"That's curious," Wendy said.
"Check out the microscopic."
Marissa began to read it again.
"Do you notice anything strange?"
"I don't think so," Marissa said.
"What caught your eye?"
"Let's see if you see it," Wendy said. Quickly she went back into her own record and called up her pathology page.
"Read the microscopic!"
Marissa did as she was told.
"Okay," she said when she'd finished.
"What's on your mind?"
"Still don't see it?" Wendy questioned.
"Just a second." She cleared her record and went back to Marissa's pathology page.
"Read again," she suggested.
When Marissa was finished, she looked at her friend.
"I get it now," she said.
"They're exactly the same. Word for word, verbatim."
"Exactly," Wendy said, "Do you think that's weird?"
Marissa thought for a moment.
"No, I guess I don't," she said.
"These reports were undoubtedly dictated. Doctors frequently dictate from rote when they are dictating similar cases. I'm sure you've heard surgeons dictating. Unless there's a complication, their dictations; come out verbatim all the time. I did it myself when I was on surgery. All it suggests to me is that there are more cases here at the Women's Clinic: something we've suspected all along."
Wendy shrugged.
"Maybe you're right," she said.
"It just seemed odd at first. Anyway, let's get back to what we were doing. I'll try running a search using some of these possible code designators that we've found in both our charts."
Going back to a system utility menu, Wendy began trying the various letter and number combinations Marissa had written down. The third one resulted in a list of eighteen numbers that appeared to be social security numbers.
"This looks very promising," Wendy said as she prepared to print out the list.
The only sound in the ultrasound room had been the barely audible click of the keyboard keys, but just as Wendy was about to push the Print key, Marissa heard the sound of a door opemng not too far away.
"Wendy!" she whispered.
"Did you hear that?"
Wendy responded by turning off both the computer terminal and the light. They were plunged into utter darkness.
For several minutes both terrified women strained their ears to pick up the slightest sound. All their previous fears had congealed into one moment. They held their breath. In the far distance they heard the muffled sound of a refrigerant compressor switching on in a lab. As intently as they were listening, they even heard a bus go by on Mt. Auburn Street, almost a block away.
Groping soundlessly, they found each other's hands for a modicum of comfort and held on. Five minutes crawled by.
Finally Wendy spoke in a barely audible whisper: "Are you sure you heard a door?"
"I think so," Marissa answered.
"Then I think we'd better get out of here," Wendy said.
"AD of a sudden I have a terrible feeling."
"All right," Marissa agreed.
"Try to stay calm." She didn't feel too calm herself.
"Let's head over to the door."
Still holding on to each other and fearful of turning on the light, they blindly inched across the room with their free hands out in front of them. They moved a half step at a time until they touched the wall. Advancing along the wall, they came to the door to the narrow hall.
As quietly as she could manage, Marissa opened the door, first a crack, then wider. At the end of the short hallway they could see weak light coming from the waiting room windows.
"My God!" Marissa said.
"The door to the waiting room is open. I know I closed it."
&n
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Robin Cook 1990 - Vital Signs Page 15
