Chapter 11 - THE PATIENT WHO KNEW HER FATHER
Three weeks after Clara Hayes-Kaine stopped waiting for danger, danger walked into her emergency room wearing a dead man’s coat.
It happened at 2:47 on a Thursday morning.
The Nathan Hayes Community Medical Center was unusually quiet. Snow pressed against the tall windows, the trauma board showed only two active cases, and Clara was standing at the nurses’ station arguing with Roman Bellini over whether a vending-machine burrito technically qualified as food.
“It contains protein,” Roman said.
“It contains regret.”
“I’ve eaten worse.”
“You were raised by criminals. Your standards are compromised.”
Roman tore open the wrapper.
“You married one.”
Clara pointed a pen at him.
“Former criminal.”
From the waiting room, Victor looked up from his laptop.
“I can hear both of you.”
“Good,” Clara called.
The automatic doors opened.
A man stumbled inside.
He was perhaps sixty-five, tall but painfully thin, with snow clinging to his gray hair. An old brown overcoat hung from his shoulders.
One hand pressed against his chest.
The other held a photograph.
He made it six steps.
Then collapsed.
Clara was moving before his knees hit the floor.
“Get a stretcher.”
Two nurses rushed forward.
Clara knelt.
“Sir? Can you hear me?”
The stranger opened his eyes.
His gaze found her face.
Everything about him changed.
Fear.
Recognition.
Then something worse.
Relief.
“Nathan?”
Clara froze.
“My name is Clara.”
The man’s hand shot out and caught her wrist with startling strength.
“Hayes?”
Her pulse jumped.
“Yes.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, God.”
Victor was already standing.
Roman dropped the burrito.
Clara ignored both of them.
“What’s your name?”
The man struggled to breathe.
“Thomas... Arden.”
His pulse was erratic.
Clara looked at the monitor being attached.
“Possible MI. Trauma One.”
They rushed him through the doors.
Twenty-two minutes later, Clara knew Thomas Arden was not having a heart attack.
He had been poisoned.
His potassium level was dangerously elevated. His cardiac rhythm deteriorated twice. Someone had introduced a concentrated substance into his bloodstream within the previous several hours.
Clara stabilized him.
Barely.
When she emerged from Trauma One, Victor was waiting.
“You recognize the name?” she asked.
“No.”
Roman did.
His face had gone pale.
Victor noticed.
“Roman.”
Roman looked toward the closed trauma-room doors.
“Thomas Arden was an accountant.”
“So?”
“For my father.”
Victor stopped moving.
Clara folded her arms.
“Anthony Bellini?”
Roman nodded.
“My father kept him away from the organization. Arden handled legitimate shipping companies.”
Victor’s expression sharpened.
“How do you know?”
“I found his name when Elias gave me the records about our fathers.”
Clara felt an old chill.
Elias Kaine was serving multiple life sentences.
Samuel Grayson was incarcerated.
Marcus Vale was gone.
The war was supposed to be finished.
“What was he doing here?” she asked.
Roman looked at the photograph the stranger had dropped.
Clara had forgotten about it.
A nurse had placed it inside a plastic evidence bag.
Victor lifted it.
The photograph was old.
Four men stood beside a cargo ship.
Nathan Hayes.
Anthony Bellini.
Victor’s father.
And Thomas Arden.
On the back, written in Nathan’s handwriting, were three words.
IF VICTOR SURVIVES.
Nobody spoke.
Then the monitor inside Trauma One began screaming.
Clara ran.
Thomas was seizing.
“Two milligrams lorazepam.”
The nurse administered it.
His body settled.
Clara leaned close.
“Thomas. Stay with me.”
His eyelids fluttered.
“Your father...” he whispered.
“What about him?”
“He didn't hide everything in the locker.”
Clara’s heartbeat accelerated.
“Where?”
Thomas tried to raise his hand.
His fingers touched the pocket of his coat.
Clara reached inside.
A brass token.
Grand Central Terminal.
Again.
“What does this open?”
Thomas looked terrified.
“Not... what.”
His breathing became shallow.
“Who.”
Clara leaned closer.
“What does that mean?”
Thomas whispered two words.
“Patient Zero.”
His heart stopped.
“Code!”
Clara began compressions.
For fourteen minutes, the room became controlled violence.
Epinephrine.
Shock.
Compression.
Airway.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Finally—
A rhythm.
Weak.
But alive.
Clara stepped back.
Sweat covered her forehead.
Victor stood beyond the glass.
He had seen everything.
Later, Clara found him in her office examining the brass token.
“You’re doing the thing,” she said.
“What thing?”
“The terrifying silent-mafia-boss thing.”
“I’m thinking.”
“You look homicidal when you think.”
“Occupational residue.”
She sat opposite him.
“Patient Zero.”
Victor placed the token on her desk.
“Nathan investigated manipulated medical cases for years.”
“Maybe there was a first patient.”
“Maybe.”
Clara studied him.
“But you don’t believe that.”
Victor leaned back.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Thomas Arden disappeared fourteen years ago.”
Clara frowned.
“After your father died?”
“The same night.”
Roman entered without knocking.
That alone told Clara something was wrong.
“I pulled hospital records.”
He placed a tablet on the desk.
“Thomas Arden was admitted to St. Jude’s fifteen years ago.”
Clara looked.
The date punched the air from her lungs.
October 18.
The night Nathan Hayes died.
Diagnosis:
Multiple stab wounds.
Attending physician:
Nathan Hayes.
Outcome:
Deceased.
Clara stared toward Trauma One.
“But he’s alive.”
Roman nodded.
“And according to every official record, he has been dead for fifteen years.”
Victor looked at the brass token.
Clara understood.
Her father had not only discovered a conspiracy.
He had hidden a living witness.
Victor stood.
“Where’s Arden’s coat?”
“Evidence room.”
They went downstairs.
The coat was gone.
A security guard lay unconscious beside the door.
Roman checked his pulse.
“Alive.”
Victor drew his weapon.
Clara hated seeing it.
But this time she said nothing.
They opened the evidence-room door.
Empty.
On the wall someone had written four words using a black marker.
NATHAN SHOULD HAVE STOPPED.
Clara stared.
Victor stepped beside her.
“The people from fifteen years ago are in prison.”
“Not all of them.”
Victor looked at her.
Clara’s fear had disappeared.
In its place was the expression he had learned not to underestimate.
“Someone thinks my father left something unfinished.”
Victor reached for her hand.
Clara held it.
Then her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered.
A distorted voice said:
“Dr. Hayes?”
Clara’s grip tightened around Victor’s fingers.
“Yes?”
“You saved the wrong man tonight.”
The call disconnected.
Clara looked through the hospital window.
May you like
Outside, across the snowy street, a black sedan slowly pulled away.
And in the back seat sat a woman wearing Nathan Hayes’s old St. Jude’s identification badge.
