The Three Dollar Phoenix by Walt Sautter (microsoft ebook reader .TXT) 📕

he suggested eagerly.
“Let’s pick one of your patients. Which one do you want?”
Rita hesitated for a minute.
“How about A9705?” she replied.
“A9705 it is” he said as he typed into the terminal.
Within a second, the screen was covered with medication data and history for Ann Brown, patient A9705T12, the current occupant of room 97 in Building A-5.
“This terminal can access any patient in Caramore?” Rita asked.
“Sure, with my entry code” he replied.
“I’m responsible for proper medication of all patients in the facility and therefore I need the records of each. Actually, to be honest, I really don’t need any of that kind of information very often, but I’m still required to have access to it. The computer has reduced the job to pill counting, like I said. With all its internal checks and cross referencing, there’s not much for us to do here. Sometimes its sort of discouraging, I mean to be reduced to a stockman after five years of training” he confided.
“The last time I did anything but pill pushing was about two weeks ago and even that wasn’t very challenging.”
“What was that?” Rita asked in forced tone of interest.
“Well, Doctor House sent a special request for one of his private patients” he began.
Rita’s interest was now no longer artificial at the mention of House’s name.
“Private patient? I thought all patients at Caramore were private” she interrupted.
“That’s true, but some are more private than others, you might say. House treats a very few people himself” responded Stein.
“Who’s Doctor House?” replied Rita. She decided to play dumb and see what was said.
“He’s the head man here, didn’t you know that?” asked Larry.
“I heard the name but I wasn’t sure who he was. He and a couple of big money people are going to buy this place in the fall, or so rumor has it. From what I understand, they’re all political big wigs from Jersey. House took over running the place about six months ago. I’ve been told that was part of the purchasing deal. I don’t see him very often, nobody does. He met with the entire staff when he first took over and I never saw him again until about three or four days ago, so that’s only the second time I’ve seen him in the whole time he’s been here.”
“So, what was his special request?” Rita asked with peaked interest.
“It seems that one of his patients had trouble with the size of the pills that were prescribed. They were too small. You know, some older people have arthritis and can’t even pick up those real small pills, so he had me enlarge them. I don’t know why he wanted them enlarged, though, they were already almost a third of a gram. I wasn’t about to argue, of course, so I just did it. All I had to do was mix them with some extra inert compound and run it through the pill maker. It doesn’t sound like much, but compared to the routine here it was high tech pharmacy” said Larry.
“Why did House come down here?” she asked tiring to sound as causal as possible.
“Did he check up on people himself?” she added so as to reduce any sign of suspicious inquiry.
“No, he wanted to do some compounding himself. I didn’t ask him specifically what he was doing, even though it’s not strictly legal for a non pharmacist to the do compounding. But he’s the boss, so I looked the other way, if you know what I mean” answered Larry.
“Let’s go for coffee” he suggested as he walked towards the door.
“The coffee machine’s down the hall” he added.
Rita reached over to the terminal and switched it off as she moved to follow him.
“Leave that on” he said.
“Oh well, too late, I’ll turn it on again when we get back. I generally just leave it on all day. Logging in and entering the code every time you want to use it is a pain. It’s much easier to just leave it on. Nobody here is going to fool with it. We all have the same access code” he said as they headed down the hall.
The rest of the day was consumed with idle conservation. Larry and she chatted on about everything from medical ethics to politics and the latest fashions. It was obvious, that he found her attractive and she felt somewhat similar. In spite of that, Rita made every effort to find out everything she could from him. At the end of the afternoon, it was apparent to her that Larry was not only uninvolved, but unaware of any unusual events at Caramore. She felt good about that. She didn’t like the idea of betraying the trust of someone she liked.
When she got back to her apartment that evening, she sat in a chair and tried to organize the pieces of what she had learned. If she could see Al Druse’s mediation chart, that might help to clear some things up. She couldn’t just ask Larry to see that one particular set of records. What reason would she give? He’s not even her patient. Rita sat looking out the window at the snow covered mountains as she thought. After several minutes, the idea came to her. She had about an hour before dinner. She reached into her purse and took out a pad of prescription forms and began to write.
Having completed the form, she walked to her car and drove to town.
She parked in front of Anson’s Pharmacy on the street. It was an old shop, with a wooden sign and shutters on the windows. Mr. Anson, a man, with white hair, wore a hearing aid and spoke in a loud, deep voice uncharacteristic of his size.
