“Thanks,” he said, hanging up the phone. “Can you tell me how to get to Peds? I’m new here.”

“I know,” she said, smiling coyly. “You’re Dr. Wright, right? I’m Tish.”

“Tish, which floor is Peds on?” he asked. “The elevators are that way, right?”

“Yes, but Peds is in the west wing. The easiest way to get there is to go over to Endocrinology,” she said, pointing in the other direction, “take the stairs up to fifth, and cross over — ” She stopped and smiled at him. “I’d better show you. It’s complicated.”

“I’ve already found that out,” he said. It had taken nearly half an hour and asking three different people to get from his office down to Medicine. “You can’t get there from here,” a pink-smocked aide had said to him. He’d thought she was kidding. Now he knew better.

“Eileen, I’m running up to Peds,” Tish called to the charge nurse, and led him down the hall. “It’s because Mercy General used to be South General and Mercy Lutheran and a nursing school, and when they merged, they didn’t tear out anything. They just rigged it with all these walkways and connecting halls and stuff so it would work. Like doing a bypass or something.” She opened a door marked “Hospital Personnel Only” and started up the stairs. “These stairs go up to fourth, fifth, and sixth, but not seventh and eighth. If you want those floors, you have to go down that hall we were just in and use the service elevator. So how long have you been here?”

“Six weeks,” he said.

“Six weeks?” Tish said. “Then how come we haven’t met before? How come I haven’t seen you at Happy Hour?”

“I haven’t been able to find it,” he said. “I’m lucky to find my office.”

Tish laughed a tinkling laugh. “Everybody gets lost in Mercy General. The most anybody knows is how to get from the parking lot to the floor they work on and back,” she said, going ahead of him up the stairs. So I can see her legs, he thought. “What kind of doctor are you?” she asked.