Plague

CHAPTER 14

Benjamin Cornell’s heart raced as he walked into the California Department of Health. He glanced around to make sure no one had noticed him though he was sure they hadn’t. He’d dressed as normally as possible: Polo shirt, jeans, and sandals. Just an average white guy walking into a public building. He wore glasses and had his sun-bleached blond hair covered in an Oakland A’s baseball cap.

The corridor he walked down was long and there was a receptionist at a booth on his right side. He took a deep breath and walked to her.

“Hi,” he said, putting on his best smile. “I’m here to see Dr. Wharton, please.”

“Fifth floor, two doors on your left.”

“Thank you.”

He walked to the elevators and hit the button for the third floor, his actual destination. If anyone asked the receptionist later, he wanted her to only remember that someone had asked about Dr. Wharton.

The elevator dinged and he stepped on. There were six other people crammed on and he thought of an email joke he had received. Something about being on a crowded elevator and saying, “You’re probably all wondering why I gathered you here today.”

He smirked to himself as the doors opened on the third floor. Ben leaned against the wall and waited until the two other passengers that wanted this floor stepped off. He thought it best not to step off on the same floor as anyone else. Instead, he rode the elevator up to the fourth floor and got off.

There was a Workforce Services suite and he walked toward it until he heard the elevator doors close behind him and then he spun and ran over to the stairs leading down. He took two at a time before he stood in front of the door leading into the third floor and then took a deep breath to compose himself.

He opened the doors and stepped through.

The third floor was better taken care of than the fourth. The carpets didn’t have any stains and the walls were free of clutter. He walked past a set of double doors that had a black sign emblazoned on the glass that took up half the door: MEDICAL RECORDS.

Ben checked the watch on his phone. It was 11:51 a.m. He had four minutes.

He walked down the hallway to a drinking fountain and took a sip of water but his throat was nearly closed up from the amount of adrenaline coursing through him. There were restrooms just around the corner and down a small corridor and he walked to them and went into a stall. He sat on the toilet seat.

Occasionally, not often, but occasionally, it hit him just what an awkward turn his life had taken. He had graduated first in his class from Berkley’s Haas School of Business with his MBA when he was just twenty-one and the world had been his oyster. He’d been offered a consulting job in Manhattan making a hundred and sixty thousand a year and had accepted.

But that felt like a different life now. That was before his son Matthew had developed autism. Before the twenty-four-hour care and the crying and the strained marriage. Before it felt like his soul had been ripped out of his body and crushed. He had to leave the position in Manhattan and he and his wife and Matthew moved back to Northern California. He accepted a job at a non-profit as assistant director, making a quarter of his previous salary. But the job had flexibility so that he could spend more time with Matthew.

He checked his watch: 11:54 a.m. He had one minute.

Ben stood up and walked out into the corridor. He had never done anything like this before. He was not a criminal. The last time he had gotten in trouble that he could remember was when he received a speeding ticket rushing his wife to the hospital when she was in labor.

He took a deep breath, and continued down the corridor to the medical records room.

Ben opened the door, expecting to see a receptionist. He fiddled with the credentials in his pocket that had been forged by a counterfeiter that made fake identifications for illegal aliens and then withdrew his hand. Instead of a receptionist or a security guard or a police officer, there was a sign, handwritten with marker on a piece of paper, that had been pinned up on a small board: PLEASE DIAL 9 FOR OPERATOR IF YOU NEED HELP.

He smiled to himself. You had to love the way government operated.

Ben walked around the counter and past the large stacks of periodicals and folders and papers. What he was looking for wouldn’t be here. There was an adjoining room and he opened the door onto a world he couldn’t begin to fathom.

Manila folders were stacked on shelves from floor to ceiling. The Department of Health was slowly going digital, but they could not destroy the paper copies until the subjects passed away or moved out of state. The rows of shelves seemed to go on forever like an infinite library of people’s personal information. He didn’t want to spend the time running through here and he scanned the room for something that…there it was. In the corner was a computer with a barstool in front of it.

He went to it and sat down, typing in several names. He wrote the call numbers on his palm with a pen that was on the counter next to the computer and the writing got past his wrist before he was done.

Ben jumped to his feet, and began running down the rows of shelves. They were arranged by number, rather than alphabetically, and it took a few minutes for him to adjust. But once he did, it was just like scanning through the Dewey decimal system at any library. He found the first two files he needed but the third wasn’t where it was supposed to be. He read the name again: it was a female. He wondered whether it was under her maiden name and went back to the computer and found a number for her maiden name and got the file.

He nabbed seven more files and was about to head back to the computer and run the remainder of his names when he heard voices in the room next door. The door opened.

Ben jumped behind one of the shelves, kneeling down with the files in his arms. Two people, a male and a female, were discussing a retirement party that had been thrown for someone at the office. They stopped near the shelves, about ten feet from where Ben was. His heart was pounding so hard it was causing him to be breathless. Sweat was beginning to trickle down his neck and back and it tickled his skin.

Slowly, he began to crawl away from them. He got another twenty or thirty feet before he heard them say goodbye. The male continued down toward him and the female went back to the main office.

Ben was frozen as he heard the footsteps approach him. The man was in another row, just to the right, but he was bound to see him when he walked by. Ben thought about dumping the files and acting as if he had just mistakenly walked into the wrong office. But that couldn’t happen. These files were valuable and they wouldn’t get another chance: the office of medical records was moving to a secure location a hundred and eighty miles away. If he wanted the files, this was his only shot.

He stood to his feet. There were over four hundred employees in this building alone. What were the chances that this guy had met every single one?

Ben turned the corner and began walking toward the man.

The man was tall and black with a potbelly. He wore a short-sleeve shirt and a tie and he eyed Ben but didn’t say anything.

Ben smiled and said hello as he walked past him. Relief washed over him; his heart felt like it had fallen into his stomach and his knees were weak.

“Excuse me,” the man said from behind him, “can I help you with something?”

Ben looked to him. “Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Oh, I’m Timothy. From Dr. Wharton’s office upstairs. Cami called about these records yesterday and no one was here when I came down.”

“What records are those?”

“For the smoking study that Dr. Wharton’s doing. They told me everything’s cleared up.”

“No one ran it past me, but I wasn’t here yesterday.”

“Well I’ll wait if you like and you can call up there and verify.”

The man looked him up and down, running his eyes over the names on the files he was holding. “Nah, just make sure you sign out for ‘em at the front desk.”

“Thanks.”

Ben walked out the door to the reception area where the woman was sitting. He smiled as he signed a fake name to a sheet that was sitting on the counter and then went out the front door, having to lean against the wall a moment because he felt like he was about to faint.