Chapter 6 - The Wrong Uniforms.
The two men outside the door wore gray jackets and carried an empty wheelchair.
From a distance, they looked almost correct.
Up close, their badges were printed in the wrong font.
Nora noticed because she had worked at St. Catherine's for eleven years.
Leah noticed because one of the men kept looking toward the bassinet instead of toward the patient bed.
"Nurse Green, we have an urgent transfer order."
Nora did not open the door.
"Order number?"
The man closest to the glass hesitated.
"It should be in the system."
"Then tell me the number."
His polite expression disappeared.
"Open the door."
Leah picked up Luca's security card and pressed the side button.
Nothing happened.
The connection was still dead.
Nora moved between Leah and the door.
"Security is on the way."
The second man looked down the hallway.
"We don't have time for this."
The first man reached toward the access panel beside the door.
A red light flashed.
Denied.
He tried again with another badge.
Denied.
Leah's heart hammered against Emma's blanket.
"What do they want?"
Nora answered without turning around.
"They want you scared enough to make a mistake."
The first man looked through the glass at Leah.
"Mrs. Bennett, your attorney authorized this."
"I don't have an attorney."
The man's eyes shifted.
That was enough.
Leah felt something change inside her.
Fear remained, but confusion did not.
These people were lying.
That mattered.
"You need to leave."
The man gave her a thin smile.
"We're trying to help you."
"Then help me by leaving."
Footsteps sounded at the far end of the hallway.
The two men turned.
Hospital security appeared with Luca behind them.
His black coat was open, and one side of his collar had been pulled loose.
There was a small cut near his eyebrow, but his expression was exactly the same as before.
Calm.
Controlled.
Unimpressed.
The men abandoned the wheelchair and ran toward the stairwell.
Security followed.
Luca came directly to the glass.
"Leah?"
She unlocked the door only after Nora nodded.
Luca stepped inside.
"Are you both all right?"
Leah stared at the cut near his eyebrow.
"What happened to you?"
"Someone didn't want me opening box 314."
"Who?"
"I don't know yet."
He removed a thick envelope from inside his coat.
"But they failed."
Nora closed the door again.
Luca spread several photocopied pages across the desk.
Ethan's name appeared at the top of each page.
Leah recognized the date immediately.
The night he died.
Nora studied the medication entries.
"This one is wrong."
"How do you know?"
"Because this drug would never have been ordered at this dosage for the condition listed here."
Leah gripped the edge of the desk.
"Are you saying someone hurt him?"
Nora shook her head quickly.
"I'm saying the records don't make clinical sense."
Luca pointed to a signature at the bottom.
"And this physician says he never signed it."
Leah looked at the name.
Dr. Samuel Keene.
She remembered him from the funeral.
He had hugged her and apologized for being unable to save Ethan.
"Why would Ethan hide copies in a hospital archive?"
Luca removed one more item from the envelope.
A small flash drive.
"Because he expected someone to change the originals."
Nora stared at it.
"What's on there?"
Luca looked at Leah.
"A video Ethan recorded three days before the crash."
Leah's throat tightened.
"You watched it?"
"Only the first ten seconds."
"Why stop?"
"Because he says your name and asks that you see it first."
Luca placed the drive in Leah's hand.
Then Nora's phone buzzed.
She checked the message.
Her face went blank.
"The police downstairs just released Derek."
Leah looked up.
"Why?"
May you like
Nora swallowed.
"Because he filed a complaint saying Luca attacked him without cause."
