Chapter 20 Rowan #2
I swipe my badge at 7B’s doorway, and the reader flashes green. The door opens easily, and I step into the room expecting to see an attending reviewing a chart or a patient waiting for evaluation.
Instead, it’s empty. No patient in the bed.
No chart active on the monitor. No surgical tray on the counter.
The sheets are pulled tight and smooth, undisturbed, and the wall monitor remains dark.
The air feels still in a way hospital rooms rarely do, faintly stale, as though no one has been inside for hours.
I hesitate only a second before stepping fully across the threshold. The door closes behind me with a muted mechanical sound.
I take three steps toward the bed, scanning the room more carefully now. The metal railings gleam. The sink is dry, and the trash bin is empty. I turn back toward the door and press the handle. It doesn’t move.
For a second, I assume I didn’t fully disengage the lock, so I swipe my badge again and wait for the green flash. It flashes red.
I swipe it a second time, slower now, watching the small panel carefully. Red again.
A faint dimming passes through the overhead lights, subtle enough that I might have missed it if I weren’t already on edge. The room doesn’t go dark, but the brightness lowers just enough to change the tone of the walls.
The air feels different, too. I draw in a slow breath before my body can tip into panic and remind myself that this is a hospital room, not an alley or a threat in motion.
I cross to the wall phone and lift the receiver. There’s no dial tone. I set it back down carefully and pull out my cell phone. No signal.
That’s when it stops feeling like a malfunction.
The ventilation above continues its low mechanical whir, but beneath it, I hear something else. A faint internal click from somewhere overhead.
I look up just as a ceiling speaker activates.
“You adapt quickly, Doctor.”
The male voice filters down from the ceiling, smooth and composed, as if we’re discussing a scheduling error instead of the fact that I’m locked in an empty room.
My body reacts before my mind does, a sudden wash of cold spreading from my chest outward. The tone isn’t distorted or hurried. If anything, it’s conversational, and that makes it worse.
“You survived the car accident,” he continues calmly.
The words sink into me slowly, not shouted or dramatic, just stated as fact. I don’t respond. There’s power in silence, and I cling to it now.
“You didn’t retreat,” he adds almost thoughtfully. “That was unexpected.”
My throat pinches as the implications unfold. None of this was a mistake or random. None of it was a series of unrelated events spiraling out of control.
“They’ve been observing,” he continues. “Your schedule. Whom you speak to. When you arrive. When you leave.”
I bite the inside of my cheek until the sting steadies me, a low hum slipping out before I realize I’m doing it.
“You changed your shifts,” he adds. “That was smart.”
So, they noticed that too.
“You should consider stepping back,” he says lightly. “This hospital won’t protect you the way you think it does. It’s accessible to us.”
Accessible.
I lift my chin slightly.
“If you wanted to hurt me,” I reply flatly, “you would have.”
There’s a brief pause.
“Hurting you would be simple,” he answers.
My pulse pounds harder.
“What we want is to understand you.”
The air suddenly feels thinner.
“You were never the primary objective,” he continues. “But you are connected to it. And connections matter.”
Connected.
“This isn’t a warning,” he adds calmly. “It’s information.”
It is absolutely a warning.
The speaker clicks off, the lights return to full brightness, and the door lock disengages with a muted mechanical sound. Everything resets.
I stand frozen for three long seconds before moving. Then I retrieve my phone. There’s still no signal.
I open the door. The corridor outside is unchanged. A surgical tech pushes a cart past the intersection. A nurse adjusts a clipboard near the supply room.
Leo straightens the moment I step into view.
“What happened?” he asks quietly.
For a fraction of a second, I consider telling him everything. The lock. The voice. The certainty in the man’s tone. But there’s no proof. No evidence that the room was anything other than empty.
“Nothing,” I answer automatically.
The word feels disconnected from my body, thin and insufficient, but I hold his gaze long enough to make it convincing. If I escalate this without something concrete, I hand them exactly what they want.
He studies me carefully. My breathing. My hands. My pupils.
“Doc.”
“It was a wrong page,” I continue calmly. “That’s all.”
He doesn’t look convinced. Neither am I. But as we walk back down the corridor, the word echoes in my mind.
Accessible. The hospital is accessible. And someone just proved it.
I head directly toward IT, keeping my pace even as I move through the corridor.
Leo falls into step beside me without asking where we’re going.
