Chapter 2 - The Syringe That Should Never Have Reached His Room
By 4:00 a.m., Tessa had stopped wondering whether somebody wanted Luca Vesceri dead.
The only question left was how many people were involved.
The sealed floor had become unnaturally quiet.
Security remained outside every entrance. Marco stationed men at both ends of the corridor and ordered everyone without clearance removed.
Once the threat became human rather than medical, his control returned quickly.
Doors closed.
Phones were collected.
Names were checked.
Electronic access logs were copied.
Hospital administrators appeared, protested briefly, then became considerably less argumentative after being shown photographs of the disabled ventilator and contaminated syringe.
Tessa remained beside Luca.
She did not find the additional security comforting.
The false physician had possessed a badge capable of opening restricted doors.
Someone had issued that credential.
Someone had either helped him enter or known he would.
Additional guards could protect Luca from a stranger in the hallway.
They could do very little against a trusted hand already inside the circle.
His breathing stabilized.
His blood pressure did not.
Tessa watched the numbers.
She repositioned his head.
Checked drainage.
Inspected the surgical site.
Adjusted his fluids.
Every few minutes she glanced at his right hand.
No further movement.
Perhaps she had imagined it.
Exhaustion could do strange things.
She had once completed a double shift and spent ten minutes searching for glasses that were sitting on top of her head.
But this felt different.
She leaned close again.
“If you can hear me, squeeze my hand.”
Nothing happened.
Tessa waited.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
Thirty.
She started to withdraw.
His index finger moved.
Not a squeeze.
Not enough to prove awareness.
Enough to keep the question alive.
Marco returned alone.
“The man got into the service stairwell before we closed it.”
“You lost him?”
“We lost him inside a hospital containing nineteen stairwells, multiple loading entrances and more employees than some small towns.”
“So yes.”
Marco stared at her.
Tessa lifted one eyebrow.
“Yes,” he said finally. “We lost him.”
“Badge?”
“Legitimate.”
That got her attention.
“Stolen?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Tessa checked Luca’s pupils.
Marco watched her.
“You recognized the dose immediately.”
“I’m a critical-care nurse.”
“Temporary nurse.”
“That doesn’t make the medications temporary.”
Marco ignored the remark.
“Why are you here?”
“At the hospital?”
“On this floor.”
“Scheduling.”
“No.”
His voice remained quiet.
Marco did not need volume to make a conversation feel like an interrogation.
“Why did this hospital place a temporary nurse inside Luca’s room?”
“Because two permanent nurses called out, your people rejected another replacement, and I have ICU certification.”
“Convenient.”
Tessa slowly turned toward him.
“You think I sabotaged equipment, kept him alive when it failed, stopped a poisoned syringe and then stayed here so I could be questioned by you?”
“I think convenient things deserve examination.”
“Then examine quietly. My patient needs rest.”
“Your patient.”
The words carried faint amusement.
Tessa looked back at Luca.
“For the next several hours, yes.”
Marco studied her.
“You speak to him as if he can hear you.”
“He may.”
“Doctors say he’s unconscious.”
“Unconscious and unaware aren’t always the same thing.”
Marco moved closer.
“Has he responded?”
Tessa hesitated.
There it was.
The dangerous question.
Medical truth required accurate reporting.
But something prevented her from answering immediately.
If Luca was beginning to regain awareness and someone inside his protected circle wanted him dead, announcing that fact might create another assassination attempt before he could defend himself.
“He has reflexes,” she said carefully.
Marco’s eyes narrowed.
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“It’s what I’m telling you.”
Before he could respond, another man entered.
He was older than Marco and carried none of Marco’s visible tension.
Silver touched the sides of his dark hair.
His suit was charcoal instead of black.
No weapon showed.
No security badge hung from his jacket.
Yet Marco straightened almost imperceptibly when he appeared.
Renzo Vesceri.
Tessa knew the name from the emergency intake.
Luca’s uncle.
One of the few people cleared to make decisions if Luca remained incapacitated.
Renzo stopped beside the bed.
For the first time since entering, something human crossed his carefully controlled face.
