Terminal

Switching on a light, he and Janet found themselves in a long, narrow room filled with metal shelving. Arranged on the shelves were hospital charts. There was a lot of empty space.

“This is it,” Sean said.

“A lot of room to expand,” Janet commented.

“Don’t move for a couple of minutes,” Sean said. “Let me make sure there are no alarms.”

“Good grief!” Janet said. “Why don’t you tell me these things in advance.”

Sean took a quick turn around the room looking for infrared sensors or motion detectors. He found nothing. Rejoining Janet and taking out the computer printout sheet he said: “Let’s divide these charts up between us. I only want the ones from the last two years. They’ll reflect the successful treatment.”

Janet took the top half of the list and Sean took the lower. In ten minutes they had a stack of thirty-three charts.

“It’s easy to tell this isn’t a teaching hospital,” Sean said. “In a teaching hospital you’d be lucky to find one chart, much less all thirty-three.”

“What do you want to do with them?” Janet asked.

“Copy them,” Sean said. “There’s a copy machine in the library. The question is, is the library open? I don’t want the guard seeing me pick that lock. There’s probably a camera there.”

“Let’s check,” Janet said. She wanted to get this over with.

“Wait,” Sean said. “I think I have a better idea.” He started toward the research building end of the chart vault. Janet struggled to keep up. Rounding the last bank of metal shelves, they came to the end wall. In the center of the wall was a glass door. To the right of the door was a panel with two buttons. When Sean pushed the lower of the two, a deep whirring noise broke the silence.

“Maybe we’re in luck,” he said.

Within several minutes the dumbwaiter appeared. Sean opened the door and began removing the shelves.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“A little experiment,” Sean said. When he had enough of the racks removed, he climbed inside. He had to double up with his knees near his chin.

“Close the door and push the button,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Janet asked.

“Come on!” Sean said. “But after the motor stops, wait for a couple of beats, then be sure to push the ‘down’ button to get me back.”

Janet did as she was told. Sean ascended with a wave and disappeared from view.

With Sean gone, Janet’s anxiety grew. The gravity of their actions hadn’t sunk in when Sean had been with her. But in the eerie silence the reality of where she was and what she was doing hit her: she was burglarizing the Forbes Cancer Center.

When the whirring stopped, Janet counted to ten, then pressed the down button. Thankfully, Sean quickly reappeared. She opened the door.

“Works like a charm,” Sean said. “It goes right up to finance in administration. Best of all, they’ve got one of the world’s best copy machines.”

It took them only a few minutes to carry the charts over to the electric dumbwaiter.

“You first,” Sean said.

“I don’t know whether I want to do this,” Janet said.

“Fine,” Sean said. “Then you wait here while I copy the charts. It’ll probably take about a half hour.” He started to climb back in the dumbwaiter.

Janet grabbed his arm. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to wait here by myself, either.”

Sean rolled his eyes and got out of the dumbwaiter. Janet climbed into the hoist. Sean handed her most of the charts, closed the door, and pushed the button. When the motor stopped, he pressed again and the dumbwaiter reappeared. With the remaining charts in hand, he piled into the dumbwaiter a second time and waited a few uncomfortable minutes until Janet pushed the button upstairs in administration.

When Janet opened the door for him, he could tell she was becoming frantic.

“What’s the matter now?” he asked as he struggled out of the dumbwaiter.

“All the lights are on up here,” she said nervously. “Did you turn them on?”

“Nope,” Sean said, gathering up an armload of the charts. “They were on when I came up. Probably the cleaning service.”

“I never thought of that,” Janet said. “How can you be so calm through all this?” She sounded almost angry.

Sean shrugged. “Must have been all that practice I had as a kid.”

They quickly fell into a system at the copy machine. By taking each chart apart, they could load it into the automatic feed. Using a stapler they found on a nearby desk, they kept the copies organized and reassembled the originals as soon as they’d been copied.

“Did you notice that computer in the glass enclosure?” Janet asked.

“I saw it on my tour on day one,” Sean said.

“It’s running some kind of program,” Janet said. “When I was waiting for you to come up, I glanced in. It’s connected to several modems and automatic dialers. It must be doing some kind of survey.”

Sean looked at Janet with surprise. “I didn’t know you knew so much about computers. That’s rather odd for an English lit major.”

“At Wellesley I majored in English literature but computers fascinated me,” she explained. “I took a lot of computer courses. At one point I almost changed majors.”