He rarely does. We pass a nurse pushing a linen cart, and I nod automatically when a resident stops me with a quick question about post-op antibiotics.
My voice remains calm, my hands loose at my sides.
From the outside, nothing about me suggests urgency. Inside, I focus.
The IT office sits two floors down, tucked behind a row of administrative suites that most staff never enter unless something has gone wrong.
By the time we reach the administrative wing, the traffic thins and the hospital noise fades.
The hallway here smells faintly of carpet cleaner instead of antiseptic.
The lighting feels warmer, less clinical, and more corporate.
There are no monitors chiming, no stretchers rolling past, just the low mechanical murmur of servers behind locked doors and the muted tap of keyboards.
A frosted glass panel reads Systems & Network Operations in clean black lettering. I slow at the door.
“I need to speak with them alone,” I tell Leo quietly.
He studies my face for a moment, then nods once and positions himself a few feet down the corridor where he has a clear line of sight to both exits.
I knock once and push the door open. The room is colder than the rest of the hospital. The air temperature is always set lower to protect the equipment. Several monitors glow on long desks, blue and green lines reflecting across faces bent over keyboards.
A young technician I recognize from prior system upgrades swivels toward me. His badge reads Evan. He looks mid-twenties, maybe younger, with thin shoulders under a pale button-down shirt, and his sleeves rolled unevenly to his elbows. A half-finished energy drink sits beside his mouse.
“Dr. Hale,” he greets, surprised but polite. “Everything okay?”
“Yes,” I answer smoothly. “I just need you to pull something for me.”
He straightens slightly, fingers hovering over his keyboard. “Sure.”
I step closer to his desk, the cool air brushing across my arms.
“I was paged to a restricted consult about twenty minutes ago,” I explain. “Room 7B. There was no patient. No attending. I want to verify the page origin and access logs.”
His brow furrows. “That’s strange.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
He nods and turns back to his monitors. His fingers move quickly, the keys clacking in uneven rhythm. Lines of code and system dashboards fill the screen, scrolling past in organized grids. I watch over his shoulder, not because I understand every data point, but because I want to see his reaction.
He pulls up my badge record first.
“Okay,” he mutters. “You badged into 7B at 12:17 P.M. Exited at 12:23 P.M.”
“Six minutes,” I confirm quietly.
“Yeah.” He clicks into the room usage history. “But there’s no scheduled consult. No entry request logged. No override.”
He scrolls further, frowning.
“What about the page?” I ask.
He switches windows, scanning the communication dashboard. “I’m not seeing it here,” he admits. “Your pager ID hasn’t received anything from surgical dispatch since yesterday.”
“That’s not possible,” I reply evenly. “I read it.”
He glances at me quickly, then back to the screen, uncomfortable now. “Maybe it came from an external routing system?”
“Would that log here?”
“It should,” he answers. “Unless someone spoofed it.”
Spoofed. I don’t like the sound of that.
He clicks into system diagnostics. “There’s no breach alert,” he continues. “No abnormal access attempts. No forced door.”
“What about the door lock itself?” I press. “Could it malfunction?”
He shakes his head. “Those locks are on a closed circuit. If there’s an error, it logs automatically.”
He turns the monitor slightly so I can see more clearly. Rows of timestamps and green checkmarks fill the screen.
“All green,” he says. “Everything looks normal.”
Normal. My fingers curl slightly against the edge of his desk. I loosen them deliberately.
“Could someone with administrative credentials generate a page without leaving a trace?” I ask.
He hesitates. He grinds his back teeth. “In theory, yes. But they’d need high-level access. That’s restricted to department heads and network supervisors.”
“How many people is that?”
“Six,” he answers after a moment. “Maybe seven.”
I nod once. “Thank you.”
He studies my face carefully, like he wants to ask more but knows better. “Should I flag this?”
“No,” I reply. “I just wanted confirmation.”
I step back from his desk, the cold air suddenly more noticeable against my skin. As I reach the door, I feel his eyes follow me. I don’t look back.
Someone accessed a restricted room. Someone locked it behind me. Someone routed a page without a trace. And someone knew enough about my routines to send it during peak activity, when I wouldn’t question its legitimacy.
I press the elevator button and wait, watching the numbers descend. Our reflections stare back at us from the mirrored doors. I look composed. Leo looks unchanged.