Chapter 4 - The Patient in Room 614
Luca survived his second crash.
Barely.
Mercer stabilized him within minutes, but the scare changed everything.
No one could dismiss the connections anymore.
Lakeview.
Margaret Cole.
Elias Grant.
Dr. Weber.
Kathryn Davis.
Luca.
And me.
I sat in the hallway afterward with both hands wrapped around a cup of coffee I wasn’t drinking.
Dominic leaned against the opposite wall.
“You knew Margaret?”
“I was her nurse.”
“What happened?”
“She came in with chest pain. Mild cardiac history. Stable for most of the evening.”
“And then?”
“I checked on her at 1:40 a.m.”
I could still see the room.
Dim lights.
Rain against the windows.
Margaret smiling while watching an old game show with the volume turned low.
“She asked me if hospitals kept copies of everything.”
Dominic straightened slightly.
“What did you say?”
“I told her medical records were retained according to policy.”
“Why would she ask?”
“I thought she was nervous about insurance.”
“What else?”
I searched the memory.
“She asked whether security cameras recorded hallways.”
“And?”
“I said probably.”
Dominic’s face tightened.
“Then what happened?”
“At 2:15, her monitor alarmed.”
I swallowed.
“I ran in. She was unresponsive.”
“Cause?”
“Cardiac arrest.”
“You believed that?”
“At the time.”
“But now?”
I looked toward Luca’s room.
“Now I don’t know what I believe.”
Dominic sat across from me.
“Did she say anything before she died?”
“No.”
Then I remembered.
Wait.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“She regained consciousness for maybe ten seconds.”
I had forgotten because everything after that had been chaos.
“She grabbed my wrist.”
Dominic waited.
“She said, ‘Bluebird.’”
His expression changed.
“What?”
“Bluebird.”
“Anything else?”
“She tried. Couldn’t.”
Dominic stood.
I watched him.
“You know what that means.”
He didn’t answer.
“Dominic.”
“Bluebird was the name of a freight company my father owned twenty years ago.”
My skin prickled.
“It doesn’t exist anymore?”
“Not officially.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means whoever Margaret Cole was investigating knew something about my family that very few people know.”
“Who was she?”
“We need to find out.”
Emily joined us holding her laptop.
“I already did.”
She sat beside me.
“Margaret Cole worked for Midwestern Health Procurement.”
The name sounded familiar.
Then it clicked.
“They supply Lakeview.”
“Not just Lakeview,” Emily said. “Six hospitals. Surgical equipment, medication transport, specialty devices.”
Dominic’s eyes hardened.
“Who owns it?”
“Publicly? A holding company.”
“Privately?”
Emily turned the screen toward us.
The beneficial-owner records were layered through shell companies.
But one name appeared repeatedly.
Elias Grant.
The patient I had saved.
I stared at the screen.
“So Grant and Margaret worked together.”
“Possibly.”
Emily scrolled.
“Margaret was an internal auditor.”
Dominic said, “Meaning she could see where money was moving.”
“Exactly.”
I leaned back.
“And Luca said she discovered an account connecting Lakeview to missing Romano money.”
Dominic’s phone rang.
He answered.
“Rafael?”
Silence.
Then his face darkened.
“When?”
He stood.
“We’re coming.”
He ended the call.
“What?”
“Someone broke into Lakeview.”
Emily frowned.
“That happens more often than you’d think.”
“They broke into your old locker.”
I stood.
“The flash drive?”
“Gone.”
Emily went white.
“How did they know?”
I looked at Dominic.
“The same way they knew where I lived.”
Someone was watching us.
Someone had been ahead of us since the beginning.
But they had made one mistake.
They assumed Emily had hidden the only copy.
She looked at me.
I saw it in her face before she said anything.
“You made another one.”
She nodded.
Dominic stared at her.
“Where?”
Emily hesitated.
Then looked at me.
“In the one place no one at Lakeview would ever look.”
My mind worked.
Then I understood.
“My mother’s storage unit.”
Emily nodded.
“You still had boxes there. Remember when I helped you move after she died? I kept the spare key because you always lost yours.”
“I do not always lose keys.”
“You once found your apartment key inside the refrigerator.”
Dominic glanced between us.
“Can we discuss Clare’s key habits after we retrieve the evidence?”
I glared at him.
“Fine.”
An hour later, we reached the storage facility on the North Side.
Dominic refused to let me enter first.
I refused to stay in the car.
We compromised by arguing for three minutes and then going in together.
My mother’s unit smelled like dust and cardboard.
Boxes of old Christmas decorations lined one wall.
Her sewing machine sat beneath a sheet.
Seeing it hurt more than expected.
Emily moved toward a plastic container labeled CLARE—NURSING SCHOOL.
She opened it.
Inside were textbooks, old scrubs, and a ridiculous graduation cap.
She removed a small USB drive taped beneath the lid.
Dominic stared at it.
“That?”
“That.”
Back at Mercer’s facility, Rafael isolated a laptop from the network before opening the files.
The audit log showed dozens of deleted entries.
Medication records.
Employee access.
Financial references hidden inside vendor notes.
Emily pointed at one name.
“K. Davis.”
Kathryn.
Another.
“J. Weber.”
Then a third name appeared.
Dominic became completely still.
I looked at him.
“Who’s Anthony Romano?”
No one answered.
“Dominic?”
His eyes remained on the screen.
“My uncle.”
“Your father’s brother?”
“Yes.”
“What does he have to do with Lakeview?”
“I don’t know.”
Rafael spoke quietly.
“That’s not true.”
Dominic turned.
Something passed between them.
Years of history.
Rafael continued.
“Anthony has been telling the family for months that Luca was too reckless.”
“That doesn’t mean he did this.”
“No.”
“But?”
“But he knew about Bluebird.”
Silence.
Dominic stared at the audit log.
His own uncle’s name appeared beside several transfers from medical-supply accounts.
Transfers totaling more than eleven million dollars.
Emily whispered, “That’s your missing money?”
“Some of it.”
I looked at Dominic.
“You said the bullet was meant for you.”
“Yes.”
“What happens if you die?”
He didn’t answer.
Rafael did.
“Anthony becomes acting head of the family.”
My stomach turned.
This was bigger than hospital corruption.
Bigger than missing money.
Someone might be using Lakeview to finance a takeover inside the Romano organization.
Then Emily clicked one last folder.
Inside was a scanned handwritten note.
Margaret Cole’s handwriting.
The final line read:
IF I DIE, FIND NURSE CLARE BENNETT. SHE SAW HIM.
I stared at the screen.
“I saw who?”
May you like
Nobody spoke.
And suddenly, for the first time, I was afraid of my own memory.
