Host by Robin Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

Once inside, Lynn took the woman to see one of the clerks behind the main check-in desk.
    “I will be happy to show this young lady where she needs to be,” the clerk said.
    Lynn quickly retraced her steps, and after a short wait, boarded one of the main elevators on her way up to five. Unfortunately it was a local, stopping at every floor to discharge or pick up people. Pressed into the back of the car, Lynn tried again with her tablet to see if Carl had been assigned a room yet, but he hadn’t. She expected it was going to happen at any moment.
    Once on five, she went directly to the main desk. Like the rest of the hospital, the floor could not have been any busier. To add to the chaos, the breakfast trays were in the process of being collected. The nurses who had long since finished report were getting some patients down to surgery, welcoming others back from the PACU, attending to doctors’ orders, distributing medications, and arranging transportation to radiology and physical therapy. It was comparative bedlam.
    Lynn knew many of the people who worked on the floor fromher monthlong elective back in October. She looked for the head nurse, Colleen McPherson, with whom she had gotten along well, but didn’t see her. When she asked another floor nurse, she learned that Colleen was in with a hip replacement patient whom they were trying to mobilize. Instead Lynn went back behind the desk to chat with Hank Thompson, the ward clerk. In the hospital hierarchy run by the nurses, medical students were low on the totem pole, but Hank had never treated her that way. He was a student at the College of Charleston and doing his own version of a work-study program.
    Like everyone else, Hank was doing six things at once. He was on the phone, with a number of people on hold. While waiting, Lynn pulled up the master list of all the patients on the fifth floor on one of the monitors. It was organized according to room number. She ran her finger down all the names, looking for Vandermeer. It wasn’t there. But there were several vacant rooms, so she thought there wasn’t going to be a problem. She was pleased. It was best for orthopedic patients to be on the fifth floor because the nurses and aides were well versed in handling the usual problems that had to be faced by post-operative orthopedic patients, like dealing with the CPM, or continuous passive motion machines, which flexed and extended joints immediately after surgery. Lynn knew that Carl would have one because Weaver used them with all his ACL cases.
    When Hank finished with the people on hold, he started to punch in the numbers to make another call. Lynn grabbed his arm.
    “Two seconds of your time, Hank! A patient by the name of Carl Vandermeer will be coming to the floor shortly, unless he is already here. Does the name ring a bell?”
    “Not that I remember,” Hank said with a shake of his head. “Who’s the doctor?”
    “Weaver.”
    Hank grabbed the master OR list and scanned it. “Yeah, here itis. It was a seven-thirty case.” He looked at his watch. “Should be coming up any minute, unless there was a complication.”
    “It was a straightforward case. First operation. Healthy, young guy.”
    “Shouldn’t be a problem. We have several rooms vacated this morning, and they have already been serviced, so they are clean and waiting.”
    Lynn nodded and absently played with a paper clip. Hank turned his attention back to the phone. It occupied 90 percent of his day every day.
    Lynn knew she should probably head over to the eye clinic. The lecture would be over and patients were probably lined up to be presented and examined by the medical students. Yet she knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate until she was certain Carl was comfortable and all was in order.
    Suddenly she stood up. Feeling she couldn’t just sit there, she decided she’d go down to the second floor and at least check the OR schedule. There could have been a delay in getting started. What