“I’m glad she’s not my boss,” Paul said, making an exaggerated expression of disgust. “She’s so bitchy. And that hairdo . . .”
Pia couldn’t help but reflect on Paul’s choice of an adjective to describe Mariel. Accurate as it was, it seemed somehow out of place.
“If you can find out anything about him, I’d appreciate hearing,” Paul said.
Pia finished her sandwich, and Paul could see she was lost in thought again.
“Let me drive you back to work,” said Paul. “It’s the least I could do, after all your help.”
“Oh, no,” said Pia, “I’ll get a cab. Really!”
“No, I insist. I’m part of a large group of ER docs contracted to run the Memorial’s ER. I called one of my colleagues to come in early. I’m off at three anyway, but I was going to go up to see the president, Noakes, and tell him what a spineless buffoon I think he is. The way he handled that situation was inappropriate, to say the very least.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good idea,” said Pia.
“No, it isn’t, so you’d be doing me a favor by saving me from my foolish self.”
Paul slid a business card across the table to Pia. “I want to stay in touch in case you find out anything about the Chinese runner. And I’ll let you know if there is any fallout here at the hospital. Do you have a card? I suppose you don’t, given that you were out for a jog. Give me your cell number, and I’ll put it straight in my phone.”
Pia stood up and took the card. “It’s okay, Paul, I know where to reach you.”
Paul winced inwardly. He knew Pia thought he was being pushy, and he was, a little, but not for the reasons she probably thought. He liked Pia’s detached calm, and he sensed they shared a lot of the same interests, which he couldn’t say for a lot of people. And she was so damned gorgeous. At least Pia had taken the card.
“So are you going to save me from making a fool of myself, getting myself fired, even? My car’s right outside the ER entrance. One of the perks is my own parking slot.”
Pia eyed Paul. She debated. One of the realities was that she didn’t know if twenty dollars would be enough for a cab all the way to Nano, and even though Paul was socially aggressive, there was something about his nature that suggested it wasn’t the boringly typical male sexual come-on. “Okay,” Pia said suddenly. “To save you from yourself, I’ll accept a ride.” She smiled. “But let me tell you a little secret. I’m black belt in tae kwon do.” Now she laughed.
“You’re joking?”
“I’m not joking at all. I learned it at school, starting when I was fourteen.” What she didn’t say was that the school was essentially a reform school, and she had used martial arts to protect herself.
A broad smile spread across Paul’s face. To him, she was getting more and more interesting. “Fabulous!” he said, and meant it.
They walked in silence to the car park and found his Subaru with combination ski and bike racks. A dark blue Trek Madone bike was locked into the rack. In the back of the station wagon were loops of climbing robe. As Paul unlocked the car he looked over the top at Pia.
“Pia, you aren’t going to need tae kwon do when you’re with me.”
“I know,” Pia said. “That’s why I told you about it. If I thought I’d need it, I wouldn’t have said anything.”
They both climbed into the car, which was as clean and ordered as Paul’s person. Paul turned the ignition and looked across at Pia. “The reason I asked for your cell number is that I’d like to call you, and not just about this runner guy. Perhaps we could go for a drink and talk about medicine, or whatever floats your boat.”
“That’s a possibility,” said Pia. She wasn’t used to people being so disarmingly frank. Pia also felt safe with Paul. She could usually tell that a man thought she was attractive because he would check her out and leer. Here was a man who just said he liked her. It made a nice change.
They drove out of the hospital parking lot, and Pia directed him to Nano. When they got to the gate, Pia showed the security guard her ID and said that Paul was just dropping her off. Paul pulled up to the front of the main building. He was clearly impressed.
“This place is huge. And that landscaping is to die for. The whole effect is intimidating, I have to say.”
“It is,” said Pia, who was seeing Nano from a new perspective after the strange episode with the Chinese runner. She didn’t like the feeling. She got out of the car, and Paul did, too.
“So stay in touch,” he said, leaning on the car’s roof. “No pressure, remember.”
“I have your card,” said Pia. She remembered she was wearing a Boulder Memorial lab coat, and slipped it off. Folding it over, she held it out to Paul. “This is yours,” she added.
“Not mine personally. I’d say it belongs to Mr. Noakes, in which case, you can keep it. Seriously, keep it as a souvenir of your visit to Memorial.”
“I have plenty of lab coats. I really don’t need it. It’s going to go to waste.”
Pia continued to hold out the coat, but Paul refused to take it. Instead he just smiled and raised his arms as if in surrender.
Pia relented and unfolded the coat to put it back on. As she did so, something fell out and landed on the tarmac of the parking lot. It was the first blood-collecting vacuum tube used on the runner. Pia had forgotten she had jammed it in her pocket. The tube bounced on its rubber stopper. Responding by reflex, Pia reached down and snatched up the tube before it could bounce again and break. She held it up, and both Paul and Pia could see that the tube was intact.
Paul walked around and Pia offered him the tube.
“Hey, clever you! I never knew you kept back a blood sample.”
“I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t do it deliberately. I stuck it in my pocket to keep it out of the way when I was drawing the second and third samples.”
