I stand frozen for three long seconds before moving. Then I retrieve my phone. There’s still no signal.
I open the door. The corridor outside is unchanged. A surgical tech pushes a cart past the intersection. A nurse adjusts a clipboard near the supply room.
Leo straightens the moment I step into view.
“What happened?” he asks quietly.
For a fraction of a second, I consider telling him everything. The lock. The voice. The certainty in the man’s tone. But there’s no proof. No evidence that the room was anything other than empty.
“Nothing,” I answer automatically.
The word feels disconnected from my body, thin and insufficient, but I hold his gaze long enough to make it convincing. If I escalate this without something concrete, I hand them exactly what they want.
He studies me carefully. My breathing. My hands. My pupils.
“Doc.”
“It was a wrong page,” I continue calmly. “That’s all.”
He doesn’t look convinced. Neither am I. But as we walk back down the corridor, the word echoes in my mind.
Accessible.The hospital is accessible.And someone just proved it.
I head directly toward IT, keeping my pace even as I move through the corridor. Leo falls into step beside me without asking where we’re going. He rarely does. We pass a nurse pushing a linen cart, and I nod automatically when a resident stops me with a quick question about post-op antibiotics. My voice remains calm, my hands loose at my sides.
From the outside, nothing about me suggests urgency. Inside, I focus.
The IT office sits two floors down, tucked behind a row of administrative suites that most staff never enter unless something has gone wrong. By the time we reach the administrative wing, the traffic thins and the hospital noise fades. The hallway here smells faintly of carpet cleaner instead of antiseptic. The lighting feels warmer, less clinical, and more corporate. There are no monitors chiming, no stretchers rolling past, just the low mechanical murmur of servers behind locked doors and the muted tap of keyboards.
A frosted glass panel readsSystems & Network Operationsin clean black lettering. I slow at the door.
“I need to speak with them alone,” I tell Leo quietly.
He studies my face for a moment, then nods once and positions himself a few feet down the corridor where he has a clear line of sight to both exits.
I knock once and push the door open. The room is colder than the rest of the hospital. The air temperature is always set lower to protect the equipment. Several monitors glow on long desks, blue and green lines reflecting across faces bent over keyboards.
A young technician I recognize from prior system upgrades swivels toward me. His badge readsEvan. He looks mid-twenties, maybe younger, with thin shoulders under a pale button-down shirt, and his sleeves rolled unevenly to his elbows. A half-finished energy drink sits beside his mouse.
“Dr. Hale,” he greets, surprised but polite. “Everything okay?”
“Yes,” I answer smoothly. “I just need you to pull something for me.”
He straightens slightly, fingers hovering over his keyboard. “Sure.”
I step closer to his desk, the cool air brushing across my arms.
“I was paged to a restricted consult about twenty minutes ago,” I explain. “Room 7B. There was no patient. No attending. I want to verify the page origin and access logs.”
His brow furrows. “That’s strange.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
He nods and turns back to his monitors. His fingers move quickly, the keys clacking in uneven rhythm. Lines of code and system dashboards fill the screen, scrolling past in organized grids. I watch over his shoulder, not because I understand every data point, but because I want to see his reaction.
He pulls up my badge record first.
“Okay,” he mutters. “You badged into 7B at 12:17 P.M. Exited at 12:23 P.M.”
