“Do you have a moment to talk?” Pia asked.
“I think so,” Paul said. He leaned over the ER desk and asked the head nurse if there was any other case waiting for him. Paul’s role was mainly supervisory unless the ER was overwhelmed. In that situation he saw cases cold. The nurse gave him a thumbs-up sign, meaning for the moment he wasn’t needed.
“Come on!” Paul said to Pia. He led her down the hall into a doctors’ lounge. Inside the windowless room were several club chairs, a couch, and a single desk. The desk was occupied by a resident physician dressed in rumpled scrub clothes, looking much more like the ER doctors Pia was accustomed to seeing from her medical school experience. The doctor was doing paperwork and didn’t look up when Paul and Pia entered.
“I think Nano had something to do with the blood disappearing,” Pia said quickly and quietly once they had seated themselves. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”
“What makes you think so?” Paul studied Pia’s face. Her comment sounded paranoid to him. He also noticed something else. She wasn’t maintaining eye contact.
“It’s really just a hunch.” Pia looked over at the doctor at the desk. He was paying them no heed. “The place has a lot of secrets, I’m coming to find. The security is extraordinary. I’d not given it much thought until now, but it seems excessive, even considering the need to protect nanotechnology patents. I mean, there are iris scanners. It’s like the Pentagon or the CIA, for shit’s sake. And on top of that, it’s not just runners who have some sort of association with Nano. This afternoon, while I was out supposedly to jog but really to reconnoiter the Nano complex, I saw a couple of cyclists with Nano logos who I think were also Chinese, being followed by other people I assume work at Nano: one on a motorbike and others in a white van with heavily tinted windows.”
“Cyclists?”
“Yes, Lance Armstrong types: professional-looking with all the paraphernalia, including flashy racing bikes. And I discovered that Nano has two fences, the inner fence you saw with razor wire, for chrissake, and another fence a couple of hundred yards back in the woods that’s camouflaged. I didn’t even see it until I literally walked into it.”
“You were out in the woods?”
“Yes. That’s where I was when you called me. I was going to walk around the property to find out where the other entrances are. There has to be at least one more way into the place.”
“Okay, but I don’t see how that adds up to Nano stealing my blood sample.”
“You said nothing like that had ever happened before. If there was a flaw in the lab’s system, you’d expect it to have happened at least once before, wouldn’t you? The amount of blood the hospital must send out for tests.”
“It’s true, they test a lot of blood,” said Paul. “We have a lab in the hospital, but the bulk of it is outsourced. It is more economical.”
Pia realized her logic was shaky at best. She was saying Nano must have taken the blood because they were secretive and a little sinister. But she stood by her instincts. Last year, George Wilson had tried to shoot down all of the outlandish-sounding conspiracy theories she came up with surrounding the deaths at Columbia, but in the end, she had gotten to the heart of the matter by instinct and deductive reasoning. She’d been very wide of the mark on the way to her conclusion, but she was basically right in the end. With Nano she was getting another gut feeling, and she was determined to follow through with it. There was definitely something strange transpiring, on, and she was going to find out what it was all about.
“Let me say this,” Pia continued when she sensed Paul’s dubiousness. “They certainly have the personnel to pull off something like stealing a blood sample from a clinical lab. You saw those guys yourself who came here with my boss. They looked like a private SWAT team. Come on! It’s a company that makes paint additives, or so they want us to believe. Why all the security and strong-arm tactics?”
“I did think their barging in here was a bit over the top,” Paul said, although he was reluctant to buy into Pia’s idea completely. He liked his life to be stress-free and uncomplicated and this affair was becoming complicated. He liked to work, and have enough free time to enjoy nature, at least when he wasn’t spending his spare time noodling with computer code, a hobby that was a holdover from college robotics courses. Paul loved the relative autonomy of being an ER physician, which was why suits like Noakes drove him crazy, and why the idea of a company like Nano stealing evidence, if that was what had happened, was so antithetical to his beliefs. But he didn’t want to complicate his life.
“So how are you going to find out if they did it?” Paul asked after a pause.
“Paul, trust me, I have a nose for this stuff. They did it.”
“All right, how are you going to prove it?”
“I’m going to do a little undercover work,” Pia said. She waited for Paul to reprimand her, as George would undoubtedly have done, but he said nothing.
“Which is another reason I’m here.” Pia paused.
“Go on.”
Pia lowered her voice and leaned closer to Paul. “I need a scrip. I need a prescription, or better still, maybe you could just give me a few pills if they’re available in the ER.”
“What kind of pills are you talking about?” Paul questioned warily. Pia asking for drugs raised an immediate red flag. Obviously he didn’t know her well, having met her for the first time the day before. He also noticed that she was still continuing to avoid looking at him, making him wonder if she had been like that yesterday. He couldn’t remember.
“Sleep medication,” Pia said. She was studying her hands. She felt awkward. “Not a lot. In fact, only a few pills or capsules or whatever. I hardly slept a wink last night. Thanks. I really appreciate you doing it.”
Paul leaned back, “Hey, I haven’t agreed to do it!”
“No, right, sorry, I’m jumping the gun. I need some Temazepam.”
“That’s a benzodiazepine, a controlled substance.”
“I know, I know. I’m having terrible trouble sleeping. I can’t sleep at all, in fact. I had some Ambien, it doesn’t work at all. I mean, look at me.”
Paul looked at Pia, and she seemed completely fine to him. In fact, she looked totally gorgeous. Like Pia, Paul relied a lot on his intuition to guide him. He was suspicious of Pia’s claim that she wanted the narcotic to help her get to sleep. Something wasn’t right, and she wouldn’t look at him.
“Look, sorry,” Pia said. She stood up. “I can ask someone else, it’s not a big deal.” She started toward the door.
“Pia, there’s something I didn’t tell you.”
And Pia turned back. She noticed that the other person in the room was still ignoring them as if he wasn’t even aware of their presence.
“I didn’t send all the blood to the lab. I kept a few cc’s here in the ER. They are in the fridge.”
“You did?” Pia’s face lit up. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I would have told you earlier, but you hung up on me. And I did tell you I sent a sample of the blood over to the lab. I didn’t send all of it because you said you might want to take a look at it. I sent enough for standard diagnostic tests and kept the rest.”
“I wish you’d told me.”
“I’m telling you now. You could have used a little time to chill out when we were talking earlier. I’m not going to come running after you like a lost puppy who got scolded. I’ve got my own stuff to worry about, you know.”
“Okay, I get it,” said Pia. “And you’re right. Okay, great! You keep the blood. We don’t know what we’re looking for, so you should hold on to what you have till we have a better idea.”