domestic violence calls on record and if so, get me the dates?'
Textbook nurse.
Textbook Munchausen by proxy.
Textbook crib death.
Crib death evaluated by the late Dr. Ashmore.
The doctor who didn't see patients.
Just a grisly coincidence, no doubt. Stick around any hospital long enough and grisly becomes routine. But, not knowing what else to do, I decided to have a closer look at Chad Jones's chart myself.
Medical Records was still on the basement floor. I waited in line behind a couple of secretaries bearing requisition slips and a resident carrying a laptop computer, only to be informed that deceased patients' files were housed one floor down, in the sub-basement, in a place called SPI-status permanently inactive. It sounded like something the military had invented.
On the wall just outside the sub-basement stairwell was a map with one of those red YOU ARE HERE arrows in the lower left-hand corner. The rest was an aerial view of a grid of corridors. The actual hallways were walled with white tile and floored with gray linoleum patterned with black-and-pink triangles. Gray doors, red plaques.
The hallway was fluorescent-lit and had the vinegary smell of a chem lab.
SPI was in the center of the webwork. Small box. Hard to extrapolate
from two dimensions to the long stretch of corridor before me.
I began walking and reading door signs. BOILER ROOM. FURNITURE STORAGE. A series of several doors marked SUPPLIES. Lots of others that said nothing at all.
The hallway angled to the right.
CHEMICAL SPECTROGRAPHY. X-RAY ARCHIVES. SPECIMEN FILES.
A double-width slab that said: MORGUE: NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE.
I stopped. No smell of formalin, not a hint of what existed on the other side. Just silence and the acetic bite, and a chill that could have been due to a low thermostat setting.
I pictured the map in my head. If my memory was functioning properly, SPI was another right turn, a left, then a short jog. I started walking again, realized I hadn't seen another person since I'd been down here. The air got colder.
I picked up my pace, had managed to slip into a thought-free speed-walk when a door on the right wall swung open so suddenly I had to dodge to avoid getting hit.
No sign on this one. Two maintenance men in gray work clothes emerged from behind it carrying something. Computer. PC, but a big one-black and expensive-looking. As they huffed away, two more workers came out.
Another computer. Then a single man, sleeves rolled up, biceps bunched, carrying a laser printer. A five- byeight index card taped to the printer's console read L. AsHMORE, M.D. I stepped past the door and saw Presley Huenengarth standing in the doorway, holding an armful of printout. Behind him were blank beige walls, charcoal- colored metal furniture, several more computers in various states of disconnection.
A white coat on a hook was the sole hint that anything more organic than differential equations had been contemplated here.
Huenengarth stared at me.
I said, 'I'm Dr. Delaware. We met a couple of days ago. Over at General' He gave a very small nod.
'Terrible thing about Dr. Ashmore,' I said.
He nodded again, stepped back into the room, and closed the door.
I looked down the hall, watching the maintenance men carry off Ashmore's hardware and thinking of grave robbers. Suddenly a room full of post-mortem files seemed a warm and inviting prospect.
Status permanently inactive was a long narrow room lined with metal floor-to-ceiling shelves and human-
