Free Host by Robin Cook

be back inthe usual commotion of the hospital with patients, nurses, and orderlies passing her. Her heart was still racing. There was nothing she could do to help Carl, and her first thought was that she had to find Michael. She needed an anchor, someone to hold on to during this storm of uncertainty and emotion.

5.
    Monday, April 6, 12:25 P.M.
    L ynn found Michael in the cafeteria. She had first gone back to check the coffee shop, but he and the others had left. She thought about texting him but had no idea what to say. Instead she wanted just to find him. Maybe she wouldn’t even say anything for a time.
    Considering the hour, she had decided the cafeteria was the best bet, as the food was considerably cheaper there than at the coffee shop, and Michael rarely missed a meal. As usual the room was crowded with its usual lunchtime rush. It had taken her a moment but she managed to locate him in the food line. She felt lucky he was by himself. The other members of the earlier coffee-shop group were nowhere to be seen. She was glad about that. She wanted to talk only to Michael.
    “Hey, Lynn. How’s Carl doing?” he asked when he turned to look who had tapped him on his shoulder.
    “I need to talk,” Lynn said, her voice faltering. “Privately.”
    “Okay, no problem,” Michael said. Knowing her as well as hedid, he immediately sensed her brittle emotional state. He eyed her. “You okay?”
    “That remains to be seen,” Lynn said. There was an audible catch in her voice.
    “How about grabbing some lunch and hanging with me?”
    “I’m not hungry at the moment.”
    “Do you mind if I eat while we talk?”
    “Of course not!”
    “Then let me settle up for these vittles. Then we can sit over there in left field by the far wall. I see a couple of free tables.”
    Lynn glanced in the direction and nodded. The cafeteria was as good as anyplace else in the hospital for a talk with Michael. The hubbub might actually help her keep her emotions in check.
    Although Lynn wasn’t hungry, she was thirsty, and she got herself some water before sitting at one of the free tables they had seen from the steam-table line. The area was farthest away from the windows, which looked out onto a sumptuously landscaped interior garden. A number of tables in the garden were the most popular, and were the first to fill up when the weather was as good as it was. Lynn could see quite a few of her classmates outside.
    As she sat waiting for Michael to pay, she watched him in the checkout line. He was a commanding presence and stood out from the similarly white-coated medical students. The main reason was a combination of his size and the fact that he was black. In Lynn’s class there were only three African American males along with five females of color, making up only 6 percent of the class despite the school’s active recruitment efforts. Michael was a muscular man with a thick neck who Lynn learned had played football at the University of Florida and who had had a shot at playing professionally had he not set his heart on becoming a doctor. Lynn knew that the career choice was a debt he owed to his mother. His features were broad, his skin a dark mahogany, and his hair was relatively long and worn in what Lynn had come to know was a lock-twist.Initially she thought they were short dreadlocks but now she was the wiser.
    Back on the second day of medical school when Lynn had first spoken with Michael when paired with him for the anatomy lab, she had been mildly intimidated. Not only was he a sizable man, but he seemed to her to have an animus toward her right out of the gate. From their first words he complained about her attitude, so she did the same. During the initial days they merely tolerated each other, and both had to make an effort just to get along well enough to work together.
    Lynn had never considered herself racist, but over time Michael had made her see that she had been to an extent, and that racism was unfortunately alive