'Depends, sir.' He looked past me, as if suddenly bored.
'On what?'
'How many are ahead of you. Whether your paperworks current.'
I said, 'Listen, my appointment with Dr. Eves is in just a couple of minutes. I'll take care of the badge on my way out.'
'Fraid not, sir,' he said, still focused somewhere else. He folded his arms across his chest. 'Regulations.'
'Is this something recent?'
'Letters were sent to the medical staff last summer.'
'Must have missed that one.' Must have dropped it in the trash, unopened, like most of my hospital mail.
He didn't answer.
'I'm really pressed for time,' I said. 'How about if I get a visitors badge to tide me over?'
'Visitors badges are for visitors, sir.'
I'm visiting Dr. Eves.
He swung his eyes back to me. Another frown-darker, contemplative. He inspected the pattern on my tie. Touched his belt on the holster side.
'Visitors badges are over at Registration,' he said, hooking a thumb at one of the dense queues.
He crossed his arms again.
I smiled. 'No way around it, huh?'
'No, sir.'
'Just past the chapel?'
'Just past and turn right.'
'Been having crime problems?' I said.
'I don't make the rules, sir. I just enforce them.'
He waited a moment before moving aside, followed my exit with his squint. I turned the corner, half expecting to see him trailing, but the corridor was empty and silent.
The door marked SECURITY SERVICES was twenty paces down. A sign hung from the knob: BACK IN above a printed clock with movable hands set at 9:30 A.M. My watch said 9: zo. I knocked anyway. No answer. I looked back. No rent-a-cop. Remembering a staff elevator just past Nuclear Medicine, I continued down the hall.
Nuclear Medicine was now COMMUNITY RESOURCES. Another closed door.
The elevator was still there but the buttons were missing; the machine had been switched to key-operated. I was looking for the nearest stairway when a couple of orderlies appeared, wheeling an empty gurney.
Both were young, tall, black, sporting geometrically carved hip-hop hairstyles. Talking earnestly about the Raiders game. One of them produced a key, inserted it into the lock, and turned. The elevator doors opened on walls covered with padded batting. Junk-food wrappers and a piece of dirty-looking gauze littered the floor. The orderlies pushed the gurney in. I followed.
General Pediatrics occupied the eastern end of the fourth floor, separated from the Newborn Ward by a swinging wooden door. I knew the outpatient clinic had been open for only fifteen minutes but the small waiting room was already overflowing. Sneezes and coughs, glazed looks and hyperactivity. Tight maternal hands gripped babes and toddlers, paperwork, and the magic plastic of Medi-Cal cards. To the right of the reception window was a set of double doors marked PATIENTS REGISTER FIRST over a Spanish translation of same.
I pushed through and walked past a long white corridor tacked with safety and nutrition posters, county
