4 NoraThat same Friday morning, Nora was on the west side of Portland in the complex of buildings that composed Oregon State University Hospital.
Though she was on the medical center’s main admin floor, a faint odor of rubbing alcohol lingered in the air. And from the corridor behind Nora came the muted squeak of rubber-soled shoes moving swiftly over vinyl flooring.
Ignoring those scents and sounds, she switched off her pocket recorder and tried to focus. The silver-haired hospital social worker on the other side of the wooden desk had destroyed Nora’s plan for this interview. She had to regroup.
Going full tilt on two different appeals, Nora had invented a color coding system to separate all the facts she was stuffing into her head.
Yesterday, she’d mentally loaded new information fr
