Chapter 2 - The Ghost of Room 412Saint Michael Medical Center looked like a concrete monolith bleeding yellow light into the Minneapolis snow.
I didn't use the main entrance. I knew the security desk on the first floor was manned by a guard named Carl, who played chess with Kenneth every Tuesday. Instead, I scaled the brick-and-ivy fire escape on the south wing, my boots slipping on the frozen rungs, my breath tearing ragged holes in the freezing air.
My lungs burned. My fingers were numb. But every time I closed my eyes, I saw Nurse Janice walking down the sterile, linoleum-lined corridor toward Room 314, carrying a syringe filled with enough potassium chloride to stop a horse's heart in seconds.
Hold on, Dad, I prayed into the wind, hauling myself over the railing of the third-floor balcony. Just hold on.
The window to the utility stairwell was unlocked—a maintenance oversight I had noticed during my forty hours of vigil. I slipped through into the quiet hum of the hospital interior. The air here smelled of industrial bleach, old coffee, and the metallic tang of fear.
I walked with my head down, pulling the hood of my coat over my face, blending seamlessly with the shifting shadows of the night shift nurses changing guard.
As I passed Room 412, a frail, paper-thin hand shot out from the semi-darkness and grabbed my wrist with surprising strength.
I gasped, spinning around defensively.
It was Margaret Foster.
The terminally ill woman who had handed me the voice recorder hours ago looked worse now; her skin was the color of skim milk, dark bruises shadowed her sunken eyes, and an oxygen cannula was taped beneath her nose. But her gaze was burning with an intense, manic clarity.
"You came back," Margaret whispered, her voice a dry rasp like autumn leaves scraping across concrete. "Most sheep walk straight into the butcher's yard twice. You didn't."
"I don't have time, Margaret," I whispered back, trying to pull away. "Nurse Janice is heading to my father's room right now. Kenneth sent her."
"Janice isn't going to make it," Margaret said, a strange, grim smile touching her cracked lips. She motioned with her head toward the small digital tablet resting on her bedside table. "Look at the nurse's station monitor reflection. I hacked into the hospital's internal paging system fifteen minutes ago. I kept Janice busy."
I stared at her, stunned. "You... what?"
"You think I’m just an old lady dying of lung cancer, Victoria?" Margaret let out a dry, hacking cough that rattled deep in her chest, wiping a trace of blood from her lip with a trembling thumb. "Before I was patient 412, I spent thirty years as the head of internal investigations for the Minnesota Department of Health. I've been watching Kenneth Ross destroy families for a decade. Your father was just his grand finale."
The pieces clicked together with terrifying speed. She hadn't just happened to be in the hallway. She had been hunting Kenneth just as long as he had been hunting my family.
"Why?" I asked, my voice trembling. "Why target my father?"
"Because Walter Campbell was about to expose the crooked land deals Kenneth was running through Campbell Manufacturing," Margaret said, her eyes flashing. "Kenneth didn't just want your money, Victoria. He needed your father dead before the annual shareholders' meeting tomorrow morning, or the entire empire collapses, and Kenneth goes to federal prison for embezzlement."
Suddenly, the hospital’s overhead intercom crackled to life, cutting through the low murmur of the ward.
“Code Blue, Intensive Care Unit, Room 314. Code Blue, Room 314.”
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My heart stopped.
"Go," Margaret commanded, shoving me toward the door with surprising force. "The trap is set. Now let's see if your father remembers how to bite back."
