'Sure. All those hints of high intrigue.'
She half turned toward the desk, removed a chart from the stack, let it rest in her lap but didn't open it.
'Yup,' she said, 'it's a challenging one, that's for sure.'
Standing suddenly, she walked to the door, closed it, and sat backdown.
'So,' she said, 'how does it feel to be back?'
Almost got busted on the way in.
I told her about my encounter with the security guard.
'Eascist,' she said cheerfully, and my memory banks reactivated: grievance committees over which she'd presided. White coat disdained for jeans, sandals, bleached cotton blouses. Stephanie, not Doctor Titles are exclisionary ths'ices of the p,a'er elite..
1 said, 'Yeah, it was kind of paramilitary, ' but she just gazed at the chart in her lap.
'High intrigue,' she said. 'What we've got is a whodunit, howdunit-a did-anyone-do-it. Only this is no Agatha Christie thing, Alex. This is a real-life mess. I don't know if you can help, but I'm not sure what else to do.'
Voices from the corridor filtered in, squalls and scolding and fleeing
footsteps. Then a child's cry of terror pierced the plaster.
'This place is a zoo,' she said. 'Let's get out of here.'
A door at the rear of the clinic opened to a stairway. We descended to the first basement level. Stephanie moved fast, almost jogging down the steps.
The cafeteria was nearly empty one orange-topped table occupied by a male intern reading the sports section, two others shared by slumping couples who looked as if they'd slept in their clothes.
Parents spending the night. Something we'd fought for.
Empty trays and dirty dishes cluttered some of the other tables.
A hair-netted orderly circulated slowly, filling salt shakers.
On the eastern wall was the door to the doctors' dining room: polished teak panels, finely etched brass nameplate. Some philanthropist with a nautical bent. Stephanie bypassed it and led me to a booth at the far end of the main room.
'Sure you don't want coffee?' she said.
Remembering the hospital mud, I said, Already filled my caffeine quota.'
'I know what you mean.'
She ran her hand through her hair and we sat.
'Okay,' she said. 'What we've got is a twenty-one-month-old white female, full-term pregnancy, normal delivery, APGAR of nine.
The only significant historical factor is that just before this child was born, a male sib died of sudden infant death syndrome at age one year.'
Any other children?' I said, taking out a note pad and pen.
'No, there's just Cassie. Who looked fine until she was three months old, at which time her mother reported going in at night to check on her and finding her not breathing.'
'Checking because she was nervous about SIDS?'
'Exactly. When she wasn't able to rouse the baby, she administered CPR, got her going. Then they brought her into the E.R. By the time I arrived she looked fine, nothing remarkable on exam. I admitted her for observation, did all the usual tests. Nothing. After discharge we set the family up with a sleep monitor and an alarm.
