The Dane Commission (The Dane Chronicles) by Max Dane Page A

about how they receive
treatment notifications, and how they are carried out,” he said.
    “Of course, excellent.”
     
    Dorothy pushed a button on her desk,
“Cynthia, please take Ryan to see Floor Master Lisa Evans.”
    Quickly, Dorothy made a second call.

“Lisa, this is Dorothy. I’m sending Ryan Dane to visit with you now. Please
assist him in any way you can. He is helping us with the treatment errors you
and I’ve been discussing. Thank you.”
     
    Cynthia arrived and cleared her throat
in the doorway.
Ryan stood and walked to the door.
Dorothy glanced at the picture on her display, and then back to Ryan.
“Please report to me again when you know more.”
    He nodded and followed Cynthia out the door.
     
     
    Cynthia led Ryan downstairs to Lisa
Evans, who was looking at schedules in the lobby area of the 6 th floor.
     
    “Good afternoon, Mr. Dane. I’m the
Floor Master for this floor. Please call me Lisa.”
    “Thank you so much for seeing me, Lisa.
I’m investigating the treatment errors that have occurred.”
    “I understand, how can I help you?” she
said.
     
    He explained in more general terms the
work he was performing on the research side. He went on to explain that now he
needed to look at the Hospital side.

“So I guess my first question is, who performs the treatments your patients
receive?”
     
    Lisa began walking across the floor
with Ryan at her side.
“Well, we employee hundreds of bio-technicians of varying skill levels. Any
assigned treatment is usually broken down into a number of procedures. Each
procedure is assigned to a bio-technician who has passed a test, and has
therefore been approved to practice that procedure. So, each day the
bio-technicians arrive for their shift, and log-in to their accounts to receive
the list of procedures they’ve been assigned to carry out on that particular
day.”
     
    “Are there actual doctors here too?”
    “Oh yes, we have them all. Our
physicians monitor the patients and provide feedback to the prescribing
scientists. It is a close knit collaboration between patient care and
research,” she said.
     
    Ryan said, “May I see someone’s
assignment sheet, to see what it looks like?”
     
    Lisa nodded and walked over to a young
man at a computer terminal.
“Marty, could you print a hardcopy of your activity sheet for today?”
    “Sure,” he said as he typed a few keys,
and a page printed on the machine next to him. “Here you go.”
Lisa picked it up and handed it to Ryan.
     
    It had a list of bed numbers, and the
associated procedures listed next to each.
    Ryan looked down the page. The
procedures were all written in medical terminology like ‘Pericarditis
U35rightSD’, ‘Hypoxemia BL108-108’ and so on. They didn’t mean much to him.
What he did notice was that there were no patient names or identifiers present
that he could discern.
     
    “Can we follow you, to your first
procedure?” Ryan asked.
    “If it’s okay with Mrs. Evans, it’s
okay with me.”
    Lisa said, “Sure lets go.”
     
    They walked behind Marty, following as
he began his day.
    First, Marty led them around the floor
to the patient entry area and passed through what Ryan thought were the
hospital sterilizers.
    It wasn’t his first time to see them.
    He’d visited people in his family in
the hospital before, and seen these units around. They were intended to prevent
visitors from bringing in anything that might be harmful. Lisa was already clean,
but said that Ryan had to go through.
    ”It’s required before entry to the
patients’ rooms,” she said noticing his hesitation.
     
    He eyed the large black booth with
trepidation, watching as other staff members passed through.
“What does it do exactly?”
“It sterilizes you, using ultraviolet light-waves. It’s very fast, and
guarantees you won’t be carrying any uninvited bugs with you when you enter,”
she said.

He shrugged and stepped inside.
He saw two lights in front of him, one red and one