Coma

She recognized it immediately. It was a TV monitor camera. As its unhurried pan brought its lens toward Susan, she ducked back and closed the door. When she guessed that the camera had panned past, she whipped open the door and began to run the length of the room, to the elevator. But her timing was off; she would be spotted by the TV camera on its return sweep. Susan dived behind a computer console only halfway to her destination.

She had to work her way down the rest of the room, from console to console, trying to avoid the roving eye of the camera. Making a dash for the elevator, she pressed the button frantically. Susan could hear the machinery start up inside the shaft. The elevator was on another floor.

The TV camera reached the end of its arc and started back. Susan pressed the elevator button several times in succession. The sound of the elevator machinery stopped, the doors quivered and then began to open. Susan glanced up at the TV camera before rolling around the edge of the elevator door, groping for the “close” button. The door closed but Susan had no idea if she had been observed or not The elevator was cavernous and correspondingly slow. There were only three burtons. She pressed the button for floor two and felt the machine begin to ascend. The floor plan for the second floor showed that the ORs were at the extreme opposite end of the building from the elevators. A long hall stretched from the elevators back to the OR area.

Both the eighth and ninth doors to the right led into the OR complex.

When the elevator stopped and the doors opened, Susan stayed inside with her finger poised over the “door-close” button. No one in sight. The corridor was similar to those of the first floor except that the doors were more deeply recessed. The ceilings carried tracks for the trolleys.

As the elevator doors began to close Susan plunged down the corridor, mentally checking off the number of doorways she had passed. Suddenly, in the distance, Susan saw a man driving a miniature forklift loaded with units of whole blood. He appeared to emerge from an intersecting corridor. She half-skidded, half-ran into one of the recessed doorways, crashing up against the wall, her breath coming in gasps. She listened.

The sound of the machine receded. She peered into the corridor. Empty.

She pushed off and reached the ninth door.

She waited until her breath returned to a semblance of normal before cracking the door and checking the room. She slipped in quickly.

She was in a dressing room. A partially smoked cigarette lay in an ashtray, its smoke curling up in the still air. An open doorway led to a bath area. Susan could hear the sound of a shower going.

Michelle reentered the control room. Her sense of ennui had disappeared. Her mouth was set, but her eyes moved incessantly. Like the guard, she was now very nervous.

That girl has literally evaporated. She couldn’t have walked out, could she?” asked Michelle.

“Impossible. There’s no way the front door, or any outside door for that matter, can be opened without me activating the door release.” The guard was still switching from scanner to scanner.

“I think we’d better give direction another call. This affair could get serious,” said the nurse at the computer console.

“I don’t understand it. We have these monitors placed in all the key areas. She’s got to be in some doorway,” said the guard.

“She’s not in a doorway. I went all the way through to the main ward.

What about the elevator?”

“That’s a thought,” said the guard. “If she does get upstairs there could be big trouble. I’m going to secure the building and activate all the automatic locking mechanisms on all stairway doors and electrify the perimeter fence. I’ll hold the general alarm until direction is reached.”

Michelle moved to a red telephone. “This is absurd, really! Totally unnecessary. Why was she allowed in by herself without a group?”

Swinging doors opened from the dressing rooms to the OR receiving area. Susan stepped into it. Here the appearance was more traditional.

The lighting came from fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling alongside the omnipresent tracks for the patient trolleys. There was a faint glow that Susan remembered from the main ward, and she guessed there was an ultraviolet component to the light. The floor was of white vinyl, the walls surfaced in white ceramic tile.

The OR reception area was not large. In the center was an empty desk.

There were apparently four operating rooms, two on each side, with ancillary rooms between. Susan’s attention was attracted by muffled sounds from the first OR. Light coming through a small window suggested that an operation was in progress.

A dark window in the door of the adjacent ancillary room suggested that it was empty. Susan walked over, peered in, and stepped into the darkness.

This service room was dimly lit through a window of a door leading to the occupied OR.