Chapter 4
Victor looked almost amused, but pain cut through it. He breathed carefully until the monitor slowed.
“Do you have family?” Victor asked.
Noah’s body tightened. “Why?”
“I’m asking.”
“People usually ask before deciding how cheap I am.”
Victor accepted that with a small nod. “All right.”
The answer seemed to embarrass Evan. Maybe it embarrassed everyone.
Noah looked at the floor. He should have stopped talking. He had already done enough. Too much. His supervisor would be upstairs soon, angry in that quiet way people got when they planned to fire someone without being sued. Diane’s attorney would come. Maybe police. Maybe news. Maybe nothing, because money had gravity and pulled consequences sideways.
The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and lilies.
His Aunt Rosa hated lilies. Funeral flowers, she called them. She preferred carnations because they lasted long and looked cheerful even while dying. That morning before Noah left, she had been at the kitchen table counting pills into a plastic organizer, licking her finger before turning the instructions even though Noah told her not to touch paper that way. She had asked if the hospital threw away good food. He had lied and said sometimes.
He wanted to go home.
He wanted to stay.
He wanted someone to tell him he had not just ruined his life for strangers.
Dr. Singh approached with an ice pack wrapped in gauze. “For your face.”
Noah took it. “Thanks.”
Diane watched the gesture with open resentment. Compassion, apparently, was also something she believed had been stolen from her.
Her attorney arrived before the police. Of course he did.
He was a compact man with silver hair and a camel coat, and he entered with the confidence of someone accustomed to making rooms regret their honesty.
“My client will not answer questions,” he said.
Diane stood immediately. “Richard.”
The attorney placed himself slightly in front of her. “Mrs. Hale has been under significant emotional stress. Any implication that she concealed evidence or interfered with estate documents is defamatory and premature.”
Martin, standing near the patient files, looked exhausted. “Richard, it was in the cast.”
Richard did not blink. “We have only your characterization.”
Doctor Singh held up the sealed bag.
Richard glanced at it. “Chain of custody began after alleged discovery by a hospital employee who admits to striking the patient’s cast.”
Noah’s stomach dropped.
There it was. The machine turning toward him.
Evan stepped forward. “He found it.”
Richard looked at him with polite pity. “You were not present.”
“No, because your client kept me off the visitor list.”
“That is not relevant.”
“It feels relevant to me.”
Victor spoke from the bed. “Richard.”
The attorney turned.
“If you imply again that this young man fabricated what my wife hid in my cast, I will spend whatever remains of my life making sure every judge in New York hears the recording of me saying the original will was in danger.”
Diane stared at him. “You don’t know that recording still exists.”
Victor’s eyes sharpened.
Richard closed his eyes briefly.
Diane realized her mistake.
The room heard it. Even the administrator, trying to look neutral near the door, heard it.
Evan whispered, “Jesus.”
Victor’s voice was quiet. “So you did know.”
Diane sat down.
Not gracefully. Not as a fainting wife. She sat like someone whose legs had stopped cooperating.
The police arrived after that, two detectives in dark coats who looked irritated to be inside a hospital suite where everyone had lawyers. They took statements separately. Noah gave his in a small consultation room down the hall with a vending machine humming outside and his ice pack melting onto his sleeve.
Detective Morales, a woman with tired eyes and a voice that did not waste warmth, asked him to start from the beginning.
Noah did.
She asked why he had not reported it immediately.
He looked at her.
She sighed. “Right.”
The other detective, Pierce, asked if he had touched the USB before it fell.
“No.”
“If we check prints?”
“You’ll find glove prints from the doctor, maybe hers, maybe whoever put the label on. Not mine.”
Pierce looked faintly surprised.
Noah stared at the table. “I watch TV.”
Morales almost smiled.
They asked about Diane’s slap. He shrugged. Morales wrote it down anyway.
When they finished, Noah stepped into the hall and found Evan waiting with two coffees from the hospital café. He held one out.
Noah looked at it. “Is this a rich-person trap?”
Evan blinked, then laughed. “It’s terrible coffee. So probably not.”
Noah took it because his hands needed something to do.
They stood side by side, not looking at each other.
“My father is difficult,” Evan said.
Noah gave him a look.
Evan nodded. “That was generous. He’s awful.”
“He said you didn’t visit.”
“I didn’t.”
Noah waited.
Evan rubbed his thumb along the coffee lid. “He fired me six years ago. Publicly. Boardroom full of people. Said I had no spine for business because I objected to evicting tenants from a building with no working heat. Diane sent flowers after. White roses. Card said, ‘Family wounds need time.’ I threw them in the trash.”
Noah sipped the coffee and made a face. It was terrible.
“Did the tenants get heat?” he asked.
Evan looked at him, surprised. “Eventually. After a lawsuit.”
“Eventually does a lot of work.”
Evan smiled faintly. “Yeah.”
They stood there a while.
A gurney rolled past. Somewhere a woman argued about parking validation. A janitor Noah recognized from the night shift pushed a cart down the hall and stared at him as if he had become both famous and contagious.
“My supervisor’s going to fire me,” Noah said.
“No, he isn’t.”
Noah turned. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Rich-guy certainty.”
Evan looked chastened. “Sorry.”
Noah stared into the coffee. “You can probably make him not fire me.”
“Probably.”
“That’s not the same as him not wanting to.”
“No.”
Noah nodded, oddly satisfied by the honesty.
Evan said, “What do you want?”
Noah hated that question. People with options asked it like wanting was simple.
He shrugged. “For today to be over.”
“That’s fair.”
Victor asked for Noah again near evening.
By then Diane had left with her attorney, not arrested, not yet, but stripped of the room. Her flowers remained. Nobody knew what to do with them. The nurses avoided touching the arrangement as if it belonged to the crime scene.
Victor looked worse. The doctors said stress had affected his breathing. They used careful language around him, but Noah could read enough. Victor Hale was rich, not immortal.
May you like
Noah stood just inside the door. “You asked for me?”
Victor opened his eyes. “Yes.”
