Host by Cook Robin

Author:Cook, Robin [Cook, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-24T07:00:00+00:00

24.

Tuesday, April 7, 2:41 P.M.

For a few minutes after Dr. Sandra Wykoff had left, silence reigned in the Clinical Engineering supervisor’s office. The only noise came from out in the service area and was the muted whine of various electric tools combined with a hint of classical symphonic music. The two Russian expats regarded each other while immersed in their own thoughts. Both were not happy, but for slightly different reasons.

Fyodor Rozovsky had been in Charleston for several years before he had recruited Misha Zotov. The men had known each other since childhood, having both grown up in Saint Petersburg. Also, both of them had attended the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Fyodor had been brought to America almost a decade earlier, when Sidereal Pharmaceuticals had agreed to fund the Shapiro Institute. With Fyodor’s knowledge of computer coding and robotics, he had been clearly essential to the project’s success. His contributions had been such that after the Shapiro was successfully up and running, Middleton Healthcare happily offered him the opportunity to run Clinical Engineering for the entire medical center. The company felt that progressive automation was key for hospital-based medicine.

“I don’t like this,” Fyodor said. He was now speaking Russian, and his irritation was apparent. “Sergei Polushin is going to be as angry as a bear if this blip becomes a subject of general discussion in the Anesthesia Department.”

Sergei Polushin, a financial genius, was reputed to be the closest confidant to Boris Rusnak, the billionaire Russian oligarch who had created Sidereal Pharmaceuticals. Living in Geneva, Rusnak, with Sergei’s help, had aggressively merged a number of small drug firms by a series of rapid, hostile takeovers to build one of the world’s largest. More important, the company was poised to become the dominant player in the newest pharmaceutical gold mine: making and marketing biologics, or drugs made by living systems, not by chemistry. Sergei Polushin had been the force behind the Shapiro Institute, and continued to treat it as his personal fiefdom.

“I need to have a frank discussion with my team of programmers,” Misha said. Gone was any hint of the fawning facade he presented to Sandra. He was clearly as angry as Fyodor. “A frame offset like that is just sloppy programming. The trouble is I didn’t see it myself.”

“I don’t need to tell you, but Sergei will undoubtedly hold you responsible if this thing causes trouble.”

“You don’t need to tell me,” Misha said. “I will see that it is eliminated immediately. When is the next case scheduled?”

“Not until next week, so you have plenty of time. But it is important to get it fixed. The schedule is to do a case a week in all the Middleton Healthcare hospitals. There cannot be any bugs. Is it possible this same phenomena occurred with either of the two previous test cases?”

“I don’t know,” Misha said. “Let’s check the pilot case!” He grabbed a chair, sat, and used the terminal on Fyodor’s desk to pull up Ashanti Davis’s anesthesia record. When it was on the monitor, he magnified the central portion just as Sandra had done with Vandermeer’s.

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