“Great to have this, since they confiscated the other two. I’ll keep it, if you don’t mind. It will be interesting to see if it’s normal, which is what I suspect, since he was acting so normal himself.”
“Please,” said Pia. She thought about checking out the blood herself, but she knew there was a chance it could get confiscated on her way into Nano. She thought it would be in safe hands with Paul.
“Just don’t use it all up,” she said. “I might want to look at it, too.”
“I won’t,” he said.
“You want my mobile number?” she said.
“Absolutely,” Paul said. He got out his own phone to add it directly into his contacts.
Pia told Paul her cell phone number. She had yet to change from a New York plan. Paul took it down and put the sample of blood in his own lab coat. He gave Pia a salute of sorts and a friendly smile before climbing back into his car to drive out of the parking lot.
When Paul stopped at the security gate to be let out onto the state road, he glanced in his rearview mirror. He could still see Pia standing where he’d left her. Once the security gate had been raised, Paul accelerated toward Boulder.
A few minutes later he found himself whistling. He was happy despite the run-in with Noakes over the Chinese runner. Paul was not currently in a serious relationship, thanks to a recent breakup, and he thought that meeting Pia was just what the doctor ordered to take his mind off negative thoughts. He was definitely looking forward to getting to know her. She was the most interesting and intelligent woman he’d met in a long time. He was also looking forward to seeing what the Chinese runner’s blood chemistries might show, if anything.
15.
NANO, LLC, BOULDER, COLORADO
TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 2013, 3:15 P.M.
After watching Paul’s Subaru until it disappeared from sight, Pia stood in the parking lot for a few moments, taking in the expanse of the Nano, LLC, buildings and grounds. The sensation of unease she’d felt
when she and Paul had driven into the complex a few minutes earlier had only increased, and Pia’s analytical mind clicked into gear. What did she know about Nano now that she hadn’t known less than two hours previously? She knew that there was a Chinese man somewhere in one of the many buildings who had a strange medical condition, and that Nano security was very protective of him. She also knew that Nano had its own medical staff and operated its own medical infirmary on-site. And she knew that there was a lot she didn’t know about her immediate boss, Mariel Spallek.
For Pia, Mariel’s role in the removal of the Chinese runner from the hospital was the most perplexing aspect of the whole affair. It was obvious that Mariel was familiar with the runner, or at least familiar with what might possibly cause his collapse and apparent cardiac arrest. Mariel had been extremely confident that Nano’s medics could treat the man when Paul, as a board-certified emergency medicine specialist, had little idea what was ailing him. What this told Pia was that Spallek was clearly a higher-level Nano operative than Pia had previously thought, and she wondered what this implied for her. How would the fact that it was Pia who happened upon the man affect her status at the company?
This last concern was fleeting for Pia. What was more insistent and urgent for her was her instinctive drive to find out what was going on. Unlike most people, Pia was the kind of person who, sensing danger, would seek its source rather than run away from it. Early in life she’d learned that no one was going to suddenly appear and rescue her. She had to go for the jugular when threatened or cornered.
Pia had to smile at the timing. She knew George would immediately do everything he could to persuade Pia not to investigate the Chinese runner, but George was gone. There was no one who would try to dissuade her from getting to the bottom of this weird episode. Besides, she felt a moral and ethical obligation to know what kind of an organization she was involved with and hence supporting.
Pia passed through the elaborate security system, paying more attention than usual to the process, and headed up to her lab. She looked for evidence that Mariel Spallek had been in the room recently and found nothing. That morning, before she set off for her run, Pia had started to set up yet another batch of roundworm experiments, utilizing the new design with polyethylene glycol molecules incorporated into the microbivore shell. Everyone, including Berman, had been very keen for Pia to keep pressing forward with this work in hopes of preventing any immune response, especially before moving on to animal subjects and eventually human volunteers. Pia had filled out all the required requisition forms as dictated by the overzealous bean counters in accounting.
As was her custom whenever she returned to the lab, Pia checked the status of all her ongoing experiments, but she found herself unable to concentrate. Her mind kept reverting back to the Chinese runner. She figured that he had been brought to the Nano infirmary that Mariel had mentioned, which Pia had been hitherto totally unaware of. That thought begged the question of where such an infirmary might be located, and if she could find out. If she could, then perhaps she could go to the infirmary and talk to the medical staff, to at least satisfy her medical curiosity and quiet her mind, which was racing with all manner of outlandish scenarios.
But where to start?
Pia took the elevator down to the first floor and walked back to the main security area, through which she had entered the building just minutes before. She approached one of the guards who was marginally more personable than any of the other four or five usually manning the day shift. He was standing alone in front of a pane of floor-to-ceiling glass, watching as a UPS driver unloaded a number of parcels.
“Excuse me, Mr. Milloy,” she said, reading the man’s name tag, which was pinned to his uniform. “Could you direct me to the infirmary?”
“I’m sorry, miss,” said Milloy, “I’m not sure what you mean. What’s an infirmary?”
“An infirmary, a small hospital facility. I was told that Nano has one.”
