Chương 5
Then she remembered the reason she had left.
A software malfunction at a Sterling hospital had delayed critical lab alerts for eleven patients. No one had died, but three had been harmed. Alexander had waited forty-eight hours before informing the board because his company was closing a financing agreement. He had called the delay “containment.” Madison had called it a choice.
They had never recovered from the argument because both of them knew it was not about forty-eight hours. It was about who he became when truth threatened something he had built.
“You should answer your board,” she said.
“Come with me.”
“No.”
“I have a secured office nearby.”
“I am not hiding in your office.”
“Then go to a hotel under another name.”
“My photograph is already on television.”
“Use the guest suite at my house.”
She stared at him.
He exhaled. “There are six bedrooms. You won’t see me unless you choose to.”
“You think the problem is square footage?”
“I think you have nowhere safe to go, and I hate that this is the only offer I can make quickly.”
Madison’s phone lit with another reporter’s call. A new message arrived from her younger sister in Arizona.
Mom saw the news. Call me before she calls every hospital in Chicago.
Madison rubbed her forehead.
Alexander looked toward the elevator. Two men in dark jackets had appeared near the entrance. They might have been hospital staff. They might not.
“My driver will take you through the west exit,” he said. “You can decide where to go after we’re moving.”
She hated that he was right.
“I’m not going to your house.”
“Fine.”
“And your security team does not touch my phone.”
“Fine.”
“And you tell me everything you learn.”
He hesitated.
She stepped back. “Then no.”
“Yes,” he said. “Everything.”
Maya Chen joined them beside the sedan, holding an umbrella she had not opened. She gave Madison a brief nod.
“Law enforcement traced the threat through three relays,” Maya said. “No useful origin yet. They recommend you avoid your residence.”
“Does everyone know where I live except me?” Madison asked.
Maya’s expression almost softened. “At the moment, assume yes.”
The sedan carried them to a small hotel owned by no Sterling affiliate Maya could identify. Madison registered under Maya’s assistant’s name, which seemed both absurd and illegal until Maya assured her it was merely a reservation change.
In the room, Madison took off her shoes and found a dark streak of dried blood near the cuff of her pale-blue scrub pants. She did not know whether it was Caldwell’s or her own from a cracked knuckle. She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at it until the pattern in the carpet began to move.
Her mother called.
Madison answered on the fourth ring.
“Tell me it’s nonsense,” her mother said.
“It’s complicated.”
“That is what people say before they admit the television is right.”
“The television is not right.”
“Did someone die?”
“Yes.”
“Were you his surgeon?”
“Yes.”
A pause. Her mother’s breathing came faintly across the line. “Did you make a mistake?”
Madison looked at her hands. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“The medication was not what the label said. The record was changed.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know.”
Her mother began asking questions too quickly. Was Madison under arrest? Did she need money? Should her father fly in? Had she eaten? Why had she stayed at that hospital after all the problems with Alexander’s company? Each question carried love in the form Madison found hardest to accept: practical panic.
“I need to sleep,” Madison said.
“You always say that when you don’t want to answer.”
“I have been awake since yesterday.”
“You could have called before I saw your face beneath the word fatal.”
“I didn’t arrange the headline, Mom.”
The sharpness in her voice silenced them both.
Madison closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Her mother sniffed. “I know you didn’t hurt anyone.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can.”
“No. You can believe it. That’s different.”
Another silence.
Her mother said, more quietly, “Then I believe it.”
After the call, Madison showered until the water turned lukewarm. She scrubbed the adhesive marks left by her gloves and washed the hospital smell from her hair. When she stepped out, she discovered the hotel had provided only one towel, folded into a decorative fan that collapsed when she touched it.
She laughed despite herself, then sat on the closed toilet and cried without sound for less than a minute.
The tears stopped as suddenly as they had begun. She dried her face with the ruined towel, put on the hotel robe, and checked her phone.
An email from the hospital informed her that a preliminary review had identified a documented anticoagulant warning, her acknowledgment, and Harrison Blake’s verbal confirmation. Her clinical privileges were suspended indefinitely. She was instructed to retain counsel.
A second email from an address she did not recognize contained one sentence.
Ask why Thomas Caldwell requested a printed medication record.
There was no attachment.
Madison forwarded the message to Maya and called Lena.
No answer.
She called again.
The call went to voicemail.
Madison left no message. She dressed in the clothes Maya had purchased from a store downstairs: black pants, a gray sweater, underwear still stiff from packaging. The sweater was one size too large, which she preferred.
A knock came at the door.
She checked the peephole. Alexander stood outside holding two paper cups and a brown bag.
“I said I didn’t want to see you.”
“You said that at the hospital.”
“It has been two hours.”
“That is longer than some of our better truces.”
She should have left him in the hallway. Instead she opened the door and took one of the cups.
“What is it?”
“Tea. No sugar.”
“You remembered.”
“I remember everything inconvenient.”
He placed the bag on the desk. “Turkey sandwich. Plain. An apple you won’t eat.”
May you like
“I eat apples.”
“You carry them until they become soft and then throw them away.”
