Chapter 7 - Saint Orison's Abandoned Wing
The old coastal clinic had once belonged to Saint Orison Hospital. Official records said it closed after storm damage seventeen years earlier. Satellite images showed a collapsed roof and overgrown access road.
The building was neither abandoned nor collapsed.
Mariana saw clean tire tracks in the mud before Elena's vehicle reached the gate. The coastal wind carried salt through the broken stone arches. Beyond them, the main structure rose against the dark sea, its windows covered from inside.
Elena brought four officers. Ryan came in restraints because he knew the layout and because no one trusted him enough to leave him behind.
"The treatment rooms are below ground," he said. "My mother believed ocean noise made patients easier to disorient."
They entered through a maintenance tunnel beneath the cliffs. Rust stained the walls, but the electrical conduits were new. Cameras tracked their movement from the ceiling.
Ryan pointed to a junction box. "Gabriel will see us."
"Can you blind the cameras?" Elena asked.
"For less than a minute."
He opened the box with a key hidden inside the heel of his shoe. Elena stared at him.
"You searched me badly," he said.
The lights died.
They moved through darkness and emerged into a corridor painted a soft, comforting blue. Speakers in the walls played waves and gulls. Doors bore numbers instead of names.
Room 8 contained a bed with restraints and a projector aimed at the ceiling.
Room 11 held shelves of medication, much of it recently manufactured.
Room 14 contained Teresa's wheelchair.
Mariana touched the warm cushion. "She's close."
A voice came through the speakers.
"You always were impatient, Mariana."
It sounded like Ryan, but the rhythm was different. Lighter. Almost amused.
Gabriel.
"Where is my mother?" Mariana shouted.
"Which one?"
The officers exchanged looks.
"Do not listen to him," Ryan said.
Gabriel laughed through the speakers. "My obedient brother still giving orders? Tell her what you did with Sofia, Ryan. Tell her who cut the fuel line."
Ryan's face went pale.
Mariana turned toward him. "You said you didn't kill her."
"I did not."
"Then answer him."
"He wants us divided."
A door slammed at the end of the corridor. Elena signaled two officers forward. They entered a circular room containing six hospital beds arranged around a central light.
Teresa lay on one of them.
Dr. Vale stood beside her with a syringe.
"Drop it," Elena ordered.
Vale lifted his hands, but his thumb remained on the plunger. "She is in distress. This will prevent a seizure."
"Put it down."
Teresa's eyes found Mariana. Her right hand moved weakly against the sheet.
Two taps.
No.
Mariana saw the label on the syringe. It was not an anticonvulsant. It was a concentrated paralytic.
She lunged.
Vale injected the medication into the mattress instead and ran through a side door. Elena followed. Ryan tore one cuff free against a metal rail and moved toward Teresa.
An officer raised his weapon. "Stop!"
"Her oxygen line is closed," Ryan said.
He opened the valve. Teresa gasped.
Mariana reached the bed and pulled the adhesive leads from her mother's skin. "Mom, can you hear me?"
One tap.
A siren began inside the building.
Ryan looked toward the ceiling. "Flood protocol."
"What does that mean?"
"The lower wing seals during a storm surge. Gabriel can open the sea valves."
Water burst beneath the far door.
The officers tried the main exit. It had locked electronically.
Ryan pointed to a floor panel. "There is a service shaft under the central light."
They dragged the beds aside while seawater spread across the room. Mariana held Teresa upright. Elena returned without Vale, blood on her sleeve from a cut.
"He escaped into the ventilation level," she said.
Julian, guiding them by radio from outside, managed to release the floor panel. A ladder descended into darkness.
They lowered Teresa first in a rescue sling. Mariana followed, then Ryan and the officers. Water reached the mattress tops as Elena entered the shaft last.
Below, the passage divided in two.
A crescent moon had been painted above the left tunnel.
The right tunnel carried an exit sign.
"The exit sign is false," Ryan said. "My mother used it during drills. Patients who followed ordinary directions were punished."
Elena aimed her flashlight down both passages. "How do we know you are not lying?"
Teresa lifted one finger and pointed left.
They chose the crescent.
The tunnel climbed toward the cliff and opened inside a sea cave. Rescue teams reached them minutes later.
As paramedics placed Teresa into an ambulance, she clutched Mariana's hand and formed three words with painful effort.
"Ryan saved Sofia."
Ryan heard her.
His expression broke.
"Saved her from what?" Mariana asked.
Teresa's fingers tapped once, then stopped.
Before she could answer, Elena's phone rang. Judge Wren had regained consciousness and demanded to speak with Mariana immediately.
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There was one complication.
The man guarded in Wren's hospital room claimed to be Ryan Cole.