“Not as far as I’m aware, miss. But let me ask. Excuse me a second.”
Milloy walked over to the pair of guards stationed by the front door and with a particularly serious demeanor, which was the normal style of all the Nano security people, spoke with the taller of the two. Pia had never seen that particular man do anything other than stand front and center, eyes forward, like a soldier on guard duty. Even now, as Milloy spoke with him, the man continued to look straight ahead, not acknowledging his interlocutor at all. Finally, the man nodded, almost imperceptibly, and said something to Milloy. Milloy came back to Pia.
“I confirmed it, miss. Nano has no hospital. There’s a nurse employed by the company who has an office near the cafeteria, but I expect you know that. She probably gave you a flu shot last fall.”
“Right, I’m not talking about the nurse. Thanks.” Pia started to leave, then turned back.
“Mr. Milloy, do you always work this building?”
“Why do you ask?” said Milloy. He hadn’t sounded terribly pleased to field Pia’s first question, and now he was sounding decidedly irritated. He’d tried to talk to Pia on several occasions before, but had felt she had deliberately snubbed him.
“There are a lot of buildings on the grounds,” Pia said. “I have no idea what goes on in them. I thought that if you occasionally worked in other buildings you might know which building might have the best chance of having the infirmary.”
“Sorry,” Milloy said with little sincerity.
Pia went back through the iris scanner, took the elevator back to the fourth floor, and followed the corridor back to her lab. She stopped at the door but didn’t enter. Instead, as she had never done before, she kept going. She knew there was a bridge extending from the building housing her lab to the adjacent building on the fourth floor, the same floor as her lab. She had no idea how to get to the bridge, but out of curiosity, she thought she’d try to find it. After about a hundred feet or so, there were some twists and turns until the corridor ended at a set of double doors protected by another iris scanner. Pia looked around. She couldn’t see any obvious cameras, but assumed there would be some built into the fabric of the ceiling, as there were outside of her own laboratory, so there was a reasonable chance she was being observed. If asked by security what she was doing, she decided she’d be truthful, saying she was a curious employee wondering what was behind the doors at the end of the hall where her lab was located.
Pia put her eye to the iris scanner and pressed the scan button. It was of the same design as other machines she was familiar with from the entrance to the building and her own lab. But this one gave an unfamiliar result: a harsh buzz and a momentary red blinking light. Pia tried again and the machine turned her down once more. Pia tried the door. It was locked, as she expected. She shrugged and turned back. So much for trying to check out the bridge.
Before reaching the door to her lab, she had an idea. She took out her iPhone, went to the settings, and made sure location services was on. Then she tried to map where she was in relation to other buildings. But there was no result despite there being a strong Wi-Fi signal. Being more specific, she went to the Maps app and put in Nano’s address. All she got was a blank. When she used double-tap to back out, she could see that the totality of Nano’s footprint was a blank. Apparently Nano had gotten into the Googlesphere and removed the information.
Pia was getting nowhere. She knew of no other entrance to Nano that was accessible from the main road besides the one she and apparently everyone else used. But there were other side roads in the area. Perhaps she could go outside and try to walk the perimeter of the facility to see what she could find. Pia was determined not to be thwarted, but tromping around in the woods at that moment was not a high priority.
Returning back to her own lab, she again looked to see if Mariel had been around. If she had, there was no sign of her. With some ambivalence, Pia wondered when the hell she was going to see the woman
. Mariel had been less than pleasant that morning and had mostly ignored her at the hospital, but Pia had some questions despite what Mariel had said in the hospital parking lot. Whether Mariel would answer them or not, Pia had no idea, but she was going to ask them just the same.
Pia went to the lab bench area she used as her personal space, since she did not have a separate office. She had had yet another idea. The Chinese runner had yelled out his name and suddenly it popped into her head. Pia used one of the lab’s phones to call the main operator and asked to be connected to Yao Hong-Xiau.
“Could you spell that?” the operator asked.
Pia could only guess at an Anglicized spelling of the name, but after she made a stab of it, the operator said there was no record of anyone with “Yao” or “Hong” in their name. Still connected with the operator and with a piece of paper and a pen in hand, Pia wrote out the name. She gave the operator several different possible spellings, certain only of the first couple of letters. When the operator still could find nothing, Pia persisted by asking if there was a number for any Chinese group or office. When she got another no, she switched tactics and asked to be connected with the Nano infirmary.
“Infirmary?” the operator questioned. “What’s an infirmary?”
Pia defined the term as she had with the guard downstairs, sensing irritably that it must be an East Coast term that hadn’t made its way across the Mississippi River.
“There’s no infirmary at Nano,” the operator declared with certainty.
“How about hospital or medical facility?” Pia suggested. She was feeling discouraged but kept trying.
“Sorry! There’s nothing like that. How about the nurse’s office? I have a number for that.”
Pia hung up the phone. It was frustrating. She tried to think of what else to do, but nothing immediately came to mind. Instead her eyes wandered over to the LCD display of the readouts coming from all the biocompatibility experiments she currently had running. One of the many figures on the screen was blinking, suggesting there had been a change in a parameter being monitored.