"Now then, Dr. Bennett, " he said in a voice with the deep smoothness of an operatic baritone, "what tidbits can I resurrect for you this time from the depths of our electronic jungle? Do you wish the hat size of our first chief of medicine? We have it. The number of syringes syringed in the last calendar year? Can do. The number of warts on the derriere of our esteemed administrator? You have merely to ask."
"Actually, Marco, I wasn't after anything nearly so exotic. Just a name."
"The first baby born here was He punched a set of keys and then another.
Jessica Peerless, February eighteenth, eighteen forty-three."
"Marco, that wasn't the name I had in mind."
"How about the two hundredth appendectomy?"
"Nope. "The twenty-eight past directors of nursing?"
"Uh-uh. I'm sorry, Marco."
"All this data, and nobody wants any of it." The man was genuinely crestfallen. "I keep telling our beloved administrator that we are being under-used, but I don't think he has the imagination to know what questions to ask. Periodically, I send him tables showing that the cafeteria is overspending on pasta or that ten percent of our patients have ninety percent of our serious diseases, just to pique his interest, remind him that we're still here."
"My name?"
"Oh, yes. I'm sorry. It's been a little slow here. I guess you can tell that."
"It's Rittenhouse, Ginger Rittenhouse. Here's her address, birthplace, and birthdate. That's all I have. I need to know if she's ever been a patient of this hospital, in or out." 64 Keep your eyes on the screen,"
Sebastian said dramatically. Thirty seconds later, he shook his head.
"Nada. A Shirley Rittenhouse in nineteen fifty-six, but no others."
"Are you sure?
" Sebastian gave her a look that might have been anticipated from a judge who had been asked, "Do you really think your decision is fair?"
"Sorry, " she said. "Of course, she still could have been a patient of the Omnicenter."
Kate stiffened. "What do you mean?"
"Well, the Omnicenter is sort of a separate entity from the rest of Metro. This system here handles records and billing for the Ashburton inpatient service, but the Omnicenter is totally self-contained. Has been since the day they put the units in-what is it? — nine, ten years ago."
"Isn't that strange?"
"Strange is normal around this place, " Sebastian said. "Can't you even plug this system into the one over there?"
"Nope. Don't know the access codes. Carl Horner, the engineer who runs the electronics there, plays things pretty close to the vest.
You know Horner?"
"No, I don't think so." Kate tried to remember if, during any of her visits to the Omnicenter as a patient, she had even seen the man. "Why do you suppose they're so secretive? "
"Not secretive so much as careful. I play around with numbers here, Horner and the Omnicenter people live and die by them. Every bit of that place is computerized, records, appointments, billing, even the prescriptions."
"I know. I go there for my own care."
"Then you can imagine what would happen if even a small fly got dropped into their ointment. Homer is a genius, let me tell you, but he is a bit eccentric. He was writing advanced programs when the rest of us were still trying to spell IBM. From what I've heard, complete independence from the rest of the system is one of the conditions he insisted upon before taking the Omnicenter job in the first place.", So how do I find out if Ginger Rittenhouse has ever been a patient there? It's important, Marco. Maybe very important."
"Well, Paleolithic as it may sound, we call and ask."
"The phone?"
Marco Sebastian shrugged sheepishly and nodded. DEAD END. Alone in her office, Kate doodled the words on a yellow legal pad, first in block print, then in script, and finally in a variety of calligraphies, learned through one of several "self-enrichment" courses she had taken during her two years with Art. According to Carl Horner, Marco Sebastian's counterpart at the Omnicenter, Ginger Rittenhouse had never been a patient there. Tom Engleson had succeeded in contacting the woman's roommate, but her acquaintance and living arrangement with Giilger were recent ones. Aside from a prior address, Engleson had gleaned no new information. Connections thus far between the woman and Beverly Vitale, zero. Outside, the daylong dusting of snow had given way to thick, wet flakes that were beginning to cover. The homeward commute was going to be a bear. Kate tried to ignore the prospect and reflect instead on what her next move might be in evaluating the microsclerosis cases, perhaps an attempt to find a friend or family member who knew Ginger Rittenhouse better than her new roommate. She might present the two women's pathologies at a regional conference of some sort, hoping to luck into yet a third case. She looked at the uncompleted work on her desk. Face it, she realized, with the amount of spare time she had to run around playing epidemiologist, the mystery of the ovarian microsclerosis seemed destined to remain just that. For a time, her dread of the drive home did battle with the need to get there in order to grocery shop and set out some sort of dinner for the two of them.
Originally, they had tried to eschew traditional roles in setting up and maintaining their household, but both rapidly realized that their traditional upbringings made that arrangement impractical if not impossible. The shopping and food preparation had reverted to her, the maintenance of their physical plant to Jared. Day-to-day finances, they agreed, were beyond either of their abilities and therefore to be shared. Again she checked out the window. Then after a final hesitation, a final thought about calling home and leaving a message on their machine that she was going to work late, she pushed herself away from the desk. As she stood up, she decided, if it was going to be dinner, then dammit, it was going to be a special dinner. In medical school and residency, she had always been able to find an extra gear, a reserve jet of energy, when she needed it. Perhaps tonight her marriage could use a romantic, gourmet dinner more than it could her moaning about the exhausting day she had endured. Spinach salad, shrimp curry, candles, Grgich Hills Chardonnay, maybe even a chocolate souffle. She ticked off a mental shopping list as she slipped a few scientific reprints into her briefcase, bundled herself against the rush-hour snow, and hurried from her office, pleased to sense the beginnings of a surge. It was good to know she still had one. + In the quiet of his windowless office, Carl Horner spoke through his fingertips to the information storage and retrieval system in the next room. He had implicit faith in his machines, in their perfection.
If there was a problem, as it now seemed there was, the source, he felt certain, was human-either himself or someone at the company. Again and again his fingers asked. Again and again the answers were the same.
Finally, he turned from his console to one of two black phones on his desk. A series of seven numbers opened a connection in Buffalo, New York, four numbers more activated the line to a "dead box" in Atlanta, and a final three completed an untraceable connection to Darlington, Kentucky. Cyrus Redding answered on the first ring. "Carl?"
"Orange red, Cyrus." Had the colors been reversed, Redding would have been warned either that someone was monitoring Horner's call or that the possibility of a tap existed. "I can talk, " Redding said. "Cyrus, a woman named Kate Bennett, a pathologist at Metro, just called asking for information on two women who died from the same unusual bleeding disorder."