Days 11-16 (Disappointment)

For once, he wasn't disappointed. The drive was relatively short,
the traffic at this hour had nearly evaporated, and the day
continued to be bright and clear. Grant wondered if everything
seemed so suddenly alive merely in comparison to the
Disappointment Machine. The damn thing had seemed like a
near-death experience, even in retrospect.

He'd been to this particular hospital before, though not as a
patient, and so when he went to the front desk and showed his
press credentials to the person working there, he already knew
he'd be directed to their public affairs office. In this, he was
also not disappointed - the tired but friendly worker looked over
his papers and pointed him towards room 128.

The nameplate by 128 declared it to be the domain of Ellen
MacKenzie, MBA, Chief of Public Affairs. Grant smiled; when you
job was to go around the city talking to as many different people
as you possibly could, it was nice every now and then to speak to
someone you were at least vaguely familiar with. Ellen had been
his contact here at the hospital since he'd started his job. He
knocked on the door.

It was opened promptly by a woman speaking in hurried tones into
a wireless headset. ``Yes, Dr. Forshee, I assure you, if we see
any more cases we'll get the information about the distributors
to you.'' She glanced up, saw Grant, and waved him into the
office as she retreated back to her desk. ``Thanks again.'' she
added perfunctorily.

Grant sat across from her and looked over her books, out the
window, anywhere to indicate he wasn't listening in on her
conversation. She took her headset off and pressed a button on
the cellphone she had at her hip.

``If you're doing a story about this outbreak,'' she began
seriously, ``you're going to have to come back later. I'm going
to have to get a good night's sleep before I issue any press
releases. If I'm lucky, the USDA will beat me to it.''

``Sounds serious.'' he said noncommittally. This wouldn't have
been the first time he'd gone to interview someone and gotten a
completely different story instead.

Ellen breathed a sigh of relief. ``So this is the first you've
heard of it, good.'' The downside to interviewing someone who was
familiar with you was that they learned to recognize the
statements you used when you had no idea what was going on. ``
There's been a few cases of E. Coli, we suspect there's going to
have to be a recall, and hopefully we won't see anymore and
they're isolated incidents and Dr. Forshee can handle it.'' She
interrupted Grant before he could say anything, ``And yes, if
it's more major I'll keep you in the loop.''

``Thanks.'' was the only reply he could think of. Ellen's mind
worked a mile a minute - from what little he'd seen, it had to -
and it was difficult sometimes for him to keep up. His mind was
always trying to fit things into a story, which was handy when he
was actually working on a story, but not so when he was trying to
simply listen.

``So.'' she said, having regained some measure of composure, ``
What does bring you to my office, then?''

``Ah,'' he replied. He needed to work on his attention span, he
reflected. He got sidetracked too easily. ``I'm doing a story on
people injured during the outage. Your hospital admitted a man
named Dr. James Caster two days ago.''

Ellen nodded and began typing on her computer. ``The name rings a
bell. There were two, maybe three fatalities due to that outage,
I think they were all vehicle related.'' She smiled as the
machine fetched Caster's records. ``Yes, there he is. Severe
trauma from the accident, blood loss, swelling in the brain-''
Grant knew she was purposefully keeping the jargon out of her
summary, and mentally thanked her for it. ``He died early the
next morning.''

``I've been reading the police report,'' among other things, he
added silently, ``and it says he refused treatment?''

MacKenzie had already been paging through the files while Grant
talked. She frowned at the screen. ``He did. All that damage, and
he was still conscious when we got him here. I do remember him
now, one of the on-duty doctors filled me in the next morning.
Caster wanted to see his lawyer, didn't want to be operated on or
anything until the man arrived.''

``His lawyer?'' Grant's notepad and pen had seemingly appeared
out of nowhere as he started writing. ``Did he say why?''

Ellen had paused, thinking about how best to phrase her next
statements. ``If you want the honest truth, Grant? And this is
off-record: I think he knew he wasn't going to make it. He was
probably getting his will set.''

Grant had obligingly stopped writing. ``Do you know if he did?''

She shrugged. ``I have no idea. Once the lawyer left, he gave his
consent to operate and we did what he could. We didn't ask.''

Grant stood up, ``Thanks Ellen, that's all I need.'' He shook her
hand, as he had every time he'd been here, and left. Behind him,
he could hear her start dialing another set of numbers and
speaking into her headset. There had been a time, when he'd first
started this job, when he'd though about asking her on a date.
They had, after all, gotten along fairly well, and he wouldn't,
by a long shot, be the first journalist to transition from
business to the casual. Then he'd realized the kind of hours she
put in at the hospital and the fact that she literally had no
free time. He couldn't compete with her schedule then, he
reflected as he walked away, hearing her voice dwindle, and he
definitely couldn't now. Besides, he had a date tonight.

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