Chapter 9 - The Hospital Visitor
I ran down the hall just as a woman in blue scrubs turned the corner with a covered medication tray. Her badge was clipped backward. She walked fast, too fast for someone carrying glass vials.
"Which room?" I shouted.
She glanced at me. Then she dropped the tray and sprinted for the stairwell.
I chased her until a security guard blocked my way. Behind me, bottles shattered. A nurse yelled for help. By the time we reached the stairs, the woman had slammed the fire door and vanished into a staff parking lot.
Lucía sat upright in her bed, breathing hard. "She said there was an order to sedate me," Lucía said. "I asked whose order. She wouldn't answer."
Her nurse, Denise, had found no new prescription in the chart. The stranger then tried to grab the IV port anyway.
Hospital security had a face on camera. Nora sent the footage to other investigators. The badge the woman used belonged to a retired nurse who hadn't worked there in six years.
"I thought the coffin was the worst part," she said. "But they keep coming."
"Then we change the plan. You don't spend another night here alone."
Nora arranged protection and moved Lucía to a monitored room under a restricted registration. She also ordered a records check on the funeral paperwork. The death certificate had been submitted electronically by a physician named Dr. Malcolm Rusk. Hospital records showed Rusk hadn't examined Lucía at all.
"He was paid," Nora said. "We're working to find out by whom."
My phone rang from an unknown number. I answered on speaker. Dad's voice came through as clearly as if he'd never left.
"Rafael. When you were little, you used to run to me whenever you heard thunder. Now you're making a storm you can't survive."
"Where's Jamie?"
May you like
A boy sobbed somewhere behind him.
"You have until midnight to give me the ledger," Dad said. "After that, we bury someone who won't wake up."
