Chapter 2 - THE MAN WHO OWNED THE WRONG ROOM
The rapid-response team arrived in less than four minutes.
To Elise, it felt like forty.
She had already begun basic emergency measures within her scope, checking the man's airway and breathing while relaying his condition to the responding clinicians.
A physician took over the medical assessment.
Elise gave a concise report.
"Sudden collapse. Weak pulse. Recent forearm injury. Possible medication exposure. There's an unidentified syringe in the room."
The physician looked toward the men.
"Who is the patient?"
Marcus answered.
"Adrian Blackwood."
The room changed.
Elise noticed it immediately.
One respiratory therapist glanced toward the door.
The physician hesitated.
A second nurse went pale.
Elise looked at the unconscious man.
Adrian Blackwood.
She knew the name.
Everyone in Chicago knew it.
Blackwood controlled luxury hotels, restaurants, shipping interests, and a private security empire. Newspapers called him a businessman. Prosecutors had spent years trying to establish the extent of his organized-crime connections.
People whispered that he could end a career with a phone call.
Now he lay on a hospital floor, unable to protect himself from whatever had entered his bloodstream.
"Move him," the physician ordered.
They transferred Adrian to a stretcher.
Marcus followed.
Elise picked up the suspicious syringe using appropriate precautions and ensured it was preserved for investigation.
Then she noticed something else.
The supply label on the dressing carried a handwritten initial.
V.
Her stomach tightened.
She had seen that handwriting before.
Dr. Victor Sloane.
Blackridge's chief medical officer.
A man who had recently ordered staff not to question unusual medication transfers.
Elise looked toward the empty doorway.
Adrian Blackwood had been treated inside a room officially listed as vacant.
His medical supplies carried irregular labels.
And the physician responsible might be the most powerful administrator in the hospital.
Something was terribly wrong.
By four in the morning, Adrian was in intensive care.
Elise returned to the pediatric ward.
Dorothea looked at her.
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Something like that."
"Did you get the gauze?"
Elise stared at her.
Then began laughing.
Not because anything was funny.
Because after everything that had happened, she had forgotten the gauze.
Dorothea watched her carefully.
"Elise?"
"I'm okay."
"You don't look okay."
Elise sat down.
For the first time that night, her hands began shaking.
At seven, she received a message from an unknown number.
Thank you for saving him.
She stared.
Another message appeared.
But you need to be careful.
Elise's heart pounded.
Who is this?
May you like
The reply came immediately.
Someone who knows what happened in Room 508.
