Chapter 2 - Six Days Earlier
Six days before the emergency room doors opened, Emily woke to Daniel sitting on the edge of their bed, already dressed for work.
His dark suit was perfect. His smile was not.
"You fell last night," he told her.
Emily stared at the cast covering her left arm. It reached from below her elbow to the base of her fingers. She remembered drinking tea after dinner. She remembered Daniel carrying the cup away. After that came only fragments: the staircase light, a pressure against her chest, and a woman's voice saying, "Not too much. We still need her awake later."
"I don't remember falling."
"You hit your head. The doctor said confusion was normal."
"What doctor?"
"Dr. Vale. He met us at his private clinic. You insisted you didn't want an emergency room bill."
Emily would never have said that. She had excellent insurance through her work as a clinical data analyst. More importantly, she had spent eight years reviewing hospital safety records. She knew head injuries and broken bones did not belong in an after-hours office.
Daniel kissed her forehead. "Rest."
When he left, Emily tried to sit up. Pain burned beneath the cast, not where a broken bone should hurt, but in small separate points along her forearm. Her fingers tingled. The plaster smelled faintly of almonds and antiseptic.
Her phone was gone.
So was her laptop.
She found an old tablet in the kitchen drawer, but the home network password had changed. Every landline receiver in the house was dead.
At noon, Daniel called through the smart speaker.
"How are you feeling?"
Emily looked at the black glass eye on the counter. "Like a prisoner."
His pause was brief. "That fever is making you dramatic."
She had not told him she had a fever.
That afternoon, while searching his study for her phone, she found a hospital bracelet in the trash. It bore her name and date of birth, but the facility printed beneath them was Northbridge Orthopedic Center. She searched her memory. Northbridge had closed three years earlier after a contamination scandal.
A second item lay under the bracelet: a receipt for medical plaster, surgical tubing, and a programmable micro-infusion pump.
The purchaser was D. Carter.
Footsteps sounded in the foyer.
Emily shoved the receipt inside her robe and closed the drawer. Daniel appeared in the doorway carrying flowers and soup.
"What are you doing in here?"
"Looking for pain medication."
His gaze moved from her face to the desk and then to her cast. "You should be in bed."
He guided her upstairs with one hand at her waist. To anyone watching, it would have looked tender. Emily felt the warning in every finger.
That night she pretended to swallow the pills he gave her. When his breathing deepened beside her, she slid out of bed, hid the tablets inside a tissue, and locked herself in the bathroom.
She examined the cast beneath the mirror light. Near her elbow was a tiny circle where the plaster had been repaired. When she pressed it, something clicked beneath the surface.
May you like
Emily looked toward the locked door.
Then a blue droplet seeped through the cast and rolled down her skin.
