Chapter 4 - The Hospital Fired Me Before Sunrise
At 7:12 that morning, I received a termination letter.
Not a suspension.
Termination.
The reason listed was “gross professional misconduct, unauthorized handling of controlled substances and behavior creating danger to patients and staff.”
My lawyer laughed when she read it.
Then she stopped laughing when I told her who else was involved.
“Do not speak publicly,” she said.
“Wasn't planning to.”
“Do not meet the Morettis alone.”
“Also wasn't planning to.”
“Do not investigate anything.”
That one was harder.
By noon, local news vans were parked outside my apartment.
Someone had leaked the story.
Not the attempted murder of Mia.
Not the falsified medication order.
Just:
NURSE FIRED AFTER CONFRONTATION WITH PROMINENT BUSINESSMAN'S SON.
A blurry cellphone video showed me facing Nico in the trauma bay.
It cut off before his threats.
Convenient.
Online comments did what online comments do.
Half called me brave.
Half called me reckless.
Several thought I should have treated Nico first because “you never know who someone is.”
That sentence stayed with me.
Healthcare was supposed to work precisely because it did not matter who someone was.
At three, Gabriel called.
I almost ignored it.
“Hello?”
“You're on television.”
“Excellent observation.”
“The clip was edited.”
“Another excellent observation.”
“Victor's office received it before the station did.”
I sat straighter.
“How do you know?”
“Because the metadata shows it was exported from one of our internal media servers.”
“So Victor leaked it.”
“Or someone using his credentials.”
“Do you ever actually trust anybody?”
“No.”
I thought about that.
“Sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
He asked me to meet.
Public place.
Coffee shop across from City Hall.
I agreed because police were already nearby.
Gabriel entered without bodyguards.
That surprised me.
“You came alone.”
“You asked me to stop being threatening.”
“I didn't say become stupid.”
He almost smiled.
Then he gave me a folder.
Inside was Sofia Moretti's original medical record.
His wife had died at St. Catherine twelve years earlier after a single-car crash.
She had arrived conscious.
Stable.
Talking.
Then deteriorated unexpectedly.
The official chart blamed internal bleeding.
Dana Bennett's file suggested otherwise.
A toxicology panel had been altered.
“What was actually in her blood?”
Gabriel's voice hardened.
“A sedative she was never prescribed.”
I looked up.
“You think someone drugged her.”
“Yes.”
“Before the crash?”
“Possibly.”
“Why?”
He slid another page toward me.
Sofia had been quietly reviewing Moretti family finances before her death.
She found payments to hospital contractors.
Same companies Dana later flagged.
Northstar.
A sterilization vendor.
An ambulance contractor.
A biomedical waste company.
All controlled through shells.
“Money laundering,” I said.
“Partly.”
“What else?”
“I don't know yet.”
That was starting to become our least favorite sentence.
Gabriel stared at his coffee.
“Nico was thirteen when his mother died.”
Something shifted in me.
The spoiled man who kicked over my tray had once been a thirteen-year-old boy waiting for someone to tell him his mother wasn't coming home.
“It doesn't excuse him.”
“No.”
“But it explains something.”
“Maybe.”
Gabriel looked tired.
“I made a mistake after Sofia died.”
“One?”
His eyes lifted.
I shrugged.
“Sorry.”
“I gave Nico everything.”
“Except consequences.”
“Yes.”
At least he knew.
“I couldn't save his mother, so I made sure he never felt deprived again.”
“And now he thinks wanting something means getting it.”
“Yes.”
“That's not grief anymore.”
“No.”
He accepted that too.
I began to understand why he was dangerous.
Not because he shouted.
Because he could hear truths without defending himself immediately.
My phone rang.
Dr. Shaw.
“Elena, Mia's missing.”
I stood so fast my chair scraped the floor.
“What?”
“She was being transferred for imaging. The transport order was fake.”
My pulse exploded.
“Where is security?”
“Searching.”
“Who took her?”
“We don't know.”
Gabriel was already on his feet.
I repeated the words.
His face hardened.
“Victor.”
“You don't know that.”
“No.”
He grabbed his coat.
“But I know somebody just removed the one living witness.”
We reached St. Catherine in nine minutes.
Police had sealed three exits.
A transport aide remembered seeing Mia wheeled into a service elevator by a man wearing radiology scrubs.
The elevator camera had been disabled.
I checked the route.
Basement.
Laundry.
Loading dock.
Ambulance bay.
One hallway camera showed the bed for half a second.
Mia lay beneath a blanket.
A man pushed.
Another walked beside him.
Then I noticed something.
The bed rail.
Red sticker.
“Stop.”
Torres paused the video.
“What?”
“Our ICU beds use blue asset tags.”
Dr. Shaw nodded.
“She's not in an ICU bed.”
I zoomed.
“That's an old post-op bed.”
“Meaning?”
“Someone switched beds.”
Hospital equipment tracking showed that bed registered to a decommissioned surgical wing on B2.
We ran downstairs.
The corridor smelled of dust.
At the end, a door stood open.
Mia was inside.
Alive.
Alone.
Still sedated.
No kidnappers.
No escape.
It had been staged.
Torres checked the room.
On the wall above Mia's bed, someone had taped a photograph.
Sofia Moretti.
Gabriel stopped.
A message had been written beneath it.
SHE LEARNED WHAT THE HOSPITAL WAS FOR.
Then another line:
DANA DID TOO.
I stared at Gabriel.
“What was it for?”
He shook his head.
But behind us, Nico's voice answered.
“Moving money.”
We turned.
He stood in the doorway.
His face no longer looked arrogant.
May you like
It looked sick.
“And people.”
