Chương 8
Nina stood. “Did the caller give a name?”
“No. But he knew Tommy’s room number and dialysis schedule.”
Victor called Leo. “Lock down the floor.”
Nina caught his wrist. “You cannot lock down a hospital.”
“Watch me.”
“Request protection. Do not issue orders to medical staff.”
Anna’s knuckles whitened around the IV pole. “This is because of Lakeshore.”
Victor met her eyes. “Probably.”
“Probably?”
“It could be someone collecting medical debt.”
“The debt is paid.”
“Then Dominic.”
Anna’s breathing quickened.
Victor lowered his voice. “He won’t touch your brother.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
She stared at him, startled by another honest answer.
Victor called the hospital’s security director, identified the threat, and accepted restrictions he would normally have treated as insults. Two officers were assigned to Thomas’s floor. Visitors required verification. Leo and Raymond surrendered their weapons to a locked safe in the security office.
The false call was traced to an internet-based number created that morning. It proved nothing.
At two, a man wearing scrubs attempted to enter Thomas’s hallway using a temporary badge reported missing from environmental services. A nurse challenged him. He walked away, abandoned the scrubs in a restroom, and exited through the parking structure before security reached him.
The hospital moved Thomas to a room under a confidential listing.
Anna sat beside his new bed, arms folded, jaw set. Victor stood near the door.
“This is protection?” she asked.
“It worked.”
“Someone got onto the floor.”
“And left.”
“Because a nurse did her job, not because of you.”
“Yes.”
Thomas turned down the volume on the television. “Could we not argue about who failed to get me kidnapped?”
Anna looked at him. “No one is getting you kidnapped.”
“That’s comforting, because I thought the secret room and security officer were for my birthday.”
Victor walked to the window and checked the parking structure below.
Anna said, “Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking like there’s someone behind every car.”
“There may be.”
Thomas sighed. “You two are terrible together.”
Anna’s head snapped toward him. “There is no together.”
“I mean in the same room.”
Victor almost corrected the young man, then decided not to.
Nina arranged for an independent labor attorney named David Shaw to meet Anna and Mrs. Bell. David was a patient man with silver-framed glasses who spoke in shorter sentences when people became frightened. He explained that Anna’s testimony mattered, but so did pay stubs, bank records, enrollment forms, emails, and other employees’ accounts. She did not have to decide everything that day.
“What happens if I cooperate?” Anna asked.
“Possibly interviews. Requests for documents. Maybe depositions. Maybe nothing for a while.”
“And my job?”
“You should assume Lakeshore will not employ you.”
“It barely employed me before.”
David glanced at Victor. “Mr. Russo’s household should not make employment promises while this is being investigated.”
Victor’s mouth flattened.
Anna noticed. “You were going to offer me my job back.”
“No.”
“You were.”
“I was going to offer wages while you recover.”
“That’s a job with no work.”
“People seem to enjoy those.”
David removed his glasses and cleaned them. “This is why separate counsel is useful.”
Anna ignored him. “I don’t want money to stay quiet.”
“I didn’t ask you to stay quiet.”
“Dominic did.”
“I’m not Dominic.”
“You signed his checks.”
Victor looked at Mrs. Bell’s empty chair.
“No,” he said. “My name was printed on them.”
Anna understood the reference without hearing the earlier conversation. Her expression softened for less than a second, then closed again.
David put his glasses back on. “Anna, do you have copies of your pay stubs?”
“On the employee portal.”
“Can you still access it?”
She tried. The Lakeshore login page returned an error.
Victor’s face hardened.
Anna opened her email and searched. “I downloaded some when the pharmacy asked for proof of insurance.”
“How many?”
“Four.”
“Keep the originals. Don’t forward them casually. We’ll preserve metadata.”
Thomas looked up from the television. “I have screenshots.”
Anna turned. “Of what?”
“Your portal.”
“Why?”
“You kept saying the deductions were wrong. I took pictures when you left your laptop open.”
“You went through my account?”
“I was trying to help.”
“You had no right.”
“You were working twenty hours a day and yelling at automated phone menus.”
“That doesn’t give you permission.”
Thomas’s face reddened. “Fine. Next time I’ll watch you get robbed politely.”
The room went still.
Anna turned away. “Send them to Mr. Shaw.”
“I thought I had no right.”
“Tommy.”
He picked up his phone with an angry movement. “Already sent.”
David checked his email. “These may be useful.”
Anna sat in the chair beside the bed and stared at the floor.
Thomas returned to the television, but he was not watching it.
Victor recognized the silence between them. It was the silence of two people who loved each other enough to know exactly where resentment lived.
He stepped into the hallway.
Anna followed several minutes later.
“He shouldn’t have done that,” she said.
“No.”
“But I’m glad he did.”
Victor looked at her.
She rubbed her forehead. “That makes me a hypocrite.”
“It makes you related.”
She leaned against the wall. Her fever had dropped, but weakness still pulled at her posture.
“I started opening his mail last year,” she said. “He was ignoring bills. Then I started checking his medication because he’d skip doses when he felt sick. Then I checked his phone location after he fainted at a bus stop. Every time I say it’s the last thing.”
“Fear makes permission feel optional.”
Anna looked at him. “Is that how you run your life?”
“Yes.”
“Does it work?”
“No.”
The answer sat between them.
A meal cart rattled past. Somewhere down the corridor, a child cried because a blood pressure cuff squeezed too tightly. A nurse laughed at something another nurse whispered. The hospital continued around them with the indifferent rhythm of a place where private disasters occurred every hour.
May you like
Anna slid down the wall into a chair.
“I don’t want Thomas to become my whole life,” she said. “That sounds awful.”
