“Any specific plans we should know about?” Karen questioned, needling her friend. When the love affair with Carl had begun back at Duke, Karen had accepted the diminution of Lynn’s friendship much more than these last four years when it had expanded to involve Michael. Karen had never lost a girlfriend to a member of the opposite sex with no romance involved. She couldn’t help but wonder if there was some element of romance between the two, even if they both denied it.
Lynn responded by holding up both hands, palms toward her. “No ring, no specific plans. Like all of us, I’m going to be very busy next year being a first-year resident. That’s job numero uno.”
“Hey, everybody,” Ronald said, “have you heard the one about the urology transplant surgeon?”
It was now Karen’s turn to throw her napkin at Ronald. “Quit while you’re ahead, my man!” she said. “I even remember that joke, and it ain’t funny because it is based on a pathetic male fantasy.”
“It’s a good thing we are graduating soon,” Michael said. “Ronald is running out of jokes.”
“Oh, shit!” Lynn said, catching sight of her watch. “It’s going to ten already. I have to go!” She scrambled to her feet and gathered her dishes together.
“You’re not going to the ophthalmology lecture and make us all look bad, are you?” Alice Wong, one of the other women, asked.
“Hell no!” Lynn said. “Carl had a little operation this morning, and I want to be available when he gets to his room.”
“Really?” Karen questioned. “You never said anything about him having surgery.”
“It was his decision,” Lynn said. “He didn’t want it to be common knowledge.”
“Catch you later,” Michael said. He fist-bumped with Lynn but didn’t get up. He knew that Carl was to be operated on, but he was the only one who did.
“Give him our best,” Karen called out to Lynn, who was already on her way to drop off her dirty dishes, as the coffee shop was run like a school cafeteria.
Lynn waved over her head in acknowledgment but didn’t turn around. She was in a hurry. She was tense because of Carl, and feared she might have whiled away too much time having coffee. Knowing how fast Weaver was and knowing that the less time a patient was under anesthesia, the shorter the recovery time, she wouldn’t be surprised if she got there and found Carl already in his room. She hoped that would not be the case.
3
Monday, April 6, 9:48 A.M.
Lynn moved quickly toward the main bank of elevators. It was crowded as it always was at that time in the morning, especially on a Monday morning. Lynn was well aware that the hospital, along with Medical University of South Carolina on the other side of town, served as the tertiary-care centers for the metropolitan area, with a population soon to be pushing a million. Charleston was growing, as its manufacturing and biotech base expanded, particularly in the northern suburbs. Boeing was enlarging its 787 assembly plant, and the multinational drug giant, Sidereal Pharmaceuticals, had just announced it was adding a thousand new jobs to its expanding biologics manufacturing plant.
There was another reason the hospital was busy. Answering what was considered a national need, Middleton Healthcare had built a state-of-the-art facility, called the Shapiro Institute, for the care of persistent vegetative state, or PVS, and had physically connected it to the Mason-Dixon University Medical Center. It had been built with a huge philanthropic grant from Sidereal Pharmaceuticals. Although the institute was for the most part self-contained, it did use the center’s clinical laboratory and operating rooms when necessary. Although Lynn and her buddies knew little about the establishment, since it was not used for teaching purposes, she did know that patients from all over the United States arrived on a regular basis along with their families and were admitted through the hospital.
During her second year of medical school Lynn and her fellow classmates had been given one visit, presumably to encourage them to refer their vegetative patients to the facility when they went into practice. Their guide was one of the institute’s hospitalists, but the tour had been very limited. Its purpose was mainly to impress upon the medical students how computerized and mechanized the place was, and how that made it possible to take care of so many patients with so little staff.
Accustomed to multitasking, Lynn slipped her computer tablet out of its pocket as she hustled along and entered Carl’s name to get his room number. When no number came up, she wasn’t concerned. She knew how the system worked. On day-of-surgery admissions, a room wasn’t assigned until the patient was ready to leave the PACU. That meant that Carl was probably still there. But sometimes during the busy morning hours, data entry for room assignments lagged as much as an hour behind more important data entry. Even without a specific room, she was not going to go to the PACU. It was one of the areas of the hospital that medical students were discouraged from visiting, even when rotating on surgery during their third year. Instead Lynn would head up to the fifth floor, where orthopedic cases were sent after surgery, provided a room was available.
“Excuse me,” a pleasant voice said amid the general din. At the same moment Lynn felt a tug on her arm and found herself looking down at an older woman with blue-tinted white hair. At five feet ten inches tall, Lynn looked down on a lot of women. “Can you help me, Doctor?” the woman added when she had Lynn’s attention. She was clutching some lab slips.
“I’m not a doctor yet,” Lynn said. Lynn was honest to a fault. “But how can I help?”
“You look like a doctor to me even if you are much too young. I need to have some blood work done, but I don’t know where to go. They told me at the front desk, but I’ve already forgotten.”
For a moment Lynn hesitated. If she was still going to be in time to welcome Carl, she needed to get herself up to the fifth floor. Yet, sensing the woman’s panic, she relented. “Of course I’ll show you.” Lynn took the woman’s free hand and marched her back the way they had come. From the main entrance foyer, they crossed over the connecting bridge into the outpatient clinic building. Once inside, Lynn took the woman to see one of the clerks behind the main check-in desk.
“I will be happy to show this young lady where she needs to be,” the clerk said.
Lynn quickly retraced her steps, and after a short wait, boarded one of the main elevators on her way up to five. Unfortunately it was a local, stopping at every floor to discharge or pick up people. Pressed into the back of the car, Lynn tried again with her tablet to see if Carl had been assigned a room yet, but he hadn’t. She expected it was going to happen at any moment.
Once on five, she went directly to the main desk. Like the rest of the hospital, the floor could not have been any busier. To add to the chaos, the breakfast trays were in the process of being collected. The nurses who had long since finished report were getting some patients down to surgery, welcoming others back from the PACU, attending to doctors’ orders, distributing medications, and arranging transportation to radiology and physical therapy. It was comparative bedlam.