White Lies
489 Words
The air in the hospital was thicker the next morning. Heavier. As if every hallway had heard what Lucian whispered the night before. Elara Voss hadn’t slept. Not really. Her body had shut down for maybe two hours, but her brain never left the rooftop.
Someone had tried to kill Lucian Moretti. That part wasn’t hard to believe. He was mafia, after all. What shook her was what he said last:
> "One of your surgeries wasn’t an accident."
She didn’t even know what that meant. Medical errors happened—rarely—but Elara didn’t make them. Not the kind that got patients killed.
So who was he talking about?
She walked into the break room, grabbed her tablet, and started pulling patient reports from the previous seven days. She scanned vitals, notes, logs. Nothing stood out.
Until she opened the file for Patient 3271—Mark Donnelly. 46. Gunshot wound. Admitted four nights ago. He’d bled out in surgery.
But something didn’t sit right. The vitals had dropped suddenly—unnaturally fast. She remembered the panic. The crashing. But it was the chart note that made her stomach turn:
> "Initial IV lines placed by Nurse Zeller. No anomalies noted."
Nurse Zeller had transferred to another hospital the next day. Fast. Too fast.
Elara stood abruptly.
---
In ICU 3, Lucian was sitting up, flipping through the same book he’d had since admission—Dostoevsky. He looked up when she entered.
“Did you sleep?” he asked.
“Did you?”
He smirked. “Define sleep.”
She crossed her arms. “Mark Donnelly. Gunshot wound. You said one of my surgeries wasn’t an accident.”
Lucian closed the book. “Donnelly wasn’t supposed to make it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was my father’s cleaner. He knew who shot me.”
Elara’s eyes narrowed. “And now he’s dead.”
Lucian’s gaze darkened. “And now I can’t prove who pulled the trigger.”
---
Outside his room, Elara checked the hospital cameras. Donnelly’s surgery started at 11:47 PM. She scrubbed through footage. Her heart stopped at the timestamp: 12:03 AM.
A man in a hoodie and a hospital badge stepped into the hallway outside OR-6. He lingered, looked at the door… then walked away.
She paused the frame. Enlarged it.
The badge was fake.
And the man? He was wearing surgical gloves.
Elara just uncovered her first clue — Nurse Zeller vanished right after a suspicious death…
And Lucian says it wasn’t an accident.
💬 What do YOU think is happening behind the scenes?
🩺 Was Donnelly murdered on the operating table?
🚪 Why did Zeller leave so fast?
🖤 Is Elara in way over her head… or finally waking up?
👇 Drop your theories below.
✅ Vote if you're loving the twists.
📝 Tell me who you trust… and who you don’t.
Chapter 4 is coming hot — don’t blink.
- Writer
