Westbridge felt like a living thing that morning not the kind that thrived, but the kind that pulsed beneath the surface, anxious and waiting. The corridors were quieter, the elevator slower to arrive, and every voice carried that low, practiced murmur reserved for moments when grief still hung in the air. Though the patient from 4B was gone, his presence lingered like a shadow, pressing against the hospital's bright walls with a weight no chart could explain.
Nora walked the halls like she always did deliberate steps, straight posture, eyes forward. But the air around her was different. Heavier. The death had left a scar, not just on the records, but on the way people looked at her. There were no accusations. No formal reprimands. Nothing in writing. But at Westbridge, silence had sharp edges. And rumor was more efficient than any scalpel.
She passed Station 3B without breaking stride, though her gaze flicked toward the terminal that had logged the fatal medication change. Her login. Her name. Her shadow. Someone had decided it would be easier to carve her reputation than face the truth. She didn't stop, but the bitterness settled behind her ribs like glass.
By 09:14, she was in the lower archives skipping rounds for the first time since her arrival. The stairwell groaned beneath her steps, and the buzzing of the overhead lights echoed like static in a storm. Down here, time moved differently. The air was colder, almost clinical. Forgotten.
Metal cabinets lined the walls like bones, each drawer a ribcage stuffed with the stories no one wanted told. She moved through them with care, until her fingers brushed a box labeled 2012. The year her life had split in two. She pulled it free, set it on a table, and peeled away the dust like peeling old skin.
The file wasn't hard to find. It waited for her, almost too eagerly.
Keane, Lily. Age: 15.
Her breath caught when she saw it blue ink, handwritten notes, a few creases in the top corner. Complications post-medication. Respiratory failure. Resuscitation attempt failed. Death confirmed at 06:58. The last line hit harder than it should have, even now.
Signed: Dr. K. Brenner.
Nora's pulse didn't race. But her throat tightened. This was what she had been chasing the proof, the signature, the final stitch in a wound no one else had dared to open. But then her eyes fell to the bottom of the page.
Supervising Intern: R. Cardinal.
The name echoed inside her skull like a dropped instrument in an empty OR. She stared at it. Once. Twice. Three times. Not a common name. Not a coincidence. She flipped the page, and there it was again: another case, another signature.
R. Cardinal.
Different patient. Same intern. Same year. Same ghost.
She stood still for a long time, her hand gripping the edge of the table. Rowan had never mentioned this. He'd danced around the timeline. Skipped questions. Redirected.
She slipped the file into her bag, closed the box, and turned off the light.
She found Rowan that evening in the west stairwell, sitting on the third step with his elbows resting on his knees. The kind of pose a person only took when they didn't want to think too hard but couldn't stop.
"You missed your rotation," he said, not looking at her.
"I was in the archives," she replied, arms crossed, her body angled against the railing.
"Looking for ghosts again?"
"Maybe."
He lifted his gaze. The fatigue was still there, but so was something sharper. He studied her with the care of someone checking for fractures. "Did you find any?"
She shrugged. "Names. Buried under other names."
His lips pressed into a line. He didn't ask which names.
"Did you ever work under Brenner?" she asked, voice even.
His jaw moved. A subtle shift. "Briefly. During med school."
"And your father… he's not in medicine, right?"
There was a pause. A small, surgical one.
"No."
It was a clean answer. Just not a true one.
She didn't push. Not tonight. But she saw it the flicker of a lie, or at least the shade of one. She'd spent enough time under fluorescent lights to recognize the difference between truth and polish.
"I should get back to my rounds," she said.
He didn't stop her. But just as her hand touched the door, his voice reached her again.
"Nora."
She turned slightly.
"I'm on your side."
She didn't respond. But she nodded. Once. Enough to say I heard you. Not enough to say I believe you.
Her apartment felt colder when she returned. The walls closer. The silence thicker. She left her coat on the chair and sat at her desk, pulling out the file from her bag like it was something sacred. The page with Lily's name was on top.
She smoothed it with her palm, her eyes landing again on the ink.
R. Cardinal.
The confirmation wasn't what struck her. It was the timeline. The silence. The way the connection had lived beneath her feet all this time, buried just like Lily had been beneath bureaucracy and credentials.
She turned on her laptop, typed the name into the internal hospital system.
No match.
She tried again. This time in the public medical registry.
Still nothing conclusive.
She stared at the blinking cursor. The void behind it.
She wasn't chasing facts anymore. She was following the thread. The crack. The part of the system where names lived and identities blurred. Rowan had secrets maybe not deadly, but dangerous. And she needed to know where he stood when the scalpel finally came down.
The room felt darker. She didn't remember turning off the lights. But across the room, her screen blinked once.
Connection Active.
Someone was watching.