Brain Child Page 0,82
son, and this damned machine won’t give them to me.”
“Don’t be silly,” Barbara told him. “You just have to ask it politely, in terms it understands.” She tapped at the keyboard for a few moments, and the screen came to life. “There you are. Just push this button, and it will scroll right on down, from the day he was born until the last time he was here.” She stood up, relinquishing the chair to Marsh once again, and went back to her filing.
Marsh began scrolling through the record, paying little attention to anything until he suddenly came to the end of the file. The last entry was for a routine checkup that Alex had undergone the previous April. He gazed irritably at the screen for a moment, then glared at Barbara Fannon’s back. “Are we really five months behind in the records?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I asked if we’re really five months behind in the records,” Marsh repeated. “This is September, and the last entry in Alex’s file is for his checkup in April. That’s five months.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Barbara replied. “We haven’t even been twenty-four hours behind in the last three years. Usually everything that happens to a patient is in the records within two or three hours. Let me see.” She bent over Marsh’s shoulder and began tapping on the keyboard once more, but this time nothing happened. The record simply came to an abrupt end.
“See?”
“I see that something’s wrong, and it could be any number of things. Now, why don’t you just go back to your office and get back to administering this place, and I’ll figure out what’s happened to Alex’s records. If I can’t get them out of the computer, I’ll bring you the originals from downstairs, but that will take a while. All right?”
Reluctantly Marsh got up and started out of the office, but Barbara Fannon stopped him. “Marsh, is something wrong? With Alex, I mean?”
“I don’t know,” Marsh replied. “I just have a bad feeling about him, and I don’t like Torres. I want to go over his records and see exactly what was done, that’s all.”
“All right,” Barbara Fannon sighed. “Then at least I know what I’m looking for. I’ll have something for you as soon as possible.”
But an hour later, when she came into his office, her expression was both puzzled and worried. “I can’t find them,” she said.
Marsh looked up from the report he was revising. “They’re not in the computer?”
“Worse than that,” Barbara replied, seating herself in the chair opposite Marsh and handing him a file folder. “They aren’t here at all.”
Frowning, Marsh opened the folder, which had Alex’s name neatly typed at the top. Inside was a single sheet of paper, with one sentence typed on it:
Contents of this file transferred to the Institute for the Human Brain, by authority of Marshall Lonsdale, M.D., Director.
Marsh’s frown deepened. “What the hell does this mean?”
Barbara shrugged. “I assume it means that you sent all the records relating to the accident to Palo Alto, and they never came back.”
Marsh reached over and pressed a key on the intercom. “Frank, can you come in here?” A moment later Frank Mallory came into the office, and Marsh handed him the sheet of paper. “Do you know anything about this?”
Mallory glanced at it, then shrugged. “Sure. All the records went to Palo Alto. Torres needed them.”
“But why didn’t they come back? And why didn’t we keep copies?”
Now Mallory, too, was frowning. “I … well, I guess I thought they had. They should have been here months ago, along with copies of what was done down there. It’s all part of Alex’s medical history.”
“Exactly,” Marsh agreed. “But apparently they didn’t. Barbara, would you mind getting on the phone and calling down there? Find out what’s going on, and why those records never came back.”
When they were alone, Frank Mallory studied Marsh for a moment. “Why the sudden upset, Marsh?” he asked. “Is something going on with Alex that I don’t know about?”
“I don’t know,” Marsh admitted. “It’s just something I can’t quite put my finger on. I’m worried about him.”
“And you don’t like Raymond Torres.”
“I’ve never said I did,” Marsh replied, unable to keep a defensive tone out of his voice. “But it’s more than that. Torres is acting more and more as though he owns Alex, and Alex … well, I guess I’m just worried about him.”
“What about Ellen? Is she worried too?”
Marsh shrugged helplessly. “I wish she were. Unfortunately, she thinks Torres is the