Terminal

“Get out of here before I call the police,” Ms. Richmond yelled.

Sean thought that calling the police would be interesting. He could just imagine some poor uniformed rookie trying to figure out how to categorize Sean’s offense. Sean could see it in the paper: Harvard extern actually looks into his patient’s chart!

Sean stepped forward, literally eye to eye with Ms. Richmond. He smiled, pouring on his old charm. “I know you’ll miss me,” he said, “but I really must go.”

Both Ms. Richmond and Harris followed him all the way to the pedestrian bridge that spanned the gulf between the hospital and the research building. The whole time they maintained a loud dialogue about the degeneracy of current-day youth. Sean had the feeling he was being run out of town.

As Sean walked across the bridge he recognized how much he would have to depend on Janet for clinical material pertaining to the medulloblastoma study, provided, of course, he stayed.

Returning to his fifth-floor lab, Sean tried to lose himself in his work to repress the anger and frustration he felt toward the ridiculous situation he found himself in. Like the empty room upstairs, Helen’s chart didn’t have anything in it to get upset about. But as he cooled down, Sean was able to acknowledge that Ms. Richmond did have a point. As much as he hated to admit it, the Forbes was a private hospital. It wasn’t a teaching hospital like the Boston Memorial, where teaching and patient care went hand in hand. Here, Helen’s chart was confidential. Yet even if it was, Ms. Richmond’s fury was hardly appropriate for his infraction.

In spite of himself, within an hour Sean became engrossed in his crystal-growing attempts. Then, as he held a flask up against the overhead light, he caught a bit of movement out of the corner of his eye. It was a rerun of the incident on his first day. Once again the movement had come from the direction of the stairwell.

Without so much as looking in the direction of the stairwell, Sean calmly got off his stool and walked into the storeroom as if he needed some supplies. Since the storeroom was connected to the central corridor, Sean was able to dash the length of the building to the stairwell opposite the one where he’d seen the movement.

Racing down a flight, he ran the length of the fourth floor to enter the opposite stairwell. Moving as silently as possible, he climbed the stairs until the fifth-floor landing came into view. As he’d suspected, Hiroshi was there furtively looking through the glass of the door, obviously baffled as to why Sean had not returned from the storeroom.

Sean tiptoed up the remaining stairs until he was standing directly behind Hiroshi. Then he screamed as loud as he was able. Within the confines of the stairwell, Sean was impressed with the amount of noise he was capable of generating.

Having seen a few Chuck Norris martial arts movies, Sean had been a little concerned that Hiroshi might turn into a karate demon by reflex. But instead Hiroshi practically collapsed. Conveniently he’d had one hand on the door handle. It was that support which kept him standing.

When Hiroshi recovered enough to comprehend what had happened, he stepped away from the door and started to mumble an explanation. But he was backing up at the same time, and when his foot hit the riser of the first stair, he turned and fled up, disappearing from view.

Disgusted, Sean followed, not to pursue Hiroshi, but rather to seek out Deborah Levy. Sean had had enough of Hiroshi’s spying. He thought Dr. Levy would be the best person to discuss the matter with since she ran the lab.

Going directly to the seventh floor, Sean walked down to Dr. Levy’s office. The door was ajar. He looked in. The office was empty.

The pool secretaries did not have any idea of her whereabouts but suggested Sean have her paged. Instead, Sean went down to the sixth floor and sought out Mark Halpern, who was dressed as nattily as ever in his spotless white apron. Sean guessed he washed and ironed the apron every day.

“I’m looking for Dr. Levy,” Sean said irritably.

“She’s not here today,” Mark said. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Will she be here later?” Sean asked.

“Not today,” Mark said. “She had to go to Atlanta. She travels a lot for work.”

“When will she be back?”

“I’m not sure,” Mark said. “Probably tomorrow late. She said something about going to our Key West facility on her way back.”

“Does she spend much time there?” Sean asked.

“Fair amount,” Mark said. “Several Ph.D.s who’d originally been here at Forbes were supposed to go to Key West, but they left instead. Their absence left Dr. Levy with a burden. She’s had to pick up the slack. I think Forbes is having trouble replacing them.”

“Tell her I’d like to talk to her when she comes back,” Sean said. He wasn’t interested in the Forbes’s recruiting problems.

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?” Mark said.