Chapter 5: Codes and Consequences
713 Words
Nina’s breath hitched.
“You think this is an inside job?” she whispered, her voice barely audible in the break room.
Dr. Cole leaned back, sipping from his coffee cup with maddening calm. “Not just inside. Deep inside.”
Nina’s fingers curled around her pen. “Then tell me everything. Stop dancing around it.”
He looked at her like he was weighing the consequences—hers and his. “You ever heard of a protocol called Vigil?”
She shook her head.
“It was a dormant security measure put in place years ago to detect anomalies in hospital systems—everything from prescription drug discrepancies to unauthorized patient transfers. It flagged something last week.”
Nina sat forward. “Room 317?”
Cole nodded. “The system picked up inconsistencies in his vitals log. His name was never entered into the official patient database, but his medications were being signed off. Someone knew how to bypass everything.”
“Then who admitted him?” Nina asked.
“That’s what we don’t know. The ID used was cloned.”
“Why wasn’t this reported?”
Cole gave a bitter smile. “Because someone with access is behind it. And if they find out what we know—”
“We?” she echoed.
“You’re in this now, Nina. Whether you like it or not.”
⸻
Later, on the ward, Nina’s shift felt surreal. Every face she passed seemed suddenly suspicious. The janitor with his slow cart. The quiet med student who avoided eye contact. Even the cheerful pharmacist who always offered candy.
What if any one of them was part of this?
At her station, she pulled up the internal prescription logs and filtered through entries tied to Room 317.
Most were routine: saline drips, antibiotics.
But one stood out.
Compound X8-Delta.
Not listed in the hospital formulary.
She opened the digital chart associated with the order—and found it was authorized under Dr. Russell Stokes.
Nina frowned. She didn’t know that name. And yet the signature was timestamped during her shift two days ago.
She scrolled to the security cam database, heart racing.
Stokes had entered the ER that day for exactly four minutes.
No check-in. No scrub-in. No badge swipe.
Just a face.
She screengrabbed the footage and sent it to Sam with the message:
“Ever seen this guy? Said he’s a doctor. Doesn’t feel right.”
⸻
At lunch, Sam texted back:
“Girl. That’s NOT a doctor. That’s Elijah Reeds. He was part of a failed med-tech start-up years ago. Got sued for experimental trials gone wrong.”
“Why would he be in our hospital?”
“No clue. But he was reported dead two years ago.”
Nina’s fingers trembled. Someone had used the identity of a dead man to approve the drug.
And worse, no one noticed.
⸻
That night, as she exited the hospital, her head swirled with too many questions. A cool wind rustled her scrub jacket. The parking lot lights buzzed overhead.
She reached her car and fumbled for her keys—when a shadow moved behind her.
She spun.
Nothing.
Her phone buzzed.
A blocked number.
Hesitating, she answered.
A voice she didn’t recognize crackled through.
“If you want to stay alive, stop looking.”
Nina’s heart dropped. “Who is this?”
Click.
Silence.
She stood frozen, surrounded by the ordinary sounds of the hospital’s night shift—a distant siren, the rustle of leaves, the idle hum of street lamps.
But now, every sound felt… loaded.
She was being watched.
⸻
Back in her apartment, she bolted the door and pulled out the note from Room 317 again. She laid it beside the printed screengrab of Elijah Reeds.
Then she remembered something—the hand.
When the patient had grabbed her wrist… he had been trying to point to something.
She opened her notebook and sketched the sequence of beeps from the heart monitor that had started going haywire just before he awoke.
It wasn’t a normal EKG.
It had pauses. Repetitions.
It was a pattern.
She transcribed it as dots and dashes.
Morse code.
After a quick translation, her jaw dropped.
The message spelled:
“317 isn’t the only one.”
- Writer
