Wednesday, April 8, 11:02 A.M.
Having to deal with this new conundrum of Dr. Wykoff’s unexpected disappearance, Lynn knew that she would find trying to suffer through the ophthalmology clinic as bad as the lecture. Instead, she had decided to use the time to solve the problem of getting a floor plan for the Shapiro. To that end, she’d gotten Carl’s Jeep out of the parking garage and headed downtown.
It seemed particularly auspicious to her to find a parking spot on Calhoun Street directly in front of the Charleston County Public Library with time still on the meter. What made it so convenient was that the library was just across the street from 75 Calhoun, the impressive and relatively new municipal building that housed the Charleston Building Commission.
Lynn hurried inside. She wanted to find the right office well before the lunch hour. From her experience with city bureaucracy in Atlanta, where she had grown up, she knew that midday was a time to avoid, as civil servants became progressively distracted and unhelpful. But she soon learned she needn’t have worried. Not only was the building commission easy to find but the people behind the counter immediately gave her the impression they were there to help, particularly a balding, jovial, and colorful fellow named George Murray. The man wore bright-red suspenders to keep his pants up despite a particularly protuberant abdomen. When he saw Lynn’s white coat and correctly guessed she was a medical student, he laughed and told her to go ahead and give him the standard lecture on potential evil consequences of his beer belly. “I like my suds,” he confessed. “Anyway, what can I do to help you?”
“An architect friend has told me that you would have plans available for public buildings, like hospitals.”
“Provided the hospital is in Charleston,” George said with a laugh. “Plans have to be submitted and approved to get a building permit. It’s all in the public domain. What hospital are you curious about?”
Lynn paused, trying to think of how much she wanted to reveal. The last thing she wanted was for it to get back to the dean or anyone at the school or the hospital that she was in the building commission asking for plans for the Shapiro. But she didn’t see any way around the issue. “The Shapiro Institute,” she said, hoping she wouldn’t regret admitting it. The trouble was that, without plans, she worried that she might not get much benefit from making the effort to break into the Shapiro other than possibly accessing the institute’s electronic medical records. She wanted to maximize the chances of finding Carl, which she knew might not be easy among a thousand or so patients unless she had a pretty good idea how the place was laid out.
“That’s part of the Mason-Dixon Medical Center,” George said without hesitation. “What kind of plans are you interested in?”
“I don’t really know,” Lynn admitted. “What kind of plans do you have?”
“There’s floor plans, electrical plans, HVAC plans, plumbing plans. You name it, we have it.”
“I guess I’m mainly interested in floor plans.”
“Let’s see what’s available in the file,” George said agreeably. He was gone for only a few minutes before returning with a very large burgundy-colored folder tied with string.
George heaved the folder onto the countertop and opened it. He slid out the contents. “We are gradually going digital, but we’ve got a long way to go.” He pawed through the material, eventually locating the floor plans. They were bound on one side with staples. “Here you go. Knock yourself out!”
Lynn flipped through some of the pages. She’d seen architectural floor plans before and knew something about how to read them. What surprised her right off was that although the building had a relatively low silhouette in real life, suggesting it was about two to three stories tall when compared with the attached hospital building, it was actually six stories, with four being below grade. “Which is ground level?” she asked.
George turned the plans around so that he could read all the small print. “Apparently it is the one labeled the fifth floor,” he said, comparing the floor plans with their accompanying elevations. He turned the pages of the floor plans until he was on five. “Doesn’t look like it has many external doors leading outside. Strange, but I’m sure it was cleared by the fire department. Must have a damn good sprinkler system. What kind of hospital is this?”
“It’s for people in a vegetative state,” Lynn said. She turned the plans back around and, by looking at the fifth floor, was able to locate the connection with the hospital proper and see the conference room she had been in for her tour during second year. She could also see the three patient visiting rooms. She was also able to locate the door Michael had used when he entered the building with Vladimir. Down a short hall from the door was a room labeled NETWORK OPERATIONS CENTER. She guessed that was what Michael had called the NOC. Immediately adjacent to it was a room for computer servers, and across the hall was a room labeled LOCKER ROOM. So far, so good.
“What’s a vegetative state? You mean people in a coma?”
“Yes, but they are not all in a coma. Some of them have sleep-wake cycles, which unfortunately often gives families unjustified hope they are going to wake up completely. Anyway, the hospital is for people with brain damage who cannot take care of themselves in even the most basic ways. They all need a lot of attention. It takes a lot of effort on the part of the nursing staff.”
“Sounds terrible.”
“It is,” Lynn agreed. She noticed that beyond the NOC was a hallway off of which was a profusion of rooms. Some were labeled as SUPPLY ROOM. Many were labeled AUTOMATION ROOM, whatever that meant. One was labeled AUTOMATION CONTROL. A few weren’t labeled at all. Two of the largest rooms were named CLUSTER A and CLUSTER B and also could be reached from the same hallway. Lynn remembered that Michael had said that on the first page of Ashanti’s record it had Cluster 4-B 32. Lynn now guessed that these were the spaces where patients were housed. Apparently Ashanti was on the fourth floor, or the first subterranean floor in the B cluster room.
