who felt doctors need to relax in high style. A patron who'd never spent time with a Western Peds doctor.
I strode across the room and tried the connecting door to the library.
Open.
The windowless room was pitch-dark and I turned on the lights.
Most of the shelves were empty; a few bore thin stacks of mismatched journals. Careless piles of books sat on the floor. The rear wall was bare.
The computer I'd used to run Medline searches was nowhere in sight.
Neither was the golden-oak card catalogue with its handlettered parchment labels. The only furniture was a gray metal table.
Taped to the top was a piece of paper. An inter-hospital memo, dated three months ago.
To: Professional Staff FROM: G. H. Plumb, MBA, DBA, Chief Executive
Officer SUBJECT: Library Restructure In accordance with repeated requests by the Professional Staff and a subsequent confirmatory decision by the Research Committee, the Board of Directors in General Assembly, and the Finance Subcommittee of the Executive Board, the Medical Library reference index will be converted to a fully computerized system utilizing Orion and Melvyl-type standard library data search programs. The contract for this conversion has been put out to competitive bid and, after careful deliberation and cost/benefit computation, has been awarded to BlO-DAT, Inc of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a concern specializing in medical and scientific research probe systems and health-care workstation integration.
BIO-DAT officials have informed us that the entire process should take approximately three weeks, once they are in full receipt of all relevant data. Accordingly, the library's current card files will be shipped to BIO-DAT headquarters in Pittsburgh for the duration of the conversion process, and returned to Los Angeles for purposes of storage and archival activity, once the conversion has been terminated.
Your cooperation and forbearance during the conversion period is solicited.
Three weeks had stretched to three months.
I ran my finger along the metal table and ended up with a dustblackened tip.
Turning off the light, I left the room.
Sunset Boulevard was a bouillabaisse of rage and squalor mixed with immigrant hope and livened by the spice of easy felony.
I drove past the flesh clubs, the new-music caverns, titanic show-biz billboards, and the anorexically oriented boutiques of the Strip, crossed Doheny and slipped into the dollar-shrines of Beverly Hills.
Passing my turnoff at Beverly Glen, I headed for a place where serious research could always be done. The place where Chip Jones had done his.
The Biomed library was filled with the inquisitive and the obligated.
Sitting at one of the monitors was someone I recognized.
Gamine face, intense eyes, dangling earrings, and a double pierce on the right ear. The tawny bob had grown out to a shoulderlength wedge.
A line of white collar showed over a navy-blue crewneck.
When had I last seen her? Three years or so' Making her twenty.
I wondered if she'd gotten her Ph.D. yet.
She was tapping the keys rapidly, bringing data to the screen.
As I neared I saw that the text was in German. The word neuropeptid' kept popping out.
'Hi, Jennifer.'
She spun around. Alex!' Big smile. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and got off her stool.
