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The code was called at 6:42 A.M., cutting through the stillness of the hospital like a blade through cloth. By the time Nora reached Room 408, the flatline was already screaming from the monitor, loud in its finality. Two residents were locked in a frantic rhythm, hands pressed to the patient's chest, sweat already beading at their temples. A nurse struggled with the crash cart, the tremble in her fingers betraying the fear she hadn't yet voiced. The attending hadn't arrived. No one was in charge. That kind of silence didn't come from calm it came from panic.
Without pausing, Nora stepped forward and assumed control with a clarity that left no room for doubt. "Push another amp," she instructed as she slipped on her gloves. "Resume compressions tighter, deeper. Let me handle the airway." Her voice cut cleanly through the chaos, firm and precise, demanding attention without ever needing to raise in volume. Within seconds, the tone in the room shifted. Her presence didn't calm them it commanded them.
The man was in his mid-forties, post-cardiac surgery, stable less than six hours ago. But everything in his vitals told a different story now. The numbers didn't lie they never did. They screamed failure. She worked in silence, recalculating every intervention in her mind, every charted dosage, every procedure logged in the last twenty-four hours. Nothing added up. The pressure continued to drop, and despite every correction, every push of adrenaline, the monitor remained unchanged.
At 6:51 A.M., with a steady breath and no visible emotion, she said the words she hated most: "Time of death, 06:51."
No one spoke after that. And for a brief moment, Nora stood still in the aftermath, her gloves slick with sweat, her mind already racing through the file she had just read hours before. Something was off. And not in a way she could explain yet.
In the locker room, she scrubbed her hands long after the water ran clean. The sink steamed, too hot to be comfortable, but she didn't flinch. She stared at her reflection in the small mirror above the faucet, taking in the tight line of her jaw, the quiet fury that hovered just beneath her skin. The patient hadn't crashed without reason. She had reviewed his chart before bed the medications were stable, the dosages correct. But now there was a new line. A change. A subtle dosage shift she hadn't approved, logged under her ID at 23:47.
And she knew without question that entry wasn't hers.
Someone had altered the record.
Someone wanted her to take the fall.
By eight o'clock, the whispers had already begun, moving faster than any lab result. But these weren't idle hallway rumors anymore. They were strategic. Intentional. Targeted. She heard fragments as she walked voices dipping just low enough to be heard, just loud enough to wound.
"She was the last one to touch the chart."
"I heard she bypassed the final med check."
"Guess she's not as sharp as everyone thought."
She kept walking. Her expression never shifted. Her steps never faltered. But she felt every word like a cut to the spine. In the hallway, she caught Rowan watching her from down the corridor, brow furrowed, mouth tight with unspoken thoughts. He didn't say anything not yet but she saw the question forming in his eyes.
At 8:32 A.M., her pager buzzed.
Closed-door review. No explanation.
She didn't need one.
The review room was colder than it should have been, with clean white walls and a long table designed to intimidate more than to mediate. Brenner sat at the head, hands folded neatly over a pristine folder, his suit sharp and his expression sharper. Two hospital administrators flanked him, both looking uncomfortable in a way that wasn't quite guilt more like anticipation. Elias stood in the corner, silent, arms crossed, unreadable.
"Nora," Brenner began, his voice smooth, his tone falsely sympathetic, "you responded to the emergency this morning?"
"I did," she answered.
"You were also the last to modify the patient's medication protocol?"
"I followed the chart."
He pushed the folder across the table. "This entry was logged at 23:47. Under your ID. That's your access point."
Nora didn't touch the folder. She didn't need to. "That's not my signature. I wasn't even near that terminal."
"And yet, the entry exists." His voice didn't rise. It didn't need to.
"I'm telling you, someone falsified access."
One of the administrators leaned forward. "Are you suggesting deliberate manipulation of records?"
"I'm suggesting someone is trying to shift blame."
The tension in the room grew thick, like gauze soaked in accusation.
Then the door opened.
Rowan stepped in, still in scrubs, a printout in hand and a fire in his eyes that hadn't been there before.
"She didn't make that entry," he said flatly. "At 23:47, Dr. Keane was in the OR with me, handling a post-op complication in 3C. I logged the procedure. She couldn't have accessed that system."
Brenner didn't blink. "That doesn't explain the terminal match."
Rowan walked forward and dropped the printout on the table. "That access came from Terminal 3B different wing, different floor. She was nowhere near it. And I pulled the logs to prove it."
Silence stretched. Elias shifted slightly in the corner, head tilted, lips pressed tight.
"I don't know what game is being played here," Rowan continued, "but if you're looking for someone to hang this on, it won't be her."
Brenner's mouth twitched, barely. "Thank you, Dr. Cardinal. We'll review."
"I hope you do," Rowan said, meeting his eyes without a trace of fear. "Because you don't get to destroy reputations just to cover sloppy systems."
They didn't speak again until they were halfway down the corridor. Nora didn't say thank you right away. She just walked beside him, her hands still tense at her sides.
"You just made yourself a target," she murmured.
"I don't care," he replied. "Someone had to say it."
She stopped. Looked at him really looked at him and for the first time, something softened. Not trust. Not yet. But recognition.
"You didn't have to do it."
"You'd have done it for me."
They stood there, unspeaking, the fluorescent lights casting long shadows behind them. For once, she wasn't alone in the fight. And that mattered more than anything she could say aloud.
When she finally returned to the elevator bay, she paused. Her reflection in the polished steel looked unchanged, but she could feel the shift beneath her skin. The wear. The weight. She pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear, trying to shake the tightness in her chest.
Somewhere behind her, a camera rotated with a faint mechanical click.
In the far corner, half-hidden behind the stairwell, Elias watched her. Not just with suspicion, but with something else understanding, maybe. Or calculation. He glanced down at the screen on his tablet. And she knew, in that moment, that nothing about this was over.
Not the sabotage.
Not the war.
Not the truth that still waited beneath everything.