“What do you think Cluster A and B refer to?” Lynn asked, just to see what George might say.
“No idea,” George said. “But I can tell you one thing: they are good-sized rooms and look like they need a lot of electrical power.”
“They are narrow in comparison to this open space in the middle,” Lynn said. The area she was pointing to was a large rectangle, and it occupied the center of the building. Around its entire periphery was a hallway that could be reached from the cluster rooms.
George looked at the space on the floor plan but appeared confused. He turned the plans around again, but there was nothing to read. It was just a blank space. He then shook his head and said: “I don’t know for sure what it is. Maybe it is a space open above and below. Let’s check the fourth floor.” George flipped the page over. “I was right. On the fourth floor it is definitely a room, which is open above, apparently all the way to the roof. That is a hell of a room. It’s got a three-story ceiling.”
Lynn studied the space that now was labeled RECREATION, and a door at each end. Otherwise, the fourth floor looked like the fifth. “What do you think it is?”
George scratched his bald pate, appearing as confused as ever. “If I had to guess, I’d say a gym! If I had to be more specific, I’d say a basketball gym. I know that sounds ridiculous, but the dimensions are about right. But I don’t know what all the wiring is in the floor.”
“There can’t be a gym in a hospital for comatose people,” Lynn said.
“Maybe it’s for the staff. You know, to let off a little steam. You said it is hard to take care of these vegetative patients.”
“I suppose it is possible,” Lynn said. “Let’s see what’s on the other floors.” She flipped a page back to see the third floor. It was just like the fifth floor, with the center space a bank. Same with the second floor. Then the first floor was a mirror image of the fourth, with the center space labeled RECREATION, and with the same wiring in the floor. “Two gyms?” Lynn said in disbelief.
“One for the men and one for the women,” George said with a laugh that suggested he wasn’t serious. “Why are you looking at plans? Are you going to visit?”
“I already have,” Lynn said. She told George of the limited visit given to her and her class. “Unfortunately all we saw was a tiny bit of the fifth floor. Needless to say, we have been curious ever since. That’s why I wanted to look at the plans.”
“Do you want to see anything more in this file?” George said, motioning to the stack.
“Do you think any of the other plans might give us a hint as to what the gym area really might be?”
“Don’t know!” George said. He pulled out the electrical plans and quickly flipped through them. “I don’t have any better idea about the gym, but I can tell you that the whole place must be highly automated. Seems to me there is enough power to run a manufacturing plant.” He tossed aside the electrical plans and pulled out plumbing. After he scanned them he remarked, “Wow! The place also uses a lot of water. The specified intake pipes are huge. Maybe those big rooms aren’t gyms but swimming pools. Just kidding!” Next he looked at the HVAC details. He was again impressed. “This is one interesting hospital, young lady. Look at this!”
George spun around the plans so that Lynn could read the labels.
“What am I looking at?” The plans looked superficially like the floor plans but were overlaid with all sorts of dotted lines, symbols, and labels similar to those on the electrical plans. She had to lean over to read some of the labels, which said things like FLOOR LEVEL RETURN or MAIN INDUCTION.
“This is an impressive HVAC system, which stands for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning,” George said. “Look at the size of these ducts, particularly from the gyms.” He pointed with a stubby index finger. Lynn wasn’t sure what he was pointing to and didn’t really care, but she didn’t want to appear disinterested since he was being so helpful. She was appreciative that he didn’t just hand her the file folder and leave her to her own devices.
“They can probably change the air in those gyms at will,” George said. “I worked for an air-conditioning company before I snared this city job. Much better benefits. You have no idea.”
“Why would they want to change the air in the gyms so quickly?” Lynn asked.
George shrugged his shoulders. “It’s pretty typical for well-designed gyms.”
“So you are saying that by looking at these HVAC plans you think these large rooms really are gyms.”
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” George confessed. “But I do see that the HVAC system is actually tied in with the system in the hospital proper. That’s where the cooling towers are and all the elaborate filter systems hospitals have to have. I bet that saved a bundle.”
“Well, thank you very much,” Lynn said. She felt that she had gotten the basics of what she needed. “You have really been very helpful.”
“It’s not every day that I get to help a good-looking medical student,” George said with a wink.
Good grief, Lynn thought but didn’t say. George was now ruining it by being patronizing. She hoped to hell he wasn’t going to ask her out for a drink.
“Would you like any copies of these plans?” George added, totally unaware of his faux pas.
“Is that possible?” Lynn asked. The idea had not occurred to her.
“Of course it is possible,” George said. “There is a small charge for the copier, but I could run it off for you right away, before lunch.”
“That would be terrific,” Lynn said.
“What plans would you like besides the floor plans?”
Quickly Lynn took another quick glance at the electrical, plumbing, and HVAC plans. She pulled the HVAC ones free of the others. “Maybe these,” she said. All at once a contingency plan sprang into her mind. She didn’t know if she was going to be able to get into the Shapiro, or exactly what she would find, but she was enough of a realist to know the risks, and the idea of having some sort of backup appealed to her.
“I’ll be right back,” George said with another wink.
This time Lynn didn’t mind.