Prescription for Ruin

Chapter five

I read the note in the staff bathroom on my break. It was written in a clean printed font.

I know about you and Leo Vasquez. I have documentations, texts, photographs, timestamped log entries from nights you were both on call. I'm not interested in your career. I'm interested in the truth about what happened to Marcus Webb. If you want to understand what you're involved in, meet me. If you don't, assume what I have reaches the chief of medicine before the end of the month.

There was a date and restaurant address. 7:00p.m.

I read it four times.

By the fourth time my hands had stopped shaking, the shock was gone, and I just felt cold. I fold the paper. Put it in my pocket and sit for one more minute with my thoughts.

Marcus Webb. I don't know that name. But the weight she put behind it got me thinking, it’s not a patient, not an incident, just a specific name.

She knows something real.

I go back to the ward and keep working. The job doesn’t stop just because my life is a mess, and honestly that helps because it keeps me going. I check on Mrs. Caldwell, notice the fever in bed seven early, update the charts, do the count, and finish everything while the paper stays in my pocket and Sophia Brown’s face keeps replaying in my head.

—————————

At 6:00 in the morning I stand in the hospital parking lot in light rain and try to breathe. The morning feels dull and tired, not happy at all.

Leo texted at 3:14 a.m., “Thinking about you.”

I stare at the message for a while. It’s just three simple words, from the same man I was with earlier like nothing happened. I just didn’t know what to reply , what’s with him and this Marcus guy.

I put my phone in my pocket. I head home.

———————

While I'm eating toast standing at my kitchen counter, Dan texts .

You didn't seem okay. We used to be able to say that to each other.

We can still say that

I write back.

Then are you?

Not entirely.

Dinner tomorrow. We can talk or not talk. You pick.

Both

I write.

I shower, sleep for about four hours, and wake up still tired. The rain is heavier now. I lie in bed trying to think clearly and put everything together.

Leo Vasquez. Six months with him. The supply room, his apartment, his office. The way he talks, the way he touches me. Feeling close to someone who never really tells you anything about himself. The marks on his arm I noticed but didn’t ask about. The sealed file in his record. The fiancée who left without anyone saying much about it. Now Sophia Brown. Showing up on that elevator like she knew exactly when to come. Like she had been waiting for the right moment.

Who is Marcus Webb?.

I opened my laptop.

The search results load. I read the first article.

Marcus Webb is forty-four years old. He was admitted to Mercy General two years ago under Leo’s service, cardiothoracic. It was supposed to be a routine procedure, nothing unusual, but he never went home. The family filed a complaint, the hospital reviewed it, and the result was listed as inconclusive. I read that word three times, just to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding it.

I sit back looking at the ceiling. I think about Leo's hands and how certain they always are. How he has never, in six months, in any context, in any room, let anything approach him that he didn't already have a plan for.

And I think about the marks on his arm.

My phone buzzes on the mattress.

A call from Leo

I watch it ring. Once. Twice. On the third ring I pick up.

"You went quiet on me," he says.

"I was sleeping."

"You're a bad liar." He says. "Are you free tonight?"

I look at the laptop screen and the paper folded on my nightstand.

“Leo,” I say carefully. “Who is Marcus Webb?”

There’s a short silence like he wasn’t expecting the question.

"Where did you hear that name?" he says.

I don’t say anything,waiting for him to explain.

He asks again "Where did you hear that name?"

But this time with a tone.

“I found it in a file,” I say. “Marcus Webb. He was on your service.”

There’s a pause on the line.

“Why are you looking through my records?” he asks.

“Just answer the question, Leo.”

Another silence.

“Why is the full report sealed?”

He doesn’t answer right away.

“You’re getting into things that don’t concern you,” he says.

That’s when something shifts in me.

Because that isn’t an explanation. It’s a warning.

I don’t say anything, waiting for him to keep talking.

He doesn’t and ends the call. For the first time since I met him, I get the feeling there’s something I don’t understand at all. Something bigger than one case file.