Chapter 4 - The Patient Across the Hall.
Lena lay in the intensive care unit beneath a web of tubes and wires.
The collision had fractured three ribs and left a deep cut across her forehead.
Dana pushed Mara’s wheelchair only as far as the observation window.
“She has not regained consciousness,” Dana said.
Mara pressed her hand to the glass.
The last time she had seen Lena, they had been sitting in a grocery store parking lot, studying copies of payments to a company called Northstar Recovery.
The company had no employees, no office, and no purpose beyond receiving Cole Foundation money.
Lena had promised to trace the account before Mara confronted Ryan.
Now a uniformed hospital guard stood beside Lena’s door.
Mara recognized him.
He had worked security at the Cole Foundation’s Christmas gala.
“Take me back,” she whispered.
Dana saw the man and immediately turned the wheelchair.
They entered a service elevator just as he looked toward them.
“That guard works for Helen,” Mara said.
“He was assigned by hospital administration.”
“Helen is hospital administration whenever she writes a check.”
Back in her room, Mara called the number on the back of Grant’s card.
A woman answered without identifying herself.
“Say your name and one word that explains the danger.”
“Mara Ellis.”
She watched the door.
“Northstar.”
The line went silent for three seconds.
“Do not eat or drink anything that was not opened in front of you,” the woman said.
“Who are you?”
“Someone Officer Grant trusts.”
The call ended.
Dana replaced Mara’s water with a sealed bottle and marked the cap with a pen.
“Why are you helping me?” Mara asked.
Dana adjusted the blanket without answering.
At midnight, the lights in the hall dimmed.
A man in green scrubs entered carrying a syringe.
His badge was turned backward.
“Medication for pain,” he said.
Mara glanced at the clock.
Dana had given her medication twenty minutes earlier.
“What is it called?”
The man reached for her intravenous line.
Mara snatched the sealed water bottle and struck his wrist.
The syringe fell onto the bed.
He seized her injured leg brace and squeezed.
Pain exploded through her.
“Stop fighting,” he hissed.
Mara hit the call button, but no alarm sounded.
The wire had been cut.
The man lifted the syringe again.
The door slammed open.
Dana drove her shoulder into him, knocking him against the medication cart.
He fled before security arrived.
The syringe remained on the floor.
Dana sealed it inside an evidence bag.
“This contains enough insulin to kill someone who is not diabetic,” she said.
Mara stared through the open doorway.
At the far end of the corridor, Helen stood beneath the exit sign.
She slowly raised one hand and waved.
Hospital security searched the stairwells and found only the discarded green scrubs.
The fake badge belonged to a respiratory therapist working three floors below.
He had reported it stolen that afternoon.
Mara realized the attack required access, planning, and someone inside the hospital willing to erase records.
Dana moved the evidence bag into a locked medication safe and photographed its seal.
She sent the image to a private address before administrators could take possession.
“Trust requires copies,” she said.
Mara recognized the lesson of someone who had once lost proof and never intended to lose it again.
Outside, Helen’s footsteps faded, but the fear she left behind remained in the room.
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THE POISONED TRUTH
