“What is that?” I gasped.
“It wasn’t prescribed,” Linda said. “We don’t know what it was.”
Moments later, Nurse Mitchell entered unexpectedly. The woman startled. Karen’s expression hardened.
That was when they started monitoring the room.
That was when the note was written.
“That woman,” I said slowly, the truth settling like ice, “is his assistant.”
Linda nodded. “Emily Carter. We confirmed it this morning.”
After that, everything unraveled quickly.
Thomas’s accident hadn’t happened at work. He’d fallen during a weekend trip he’d claimed was a conference. He and Emily had been living two lives—one public, one hidden.
The injections weren’t meant to kill him. They were sedatives, meant to delay healing. To keep him hospitalized. To keep me distracted while she accessed his phone, his accounts, his life.
“He told her you were… inconvenient,” Linda said gently.
I didn’t cry.
I felt numb.
“Why tell me now?” I asked.
“Because,” she said, “he woke up and reached for her hand instead of yours.”
The police were already involved.
When I returned to Room 418, Thomas was asleep.
For the last time.
I never went back.