nowhere with the government in Jamaica, but after visiting Sister Nell, I had learned all good things of value—like birth records—lie in computer databases. If this hospital had someone like her in charge of their records, I preferred to approach him or her directly for what I needed.
The lady with the striped apron had to make three phone calls to find out that they had a computer liaison with an office on the upper floor in what looked like a converted surgical suite—except the only surgery being done was on hard drives. The floor was littered with the guts of ancient PCs, though a few models were up and looked ready to go. Those sat side by side on a long brown folding table against a far wall. A man with messy bleached- blond hair and wearing a tropical shirt had his back to me. He was hunched over a keyboard, and though he switched off the monitor when I cleared my throat, I saw he’d been playing a video game.
“Hi,” I said when he stood and faced me. “Are you the computer liaison?”
“Yeah. Dave. But if you’re from Civil Registration, I’m still moving data. I told the last guy this is gonna take like a trillion years.” Dave looked to be in his mid-twenties and his Valley-speak and freckled face marked him as American through and through.
“I’m not from Civil Registration.” I walked across the white tile floor and handed him my CompuCan card.
He studied it so long you’d have thought he was reading a calculus textbook. “So? What’s this mean?”
“Actually, you’re not going to believe this, but I’m from a major computer software developer via my company CompuCan and I’m here to help.”
As the unmistakable odor of marijuana permeated the space between us, his golden eyebrows pulled together. Apparently compound sentences triggered confusion in his pot-addled brain.
“Um, Dave? Could we sit and talk?” All monosyllabic words. Maybe they would do the trick.
“Sure. Whatever.” He sat back in his computer chair, making no effort to find me so much as a stool.
I spied a straight-back chair resting against a wall behind a pile of ravaged PC towers, brought it over, and sat next to him. I then had to scoot farther away, fearing I might get high off the dope fumes emanating from his clothes and hair.
“As you probably know, the big cheese at the company, a man whose name I am not allowed to mention, has an estate in Grand Cayman,” I said.
“You mean Bill?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Cool,” Dave said. “But maybe you should talk to an administrator.”
“Do you think I would be here if that hadn’t already happened?”
“Uh, I guess not.” His freckled cheeks flushed.
Oh how I love the slow ones. “You must be from the states, correct?”
“Florida.”
“And I see you’re working under less than modern conditions.”
“No shit,” said Dave.
“What kind of network does this facility utilize?” I asked.
“Network? Are you kidding?”
“Okay, no network,” I said. “What about the operating system? Unix?”
“Try Windows 2000,” he answered, making a sweeping gesture around the room. “These machines are all donated, and most of them can’t even support Windows Net Server much less the next generation.”
I took out my computer phone, knowing that if this guy had any real geek in him, he’d start drooling the minute he saw it. “Mind if I check out the software? Make a few notes?”
He stared with undisguised lust at my phone. “Yeah. Guess that would be okay.”
I held out the phone. “Do you have one of these?” “No way. But I read about this model. You gotta charge them every day, right?”
“This one’s ready to go. Want to play?”
“Wow. You mean it?”
I gave him the phone. “Meanwhile, I’ll see what we need to do to improve the technology in this hospital.”
“Hey. Go for it,” Dave said. Unlike with Sister Nell and the U.S. government, privacy and confidentiality apparently meant nothing in this room.
I rose and went to the last computer on the table, booted up, and began exploring files on the hard drive. It was full of spreadsheets—hospital financial records dating back five years. If they had only five years worth in their databases, I was in trouble. But noting the PC was low on memory, I figured maybe this machine couldn’t handle more than that. I moved to the next computer, and that’s when I noticed a piece of masking tape stuck on the previous machine’s tower. The word “billing” was written in black marker. If all the computers were similarly labeled my job just got a little easier.
The next computer tower was under the table and I bent and looked for its identifier. This one was marked “outpatient.”
I glanced over at Dave. He was leaning back in his chair, eyes fixed on my phone, his hand moving the wand over the tiny keyboard. I swear he might have a techie orgasm any second.
I skipped the outpatient computer and moved on to the next one, which actually had a flat-screen monitor. When I looked below to check for a label, I noticed a landline Internet connection. Obviously this was the most modern computer in the room. And the label made me as eager as a dry steer scenting fresh water. It read
“Uh, Dave,” I said. “I see you have Internet access here. What’s that for?”
“I’m uploading a bunch of crap to Civil Registration. So far, I’ve reached 1995.” He punched something on my phone and grinned, his eyes wide. “This is so awesome.”
“And why are you sending these files to the government?”
He kept playing. “You know that bad-ass hurricane they had here about twenty years ago?”
“Gilbert?” Had to be. Everyone on the Gulf Coast knew about Gilbert and how lucky we’d been to be spared. The storm’s hundred and sixty mile an hour winds had practically flattened Jamaica.
“Yeah. Gil Baby. Lots of records were lost. And more were lost when Ivan hit last year. Births, deaths, shit like that. Government’s overhauling their vital stats and they want all the hospitals to send whatever they saved as far back as possible.”
“I see.”
“Took the guy who worked here before me about four years to enter stuff from old, practically unreadable medical charts. Some he could scan in, but most of them were in such bad shape he had to enter all the data manually.”
“And now your job is to send the records to a central location?”
“Yeah, but if I had one of these babies,” he said, caressing my phone, “shit, I’d be done in a month.” He reluctantly held it out to me.
“Did you try getting on the Net?” I made no move to take the phone back.
“No. I only checked out the basics. Can’t believe you have so much memory on this little thing.”
I took the phone, entered my password, logged on, and handed it back. “It’s satellite enabled. Surf away, dude.”
He smiled and eagerly began to tap the keys again.
