had come through his living-room slider. The morning had been an aggravating rerun of the previous day, confirming his belief that the Forbes was a bizarre and largely unfriendly place to work. Hiroshi was still trailing him like a bad detective. Practically every time Sean turned around when he was up on the sixth floor using some equipment not available on the fifth, he’d see the Japanese fellow. And the moment Sean looked at him, Hiroshi would quickly look away as if Sean were a moron and wouldn’t know that Hiroshi had been watching him.
Sean checked his watch. The agreement had been that he’d meet Janet at twelve-thirty. It was already twelve-thirty-five, and although a steady stream of hospital personnel continued to pour by, Janet had yet to appear. Sean began to fantasize about going down to the parking lot, getting into his Isuzu, and hitting the road. But then Janet came through the door, and just seeing her lightened his mood.
Although Janet was still pale by Florida standards, her few days in Miami had already given a distinctively rosy cast to her skin. Sean thought she’d never looked better. As he admiringly watched her sensuous movements as she weaved through the tables, he hoped that he’d be able to talk her out of whatever it was that was keeping her in her own apartment and out of his.
She took the seat across from him, barely saying hello. Under her arm she clutched an unfolded Miami newspaper. He could tell she was nervous, the way she continually scanned the room like some wary, vulnerable bird.
“Janet, we’re not in some spy movie,” Sean said. “Calm down!”
“But I feel like I am,” Janet said. “I’ve been sneaking around, going behind people’s backs, trying not to arouse suspicion. But I feel like everyone knows what I’m doing.”
Sean rolled his eyes. “What an amateur I have for an accomplice,” he joked. Then, more seriously, he added, “I don’t know whether this is going to work if you’re stressed out now, Janet. This is only the beginning. You haven’t even done anything yet compared to what’s coming. But, to tell you the truth, I’m jealous. At least you’re doing something. I, on the other hand, have spent a good part of the morning in the bowels of the earth injecting mice with the Forbes protein plus Freund’s adjuvant. There’s been no intrigue and certainly no excitement. This place is still driving me nuts.”
“What about your crystals?” Janet asked.
“I’m deliberately slowing down on that,” Sean said. “I was doing too well. I won’t let them know how far I’ve gotten. That way, when I need some time for some investigative work, I’ll take it and still be able to have results to show as a cover. So how’d you do?”
“Not great,” Janet admitted. “But I made a start. I copied one chart.”
“Just one?” Sean questioned with obvious disappointment. “You’re this nervous about one chart?”
“Don’t give me a hard time,” Janet warned. “This isn’t easy for me.”
“And I’d never say I told you so,” Sean quipped. “Never. Not me. That’s not my style.”
“Oh, shut up,” Janet said as she handed the newspaper to Sean under the table. “I’m doing the best I can.”
Sean lifted the newspaper and placed it on top of the table. He spread it out and opened it, exposing the copied pages which he immediately removed. He pushed the newspaper aside.
“Sean!” Janet gasped, as she furtively scanned the crowded room. “Can’t you be a little more subtle?”
“I’m tired of being subtle,” he said. He started going through the chart.
“Even for my benefit?” Janet asked. “There might be some people from my floor here. They might have seen me give these copies to you.”
“You give people too much credit,” Sean said distractedly. “People aren’t as observant as you might think.” Then, referring to the copies Janet had brought, he said, “Louis Martin’s chart is nothing but referral material from the Memorial. This history and physical is mine. That lazy ass on neurology just copied my workup.”
“How can you tell?” Janet asked.
“The wording,” Sean said. “Listen to this: the patient ‘suffered through’ a prostatectomy three months ago. I use expressions like ‘suffered through’ just to see who reads my workups and who doesn’t. It’s a little game I play with myself. No one else uses that kind of phraseology in a medical workup. You’re supposed to just give facts, not judgments.”
“Imitation is the highest form of flattery, so I guess you should be flattered,” Janet said.
“The only thing of interest here is in the orders,” Sean said. “He’s being given two coded drugs: MB300M and MB305M.”
“That code is comparable to the one I saw in Helen Cabot’s computer file,” Janet said. She handed him the paper on which she’d written the treatment information she’d gotten from the computer.
Sean glanced at the dosage and the administration rate.
“What do you think it is?” Janet asked.
“No idea,” Sean said. “Did you get any of it?”
“Not yet,” Janet admitted. “But I finally located the supply. It’s kept in a special locker, and the shift supervisor has the only key.”
“This is interesting,” Sean said, still studying the chart. “From the date and time of the order they started treatment as soon as he got here.”
“Same with Helen Cabot,” Janet said. She told him what Marjorie had explained to her, namely that they started the humoral aspect of the treatment immediately whereas the cellular aspect didn’t begin until after the biopsy and T-cell harvesting.
“Starting treatment so soon seems odd,” Sean said. “Unless these drugs are merely lymphokines or some other general immunologic stimulant. It can’t be some new drug, like a new type of chemo agent.”
“Why not?” Janet asked.
“Because the FDA would have had to approve it,” Sean said. “It has to be a drug that’s already been approved. How come you only got Louis Martin’s chart? What about Helen Cabot’s?”
“I was lucky to get Martin’s,” Janet said. “Cabot is getting pheresed as we speak, and the other young woman, Kathleen Sharenburg, is being biopsied. Martin was a ‘to follow’ for his biopsy so his chart was available.”
“So these people are on the second floor right now?” Sean asked. “Right above us?”
“I believe so,” Janet said.
“Maybe I’ll skip lunch and take a walk up there,” Sean said. “With all the usual commotion in most diagnostic and treatment areas, the charts are usually just kicking around. I could probably get a look at them.”
“Better you than me,” Janet said. “I’m sure you’re better at this than I.”
“I’m not taking over your job,” Sean said. “I’ll still want copies of the other two charts as well as daily updates. Plus I want a list of all the patients they’ve treated to date who have had medulloblastoma. I’m particularly interested in their outcomes. Plus I want samples of the coded medicine. That should be your priority. I have to have that medicine; the sooner the better.”
“I’ll do my best,” Janet said. Knowing how much trouble it had been merely to copy Martin’s chart, she had misgivings about getting everything Sean wanted with the kind of speed he was implying. Not that she was about to voice those concerns to Sean. She was afraid he’d give up and leave for Boston.
Sean stood up. He gripped Janet’s shoulder. “I know this isn’t easy for you,” he said. “But remember, it was your idea.”
Janet put a hand on Sean’s. “We can do it,” she said.
“I’ll see you at the Cow Palace,” he said. “I suppose you’ll be there around four. I’ll try to get back about the same time.”
“See you then,” Janet said.
Sean left the cafeteria and used the stairs to get to the second floor. He emerged at the south end of the building. The second floor was a center of activity and as bustling as he’d expected. All the radiation therapy as well as diagnostic radiology was done there; so was all the surgery and any treatment that could not be done at the bedside.
With all the confusion Sean had to squeeze between gurneys carrying people to and from their procedures. A number of the gurneys with their human passengers were parked along the walls. Other patients sat on benches dressed in hospital robes.
