When HEROES don't come HOME

Chapter Twenty-Nine – Empty Rooms

The corridors of the military hospital were a maze of white tile and humming fluorescents, scrubbed so clean they reflected her face when she leaned close enough. Emily had walked them a hundred times as a nurse, as a doctor-in-training, as someone with a badge and a purpose. Today she walked them like a trespasser hiding in plain sight. The smell of antiseptic clung to the air, sharp enough to bite. Carts rolled somewhere beyond a set of double doors. Voices rose and fell in the steady rhythm of hospital life—orders, requests, the muffled groan of patients whose pain was an accepted background noise here. Emily turned down a side corridor she knew well. This wing held the long-term observation rooms, the kind meant for soldiers whose conditions didn’t fit easy categories. Too sick for discharge, too stable for ICU. Perfect cover for the names Reeves had given her. Halfway down the corridor she spotted the nurse’s station. A young woman in scrubs sat there, pen cap between her teeth, forehead furrowed over a clipboard. Her hair was pulled into a messy bun that listed to one side like a sinking ship. Her badge read K. Yates, RN, but it might as well have said in over her head. Emily’s pulse slowed with opportunity. Yates—she remembered her. Sweet, eager, but scatterbrained to a fault. She’d once called Emily “Dr. Henderson” for an entire week despite every correction. Perfect. Emily adjusted her expression to calm authority, the way she did when dealing with trainees. She approached the desk quietly. “Doctor Hendricks asked me to confirm something with you,” she said, pitching her voice low but confident. Yates’s head snapped up. Her pen fell, clattering across the clipboard. “Dr. Hendricks? Oh—oh no, I mixed up his schedule again, didn’t I?” Emily gave her a sympathetic half-smile. “Nothing serious. He just wants to be sure a few patients are ready for reassessment. Could you help me check where they’re roomed?” “Of course,” Yates said quickly, relief flooding her tone. She shuffled papers, searching for the master list of room assignments. “You know I keep messing up his patients with Dr. Hanley’s. Last week I sent the orderly to 4B when he was supposed to be in 6C. They’re never going to let me live it down.” “You’re doing fine,” Emily soothed, though her eyes sharpened as Yates produced a sheaf of notes. “It happens to everyone.” Emily recited a few names from Reeves’s list—Ortiz, Halpern, Brennan. Each syllable felt like a stone rolling across her tongue. Yates muttered the names under her breath as she ran a finger down the columns. “Ortiz… Ortiz… yes! He’s… uh…” She squinted. “Oh shoot, I can’t tell if that’s a seven or a one. I think Seven-D. Halpern, Halpern… here, Five-C. Brennan… Two-A.” She scribbled them hurriedly on a sticky note, her handwriting a looping mess. She shoved it across the desk toward Emily. “Thank you,” Emily said warmly, pocketing the note. “You’ve saved him a step.” Yates flushed with pride. “Anytime, Doctor… uh… I mean—” Emily waved a hand dismissively, already moving. The first door—Seven-D. Emily’s sneakers squeaked softly as she entered. A bed stood crisply made. No chart at the foot, no IV pole waiting. Empty. Five-C. The blinds were drawn. She pushed them back just enough to see the room bare but for equipment wrapped in plastic, unused for weeks. Two-A. Her pulse climbed as she reached for the handle. Inside, the overhead light flickered, illuminating another bed stripped of sheets, a faint ring of dust where a monitor once stood. Gone. All of them. Emily leaned against the cool wall outside the last room, heart hammering in her ears. Reeves’s list, the nurse’s scribbled note—they weren’t here. Maybe never had been. The corridor buzzed with distant sounds—an intercom call, footsteps echoing. Emily folded the sticky note into her palm and crushed it into her pocket. She needed to leave before someone noticed she was walking hallways without purpose. When she rounded the corner back toward the nurse’s station, the air shifted. Yates was no longer at her desk. Instead, two uniformed soldiers flanked her, their grips firm on her elbows. Her face was pale, confused. Papers spilled from the clipboard across the desk, forgotten. And behind them, calm and terrifying in his stillness, stood Colonel Matthews. Emily froze mid-step. Instinct shoved her back behind a column, breath shallow. Matthews’s eyes scanned the corridor like searchlights, sharp and predatory. He said something low to one of the soldiers; the man nodded and guided Yates away, her protests barely audible. Matthews lingered a moment longer, gaze sweeping over the hall, lips pressed into a line. For a heartbeat Emily thought his eyes might catch hers, might pin her behind the column like a butterfly. She pressed her back into the cool marble, praying the thud of her heart wouldn’t echo. Finally, his boots clicked on the tile. He turned, coat swaying, and strode away down the corridor. The soldiers disappeared with him. Emily stayed still, lungs burning, until silence settled again. Only then did she let out the breath she’d been holding, palms damp with sweat. The sticky note in her pocket felt like a brand. Empty rooms. Vanished patients. And now a girl who didn’t know how to keep a secret was being led somewhere she might never come back from. Emily straightened, smoothed her scrub top, and forced her feet to move. One step, then another, back into the flow of the hospital where she belonged. But her mind screamed the truth: Someone was clearing the board. And Matthews was watching.