Philips told Helen to see if she could find out why Lynn Anne had been transferred and then asked her to put a call through to Dr. Donald Travis at New York Medical Center. He also asked her to see if the police knew where Ellen McCarthy had been taken after her accident.
Still distracted, Philips forced himself to concentrate on the skull films in front of him. They were all normal in respect to their texture. When he went out to Helen’s desk, she had little good news. Dr. Travis was tied up and would have to call back. She hadn’t been able to find out much about Lucas because the nurse on duty at the time went home at 7 A.M. and could not be reached. The only positive information she had was that Ellen McCarthy had been taken back to the Med Center after her accident.
Before Philips could ask her to track down that lead, a maintenance man appeared with an enormous trolley piled with boxes, paper and other debris. Without a word, he pushed it into Philips’ office and began unloading the material.
“What the hell?” asked Philips.
“That’s the supplies from the storeroom you said to have put in here,” explained Helen.
“Shit,” said Philips as the man stacked the supplies along the wall. Philips had the uncomfortable feeling that events were slipping out of his control.
Sitting down amidst the chaos, Philips dialed Admitting. He felt his mood deteriorating further as the phone rang interminably on the other end of the line.
“Have a moment?” called William Michaels. He’d leaned in through Philips’ open door, his cheerful grin in direct contrast to Martin’s scowl. Then his eyes swept around the room in total disbelief.
“Don’t ask,” said Philips, anticipating some smart comment.
“My God,” said Michaels. “When you work, you don’t mess around.”
At that point someone finally answered the phone in Admitting, but it was a temporary receptionist who transferred Martin to someone else. That person only handled admissions, not discharges or transfers, so Philips was switched again. Only then did he learn that the person he had to speak to was on a coffee break, so he hung up, frustrated with bureaucracy, saying, “Why didn’t I become a plumber?”
Michaels laughed, then asked how Philips was doing with their project. Philips told him that he’d had most of the X rays pulled, indicating the pile with his hand. He told Michaels that he thought he could run them all in a month and a half.
“Perfect,” said Michaels. “The sooner the better, because the new memory storage and association system we’ve been working on is proving better than we’d dreamed. By the time you finish we’ll have a new central processor to handle the debugged program. You have no idea how good it’s going to be.”
“Quite the contrary,” said Philips, getting up from the desk. “I have a pretty good idea. Let me show you what the program picked up.”
Martin cleared a viewing screen and put up Marino’s, Lucas’, Collins’ and McCarthy’s X rays. With his index finger, then the piece of paper with the hole in it, Philips tried to show the abnormal densities on each.
“They look all the same to me,” admitted Michaels.
“That’s just the point,” said Philips. “That’s how good this system is.” Just talking with Michaels rekindled Martin’s excitement.
Just then the phone rang and Philips picked it up. It was Dr. Donald Travis from New York Medical Center. Martin explained his problem about Lynn Anne Lucas but purposefully left out the radiologic abnormality. Then he asked Travis if he would arrange to have a CAT scan and some special X rays done on the patient. Travis agreed and hung up. Immediately the phone buzzed and Helen told Philips that Denise was ready for the next angiogram.
“I got to be going anyway,” said Michaels. “Good luck with the films. Remember, it’s up to you now. We need this information as soon as you can give it to us.”
Philips lifted his apron off its hook and followed Michaels out of the office.
9
One of the large fluorescent light fixtures directly over Kristin Lindquist was malfunctioning so that it flickered at a rapid frequency and emitted a constant buzzing sound. She tried to ignore it, but it was difficult. She hadn’t felt right ever since she’d awakened that morning with a slight headache and the quivering light intensified her discomfort. It was a steady dull pain and Kristin noticed that physical exertion did not make it worse as was the case with her usual headaches.