He looked at Luca for a long time.
“My nephew always hated hospitals.”
Tessa returned to the monitor.
“Most people do.”
“He especially disliked situations he couldn’t control.”
“I gathered that.”
Renzo looked at her.
“You’re the nurse who stopped the transfer.”
“Yes.”
“And the medication.”
“Yes.”
“Marco says you are difficult.”
Tessa glanced toward Marco.
“Marco met me during a respiratory emergency.”
A faint smile touched Renzo’s mouth.
“Then perhaps difficult is useful.”
He stepped nearer Luca.
“You saved him.”
“I did my job.”
“Many people fail to do their jobs when frightened.”
“I was frightened.”
That surprised both men.
Tessa didn’t understand why.
Courage was not the absence of fear.
Sometimes it was nothing more impressive than doing what had to be done while your hands wanted to shake.
Renzo rested his palm against the bed rail.
“Can he hear us?”
Tessa saw Marco’s attention sharpen.
“We don’t know.”
Renzo nodded.
He did not ask again.
For the next hour, investigators examined the equipment room.
Hospital security discovered that the badge used by the false physician had been created three days earlier.
The employee identity attached to it belonged to an anesthesiologist attending a medical conference in Seattle.
Someone had duplicated his credentials.
The badge had accessed six doors.
A loading entrance.
A supply corridor.
A staff locker area.
The secure elevator.
Luca’s floor.
And, at 2:41 a.m., the small equipment closet containing the backup ventilator.
Tessa listened while Marco read the report.
“Forty minutes before the failure,” she said.
Marco nodded.
“Who else had access?”
“Hospital staff.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s several hundred answers.”
Tessa rubbed her eyes.
Exhaustion was becoming dangerous.
She needed coffee.
Food.
Ten uninterrupted minutes sitting down.
She needed distance from Luca Vesceri.
She had promised herself years ago that other people’s emergencies would not become her life.
Yet every time she considered leaving the room, she looked at the man in the bed and remembered the hand on her wrist.
The false physician knew her face.
Whoever sent him probably knew her name by now.
Walking away would not necessarily make her safer.
Near dawn, Marco received another call.
His expression changed.
He moved into the hallway.
Renzo followed.
Their voices were low, but the glass walls did nothing to contain the urgency.
Tessa caught fragments.
“…board members…”
“…if Luca doesn’t wake…”
“…decisions still have to be made.”
Tessa looked up.
Renzo said something she couldn’t hear.
Marco replied, “They won’t wait indefinitely.”
Tessa crossed the room and pulled open the glass door.
“Not here.”
Both men turned.
Renzo remained calm.
“This concerns his organization.”
“This is his hospital room.”
“Tessa—” Marco began.
She ignored him.
“Don’t discuss replacing him over him like he’s already dead.”
Silence.
Marco looked almost offended.
Renzo looked fascinated.
Tessa suddenly remembered who she was speaking to.
Then decided she didn’t care.
“If there’s even a possibility he can hear you, he shouldn’t listen to people planning his funeral while he’s still fighting.”
Renzo stepped into the room.
“And you believe he is fighting?”
Tessa glanced down at Luca.
“Yes.”
Luca’s hand moved.
This time all three of them saw it.
His fingers curled slowly against the sheet.
Marco stepped forward.
Renzo stopped breathing.
Tessa reached for Luca’s hand.
“Luca, if you can hear me, squeeze.”
Several seconds passed.
Then his fingers closed around hers.
Weak.
Unmistakable.
Marco whispered something in Italian.
Renzo’s face lost all color.
Tessa leaned closer.
“You’re safe. Don’t try to move.”
Luca’s eyelids did not open.
His grip remained around her fingers.
Then his lips moved beneath the oxygen tubing.
No sound emerged.
Tessa lowered her head.
“What?”
His mouth moved again.
This time she heard it.
One word.
Almost soundless.
“Renzo.”
Tessa looked up.
May you like
Luca’s uncle stood at the end of the bed.
And for the first time since arriving, Renzo Vesceri looked afraid.
