Terminal

After hiding all the charts, Sean descended in the elevator and crossed over the pedestrian bridge to the hospital. He guessed he was being observed by camera and felt like waving to indicate as much, but resisted the temptation.

When he arrived in the cafeteria Janet was already there, sitting at a table with a cup of coffee in front of her. She didn’t look happy.

Sean slid into a chair across from her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“One of my patients is in a coma,” Janet said. “I’d just started an IV on her. One minute she was fine, the next minute not breathing.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Sean said. He’d had some exposure to the emotional traumas of hospital life, so he could empathize to an extent.

“At least I got the medicine,” she said.

“Was it difficult?” Sean asked.

“Emotionally more than anything else,” Janet said.

“So where is it?”

“In my purse,” she said. She glanced around to make sure no one was watching them. “I’ll give the vials to you under the table.”

“You don’t have to make this so melodramatic,” Sean said. “Sneaking around draws more attention than just acting normal and handing them over.”

“Humor me,” Janet said. She fumbled with her purse.

Sean felt her hand hit his knee. He reached under the table and two vials dropped into his hand. Respecting Janet’s sensitivity he slipped them into his pockets, one on each side. Then he scraped back his chair and stood up.

“Sean!” Janet complained.

“What?” he asked.

“Do you have to be so obvious? Can’t you wait five minutes like we’re having a conversation?”

He sat down. “People aren’t watching us,” he said. “When are you going to learn?”

“How can you be so sure?” she asked.

Sean started to say something, then thought better of it.

“Can we talk about something fun for a change?” Janet asked. “I’m completely stressed out.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“What we can do come Sunday,” Janet said. “I need to get away from the hospital and all this tension. I want to do something relaxing and fun.”

“Okay, it’s a date,” Sean promised. “Meanwhile, I’m eager to get back to the lab with this medicine. Would it be so obvious if I were to leave now?”

“Go!” Janet commanded. “You’re impossible.”

“See you back at the beach apartment,” Sean said. He moved away quickly lest Janet say something about his not being invited. He looked back and waved as he left the cafeteria.

Hurrying over the bridge between the two buildings, he thrust his hands into his pockets and palmed the two vials. He couldn’t wait to get started. Thanks to Janet, he felt some of the investigative excitement he’d expected when he’d made the decision to come to the Forbes Cancer Center.

ROBERT HARRIS carried the cardboard box of employee files into his small windowless office and set them on the floor next to his desk. Sitting down, he opened the top of the box and pulled out the first file.

After the conversation with Dr. Mason and Ms. Richmond, Harris had gone directly to personnel. With the help of Henry Falworth, the personnel manager, he’d compiled a list of non-professionals who had access to patients. The list included food service personnel who distributed menus and took orders and those who delivered meals and picked up the trays. The list also included the janitorial and maintenance staffs who were occasionally called to patient rooms for odd jobs. Finally, the list ran to housekeeping: those who cleaned the rooms, the halls, and the lounges of the hospital.

All in all, the number of people on the list was formidable. Unfortunately he had no other ideas to pursue save for the camera surveillance, and he knew such an operation would prove too costly. He would investigate prices and put together a proposal, but he knew Dr. Mason would find the price unacceptable.

Harris’s plan was to go through the fifty or so files rather quickly to see if anything caught his attention, anything that might seem unlikely or strange. If he found something that was questionable, he’d put the file in a group to investigate first. Harris wasn’t a psychologist any more than he was a doctor, but he thought that whoever was crazy enough to be killing patients would have to have something weird on his record.

The first file belonged to Ramon Concepcion, a food service employee. Concepcion was a thirty-five-year-old man of Cuban extraction who’d worked a number of food service jobs in hotels and restaurants since he was sixteen. Harris read through his employment application and looked at the references. He even glanced at his health care utilization. Nothing jumped out at him. He tossed the file on the floor.

One by one, Harris worked through the box of files. Nothing caught his eye until he came to Gary Wanamaker, another food service employee. Under the heading experience Gary had listed five years’ work in the kitchen at Rikers Island Prison in New York. In the employment photo the man had brown hair. Harris put that file on the corner of his desk.