He greeted her with an acknowledging smile. She handed the prescription to him and waited silently as he read it aloud to himself.
“Forty milligrams of furosemide, huh.” He paused.
“You’re a long way from home, Ms. Bickford” he said as he finished reading and looked up at her.
“I’m staying up the road” at the Blue Star Motel tonight and I’ve just discovered that I’m out of them” she replied.
“Please sit down and I’ll take care of this in a minute or two” said Anson as he walked slowly back behind the counter towards his work station.
Rita knew there would be no problem getting this prescription filled. It was only a diuretic, no narcotic or psychoactive.
“I’ll come back for them” answered Rita.
She left the drug store and walked to the Wedgewood Cafeteria phone booth. She called Mike. No answer. It was five-thirty, a bit early, she thought. That’s probably why Mike wasn’t in. There really wasn’t any news to give to him, but she thought she’d call anyway, just to see what was happening with Ed.
“Is there a bookstore in town?” she asked the counterman as she exited the phone booth.
“Just down the block and turn left. You can’t miss it” he explained.
Rita followed his instructions and reached the store in short order. It was open, a small, brick building, with neatly manicured grounds and a statute of Horace Mann standing vigilantly at the door. It looked as if it was the town library building at one time. For some reason, the statue seemed strange, but she couldn’t quite figure out why. Then it struck her, it was unmarked, no spray paint, no magic marker.
She entered the store and walked to the financial section. There was what she wanted.
She saw it immediately, “Ten Days to Understanding Wall Street.” It had the brightest cover of the entire selection, a real eye catcher. She bought the book and returned to Anson’s.
She picked up her prescription, stopped at the local supermarket and drove back to Caramore.
The next afternoon, she went back to A-3, carrying a brown paper bag and entered Larry’s office.
“How are you doin’. This is a pleasant surprise” exclaimed Larry as he stood up from behind the newspaper covered desk.
“I brought you a present” Rita said cheerfully.
She opened the bag and withdrew a large can of V-8 vegetable juice, a can opener and two plastic cups.
“You were bitchin’ about the coffee yesterday.
You were telling me how bad it was for you and how a juice machine would be a thousand times better for everybody, so here it is, V8” she announced.
Larry’s eyes lit up. She wasn’t sure if it was because of his fondness for the juice or her, but it didn’t make any difference, his response was what counted.
“I’m glad to see you’re concerned about my health, doctor” he said with a smile and began to refold the paper.
“Do you have any ice around here? This stuff is much better on ice” she said.
“I’ll send somebody upstairs for some” he said as he and walked to the door.
“Harry, do me a favor, will you? Run upstairs and get me some ice” he shouted to one of his assistants out in the prep room.
Rita opened the can, quickly separated the two stacked cups and poured some of the red liquid into one. Some white powder in the bottom of the cup floated up on top of the juice. Rita immediately used her finger as a stirring rod and just finished dispersing it into the juice as he turned from the doorway. She licked her finger and moved the almost filled cup over towards Larry’s seat. She then proceeded to fill her own cup, carefully leaving space for an ice cube in each. Larry walked over, sat down and picked up the cup.
“This looks so good that I’m not going to wait” he said and then gulped down the entire cup with one swallow.
“You must have read my mind” he exclaimed appreciatively as he finished the juice.
“We used to drink this all the time in college” she said and refilled his cup.
“Everybody was a health nut in those days” she replied as she took her first sip.
Rita had carefully placed her purse on the desk. It was partially opened and protruding from it was “Ten Days to Understanding Wall Street” with the title conspicuously showing. She had seen Larry four times, initially at the Wedgewood, the first night at dinner, when she visited him in the pharmacy yesterday and now. Three of the four, he was reading the newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. If she was to stay for an hour or two today as she planned, small talk might not make it. She didn’t want to give the appearance of hanging around waiting. She was hoping this would do the trick. Well, for $10.95, it was worth a try anyway. If it didn’t work, she’d have to go with the small talk approach.
Suddenly, she saw Larry’s eyes glance at the bright cover, like a trout spying a flashing lure.
“Are you interested in the market?” he said as he reached for the book.
“May I?” he asked.
She nodded and he withdrew it from her purse and opened it to the table of contents.
“I’ve been reading it now, for about a week, honestly, I don’t quite understand some of it” she said coyly.
The response was immediate.
“What don’t you understand?” he replied.
She got up and walked around to the other side of the desk and put her head over his shoulder.
“Right there” she