Chapter 2 - THE NURSE EVERYONE BLAMED
Aliyah did not sleep.
At 2:14 a.m., she sat cross-legged on the floor of her Roxbury apartment with Renee Brooks's notebook in her lap.
She had carried the box through three apartments after her mother died.
Never opened it.
Renee's final years had not been easy.
Before the Malenkov case, she had been an emergency-room nurse for nineteen years.
Afterward?
Suspended.
Investigated.
License revoked.
Accused of altering medication records and diverting narcotics.
Never criminally convicted.
Professionally destroyed anyway.
Renee stopped talking about the hospital.
Stopped seeing former coworkers.
Eventually stopped nursing altogether.
Aliyah had been sixteen.
She believed what adults told her.
Her mother made a terrible mistake.
Now she opened the notebook.
The first pages were ordinary.
Shift schedules.
Medication calculations.
Patient-room numbers.
Then:
NOVEMBER 14.
E.M.
MVA.
FEMALE, 34.
CONSCIOUS ON ARRIVAL.
Aliyah stopped.
Conscious.
She kept reading.
BP 108/68.
PULSE 112.
ORIENTED.
CHEST PAIN.
LEFT ARM FRACTURE.
NO MAJOR HEAD TRAUMA OBSERVED.
Aliyah's nursing training immediately pushed through emotion.
Those were not the notes of an unresponsive trauma patient.
Another line:
Patient repeatedly asks for husband Victor.
Then:
Dr. Soren orders midazolam.
Aliyah frowned.
The dose was large.
Not automatically lethal.
But concerning given Elena's blood pressure.
Then beneath it:
I questioned dosage.
Soren said order stands.
Ten minutes later:
N. MALENKOV ARRIVED.
Aliyah stared.
N. Malenkov.
She photographed the page.
Then called Victor.
He answered immediately.
“What happened?”
“Who is N. Malenkov?”
Silence.
“Victor.”
“My uncle.”
“Nikolai?”
“Yes.”
Aliyah knew the name.
Nikolai Malenkov.
Victor's father's younger brother.
Chairman of the Malenkov Relief Foundation.
Public philanthropist.
Private legend.
“He was at the hospital?”
“Not according to any record.”
“My mother's notebook says he was.”
Victor went silent.
Aliyah continued.
“Who was Dr. Soren?”
Another pause.
“Medical director.”
“Still alive?”
“Yes.”
“Still practicing?”
“No.”
“Where?”
Victor's voice became colder.
“He sits on the board of my family's hospital foundation.”
Aliyah closed her eyes.
Of course.
“Come to my apartment.”
“No.”
“Aliyah.”
“No.”
She stared at the notebook.
“You don't get to enter my house because you're Victor Malenkov.”
Silence.
Then:
“Where would you prefer?”
That surprised her.
“Public.”
“Name it.”
They met at a twenty-four-hour diner.
Victor arrived alone.
At least visibly.
Aliyah handed him photocopies.
Not the notebook.
He noticed.
“Good.”
“What?”
“You kept the original.”
“I don't trust you.”
“I wouldn't either.”
Again, no argument.
That made him harder to dislike.
Victor read Renee's notes.
His face became unreadable.
Then he stopped.
Aliyah followed his eyes.
Renee had written:
Patient became suddenly hypotensive after second medication administration.
Soren ordered room cleared.
I refused.
Security removed me.
Then, heavily underlined:
ELENA SAID: NIKOLAI KNOWS ABOUT THE FUND.
Victor's fingers tightened around the paper.
“What fund?”
Aliyah asked.
He didn't answer immediately.
“Victor.”
“My wife's charity.”
“What charity?”
“Elena ran the Malenkov Children's Medical Fund.”
“Why would Nikolai care?”
Victor looked toward the diner window.
“Because Elena believed money was missing.”
Aliyah understood immediately.
“How much?”
“We never determined.”
“Did she tell you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Victor's voice became quieter.
“She was going to.”
“When?”
“The night she crashed.”
Aliyah stared.
Victor looked at Renee's notes again.
“My wife called me at 8:07.”
“What did she say?”
“That we needed to talk.”
“About?”
“She wouldn't say over the phone.”
His throat moved.
“She said she'd be home in twenty minutes.”
Aliyah knew those words.
Everyone who loses someone suddenly remembers the last ordinary promise.
I'll be home.
See you soon.
Call me later.
Victor continued.
“Her car went off the road fourteen minutes later.”
“And Nikolai appeared at the hospital.”
“According to your mother.”
Aliyah sat back.
“Then my mother wasn't fired because she made a mistake.”
Victor's eyes met hers.
“No.”
“She saw something.”
“Yes.”
“And somebody destroyed her career.”
“Yes.”
Aliyah looked down.
For five years, she had carried quiet embarrassment about Renee.
Now embarrassment transformed into anger.
Then Victor said:
“There is something else.”
“What?”
“Dr. Soren testified your mother altered Elena's chart.”
“I know.”
“He claimed she changed the medication time after death.”
Aliyah nodded bitterly.
Victor slid another document toward her.
“I obtained a copy years ago.”
Aliyah read.
Then stopped.
The signature beneath the medication entry was Renee Brooks.
Except Aliyah knew her mother's handwriting.
“That isn't hers.”
Victor looked at her.
“Certain?”
“Absolutely.”
She pointed.
“My mother made her R like this.”
She wrote it on a napkin.
The chart signature formed it differently.
Forgery.
Victor stared.
Twelve years of grief shifted visibly behind his eyes.
Aliyah whispered:
“They framed her.”
Victor answered:
“Yes.”
Then the diner's front door opened.
An elderly man entered.
He saw Victor.
Stopped.
Turned immediately to leave.
Victor stood.
“Soren.”
May you like
Aliyah's blood went cold.
The former doctor began walking faster.
