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Authors: Lee Goldberg
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another, extending the boundaries of their neighborhood.
The same was true with hospitals.
West Hills was in the dry northwest comer of the San Fernando Valley, where housing developments, minimalls, and fast-food outlets were advancing on the few remaining ranches and the little bit of scrubland, the last vestiges of the area's rural heritage. At the leading edge of the steadily growing suburban sprawl was John Muir Hospital.
Within a year after John Muir opened, every building new and old within a mile of the hospital billed itself as a "medical center," renting space exclusively to anyone calling himself a doctor: surgeons, dentists, shrinks, veterinarians, and at least one epidemiologist. The entire neighborhood was now choked with pharmacies and other businesses serving the needs of those doctors.
Even though his office was right across the street, Dr. Richard Barnes had no official affiliation with John Muir Hospital and no reason to visit. He was there because the rents were far below what was being charged in Century City, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica. The neighborhood may not have had the cachet of those other addresses, but it offered a seductively short commute for medical professionals like him who lived in the affluent gated communities in Bell Canyon and the Santa Susana Pass area.
His office was crisp and austere, more like the workplace of an accountant or a lawyer. It had no waiting room, no nurse, no exam tables. He wasn't even wearing a lab coat.
Dr. Barnes was an African American man in his thirties, wearing a polo shirt and slacks, his hair cut so short it looked like a shadow on his head. He smiled broadly the moment Mark and Emily stepped into the office.
"Dr. Sloan, it's good to see you again," he said, giving Mark a hearty handshake. The man spoke with a slight British accent.
"You too," Mark said, though he didn't recognize the man at all. He assumed Barnes didn't know Emily, since the epidemiologist didn't greet her with the same enthusiasm. "This is my wife, Dr. Emily Noble."
"A pleasure." Barnes shook her hand, then turned back to Mark. "I didn't expect to see you again so soon. What can I do for you this time?"
"Exactly what you did before."
"I'm always glad to help. Do you have more patient death statistics for me to study?"
"Actually, the same ones."
As they all settled into the plush leather furniture in Barnes's wood-paneled office, Mark quickly explained his unusual plight, the loss of memory, and his effort to recapture the facts of his investigation.
"Fascinating," Barnes said. "I have never personally encountered a situation like yours before. It must be especially hard for you, Dr. Noble."
"Call me Emily, please," she said. "It is hard, but I must admit there's a part of me that shares your fascination. Who knows, perhaps I'll write a paper on this someday."
"If you do, let me know. I'd love to read it."
Mark shifted impatiently in his seat. "Right now, I'm less concerned about my own condition that I am with resuming my investigation. Do you mind going over everything you told me again?"
"Not at all," Barnes said. "You came to me with statistics on several years' worth of deaths involving patients who'd died within a few months after surviving a life-threatening episode. You asked me if it was simply cruel fate or an epidemic. At first I thought you were joking, but you weren't."
"He wanted you to look at those stats using the principles of applied epidemiology," Emily said. "As you did in your study ten years ago of sudden deaths in the ICUs of several rural Texas hospitals."
Mark looked at her in amazement. "I thought I kept you out of my criminal investigations."
"I read the same medical journals you do," she said. "And I was still working in Houston at the time the study was published. I found it very interesting. Thanks to Dr. Barnes's study, and the statistical impossibility that such a cluster of deaths would occur naturally, authorities were able to
The same was true with hospitals.
West Hills was in the dry northwest comer of the San Fernando Valley, where housing developments, minimalls, and fast-food outlets were advancing on the few remaining ranches and the little bit of scrubland, the last vestiges of the area's rural heritage. At the leading edge of the steadily growing suburban sprawl was John Muir Hospital.
Within a year after John Muir opened, every building new and old within a mile of the hospital billed itself as a "medical center," renting space exclusively to anyone calling himself a doctor: surgeons, dentists, shrinks, veterinarians, and at least one epidemiologist. The entire neighborhood was now choked with pharmacies and other businesses serving the needs of those doctors.
Even though his office was right across the street, Dr. Richard Barnes had no official affiliation with John Muir Hospital and no reason to visit. He was there because the rents were far below what was being charged in Century City, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica. The neighborhood may not have had the cachet of those other addresses, but it offered a seductively short commute for medical professionals like him who lived in the affluent gated communities in Bell Canyon and the Santa Susana Pass area.
His office was crisp and austere, more like the workplace of an accountant or a lawyer. It had no waiting room, no nurse, no exam tables. He wasn't even wearing a lab coat.
Dr. Barnes was an African American man in his thirties, wearing a polo shirt and slacks, his hair cut so short it looked like a shadow on his head. He smiled broadly the moment Mark and Emily stepped into the office.
"Dr. Sloan, it's good to see you again," he said, giving Mark a hearty handshake. The man spoke with a slight British accent.
"You too," Mark said, though he didn't recognize the man at all. He assumed Barnes didn't know Emily, since the epidemiologist didn't greet her with the same enthusiasm. "This is my wife, Dr. Emily Noble."
"A pleasure." Barnes shook her hand, then turned back to Mark. "I didn't expect to see you again so soon. What can I do for you this time?"
"Exactly what you did before."
"I'm always glad to help. Do you have more patient death statistics for me to study?"
"Actually, the same ones."
As they all settled into the plush leather furniture in Barnes's wood-paneled office, Mark quickly explained his unusual plight, the loss of memory, and his effort to recapture the facts of his investigation.
"Fascinating," Barnes said. "I have never personally encountered a situation like yours before. It must be especially hard for you, Dr. Noble."
"Call me Emily, please," she said. "It is hard, but I must admit there's a part of me that shares your fascination. Who knows, perhaps I'll write a paper on this someday."
"If you do, let me know. I'd love to read it."
Mark shifted impatiently in his seat. "Right now, I'm less concerned about my own condition that I am with resuming my investigation. Do you mind going over everything you told me again?"
"Not at all," Barnes said. "You came to me with statistics on several years' worth of deaths involving patients who'd died within a few months after surviving a life-threatening episode. You asked me if it was simply cruel fate or an epidemic. At first I thought you were joking, but you weren't."
"He wanted you to look at those stats using the principles of applied epidemiology," Emily said. "As you did in your study ten years ago of sudden deaths in the ICUs of several rural Texas hospitals."
Mark looked at her in amazement. "I thought I kept you out of my criminal investigations."
"I read the same medical journals you do," she said. "And I was still working in Houston at the time the study was published. I found it very interesting. Thanks to Dr. Barnes's study, and the statistical impossibility that such a cluster of deaths would occur naturally, authorities were able to
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