Part 7
The girl nodded.
“All at once?”
“No.”
Mara had not expected that answer.
Elena opened her eyes. “One each time I tried to stop.”
The room seemed to tilt very slightly.
“One each time,” Mara repeated.
“He said they would stay covered. He said if I accused him, he would show them the missing inventory and the money.”
Mara looked at the gauze. The marks were not one moment of violence. They were a record of repeated surrender.
“Where is the tool now?”
“I don’t know. It used to be in the old infusion suite.”
“Which one?”
“West Annex. Second floor.”
The West Annex had been closed for renovation eight months earlier.
Gavin’s office controlled the renovation contracts.
Mara asked, “What happened last night?”
Elena’s breathing changed. She looked toward Rosa again.
“I took the band.”
“You already had it.”
“He kept it in a locked drawer when we weren’t using it. I took it because I needed proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“The cabinet record. The medication labels. The deliveries.”
“Where are the labels?”
“In my locker.”
Mara’s silence told her what had happened.
Elena sat up too quickly. “No.”
“The lock was cut.”
“No, no, I put them in a folder. I wrote the dates.”
“Elena—”
“I had everything.”
Her mother woke.
Elena began pulling at the monitoring wires.
Mara caught her right hand. “Stop. You are safe.”
“I’m not safe if it’s gone.”
“Detective Ward can still investigate.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand that you were threatened.”
“No, you don’t.” Elena’s voice broke, not into a scream but into something smaller. “I helped him.”
Rosa stood beside the bed, her face confused and frightened.
“Helped who?”
Elena looked at her mother.
The shame in that look seemed to age them both.
Mara called Camille into the room before Ward. The advocate spoke quietly, explaining that Elena could choose when to give a formal statement, that admitting involvement carried risk, and that legal counsel could be arranged. She did not promise immunity. She did not call Elena innocent.
Rosa listened without interrupting until Camille mentioned diverted medication.
Then she stood.
“My daughter is not a thief.”
Elena stared at the blanket.
“Tell her,” Rosa said.
“Mom.”
“Tell her you did not steal medicine.”
Elena said nothing.
Rosa stepped backward as though the silence had physical force.
Mara rose. “Rosa, she was pressured.”
“That is not the same as no.”
“No.”
The mother looked at Mara with sudden fury. “You knew?”
“I learned minutes ago.”
“And you sit there asking questions?”
“She needs to decide how to tell the truth.”
“She needs a lawyer.”
“Yes.”
“She needs someone who is not from this hospital.”
“Yes.”
The agreement disarmed Rosa more effectively than resistance would have.
She picked up her red coat and walked out of the room.
Elena watched the door close.
“She’s going to leave.”
Mara sat again. “She is angry.”
“She leaves when she gets angry.”
“People also come back.”
“You don’t know her.”
“No.”
Elena turned her face toward the wall. “Then don’t say things.”
Mara accepted the rebuke.
She remained in the chair while the girl cried silently, tears moving into her hair without sound or dramatic movement. After several minutes, Mara placed a box of tissues near her right hand. Elena did not use them.
Rosa returned twenty-three minutes later with two coffees and an attorney’s business card she had obtained from a cousin.
She did not apologize.
She set one coffee in front of Mara.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“So do you.”
Rosa almost smiled.
Elena kept facing the wall, but her shoulders lowered.
Detective Ward interviewed her that afternoon with the attorney present. Mara was not allowed in the room. She sat outside beside Rosa and listened to the ordinary machinery of the unit: call bells, rolling carts, a respiratory therapist complaining about printer toner.
Rosa folded the attorney’s receipt into smaller and smaller squares.
“When Elena was nine,” she said, “she stole a bracelet from a drugstore.”
Mara looked at her.
“It was ugly. Purple plastic beads. She hid it under her mattress and then could not sleep because she thought the police would search the apartment.”
“What did you do?”
“Made her return it.”
“Did they call the police?”
“The manager laughed. Elena cried for three days.” Rosa flattened the receipt and began again. “She tells the truth when the truth is small.”
Mara understood the part Rosa did not say.
This truth was not small.
The interview lasted nearly two hours.
When Ward came out, she looked older than when she entered.
“She identified three off-site delivery locations,” the detective said. “She also described a storage room in the West Annex and a sealing device consistent with the shape of the injuries.”
“Are you searching it?” Mara asked.
“We are seeking a warrant.”
“The hospital owns the building.”
“The hospital attorney refused consent.”
Rosa stared at her. “Why?”
Victor Sloane appeared at the end of the corridor as though summoned by the question.
He approached with a folder beneath one arm.
“The West Annex contains confidential records and equipment belonging to multiple clinical programs,” he said. “A warrant protects the integrity of the search.”
“It also delays it,” Mara said.
“Proper procedure is not obstruction.”
“Who told Gavin about Elena’s locker?”
Sloane’s expression did not move. “We have no evidence he was told.”
“Who knew she used number 114?”
“Many employees.”
“Who had authority to reactivate his band?”
“This is neither the time nor the place.”
“It became the place when you refused to let police search a hospital building connected to a patient found drugged inside your hospital.”
Sloane lowered his voice. “Dr. Voss, you are approaching conduct that may compromise both the investigation and your employment.”
Mara felt Rosa watching her.
Behind the glass, Elena lay exhausted after admitting the worst thing she had ever done.
Mara said, “Then document my conduct accurately.”
Sloane’s jaw tightened.
May you like
The warrant was approved shortly after midnight.
The storage room was empty.
