Page 95 of Hades

“I’m sorry. I’ll be more quiet.”

He snorts. “I don’t think you know how.”

“Shut it, Linus. Maybe you want to go see your girlfriend and get laid. Or is it boyfriend? I can’t remember.”

He gives me an unimpressed look as he turns back to the screen.

I do the same.

I’m reading the statements from the staff present at the time of the incident.

I’m on Travis’ when I notice the first red flag.

Dr. Kingston asked me to leave the room to ensure the samples made it to the lab.

I also asked him to contact Hades, which he hadn’t done right away. Come to think of it, I never asked him what happened.

When I stepped from the room, Nurse Jackie Grove alerted me to an irregular heart rhythm with someone in the waiting room. I went to assist with the patient, which took several minutes. When I came back into the ER, Dr. Kingston was administering care to the patient on the floor. I offered the assistance I could, but it was too late.

Finishing Travis’ statement, I turn to Marie’s.

The patient was escorted into Trauma Room Two by a large male. They were not assigned the room, so I went to see what they were doing. When I saw who the patient was, I immediately went to find Dr. Kingston. We went back to the room together and evaluated the patient. Dr. Hemlock was there but was asked to leave by Dr. Kingston. We continued to complete the exam with the man in the room. He refused to leave, and the patient was not in good condition, so Dr. Kingston made the call to care for the patient first and worry about the man later.

When we went to transport the patient to imaging, she began to seize. Dr. Kingston called out for lorazepam. I went to grab it, but someone had already had it held out. I grabbed it and handed it to Dr. Kingston to administer to the patient. The medication sent the patient into cardiac arrest. Dr. Kingston performed life-saving measures, but in the end, the patient perished.

“This.” I point at the screen. “Marie didn’t get the medication herself. She says it was handed to her. Do we know who handed it to her?”

Trigger reads the document himself and shakes his head. “She didn’t say, but let’s watch the footage.”

At first, he pulls up what the hospital gave us. The camera conveniently does not catch who hands Marie the vial.

Then Trigger pulls up the cameras he had set up. His did not miss a single inch of the entire emergency room department, including the on-call room and bathrooms.

“I’d yell at you for invasion of privacy, but this actually works in our favor,” I murmur to him.

He nods, keying the video to the exact moment the patient died. Then he rewinds it slowly. I watch as Marie walks backward to the nurses’ station. There, she takes the syringe from Beverly, a nurse I have worked with for many years.

“Beverly?” I whisper, unsure if I’m seeing it correctly.

Trigger doesn’t stop there, though. He keeps rewinding until we see that Beverly was at the medication cart, but she didn’t retrieve the medication herself. Jackie handed it to her. The same nurse who helped Dr. Pembrooke smuggle Melanie out before.

“Jackie gave her the medication. She is the one who killed Melanie,” I gasp out.

Trigger keeps going. He rewinds, following Jackie now. I watch as she pulls Travis to the waiting room for the patient he mentioned. Then she walks backward into the doctors’ lounge, where Dr. Pembrooke hands her something.

“Dr. Pembrooke gave it to her. They were in on this together.”

“It seems so,” Trigger says. “I didn’t put two and two together. I missed this. I’m so sorry.”

I wave him off. “I know we had our suspicions, but you couldn’t have known.”

He nods, but I can tell he is still beating himself up over it.

“Now what?” I ask.

He shoos me away. “Now you go home or whatever it is you do, and you let me track Pembrooke to see if we can figure out where he got it from. Or where he got the order.”

“Wait.” I pull out my phone and dial Travis.