Chapter 2 - The Shadows of St. Ambrose
The squeeze was brief, lasting less than two seconds before Everett’s hand went limp again, but to Willa, it was a blinding flash of lightning in a pitch-black sky.
She scrambled to her feet, her hands flying to his face. "Everett? Everett, can you hear me?"
She pulled out a small penlight from her pocket and clicked it on, shining the beam into his left eye. His pupil contracted quickly—far faster than it had forty-eight hours ago.
"You're in there," she breathed, tears springing to her eyes. A sudden, overwhelming sense of validation washed over her. She wasn't crazy. She wasn't just a disgraced nurse clinging to a delusion. He was fighting back. "You can hear me."
On the bed, Everett’s eyelids fluttered. A microscopic tremor passed through his right jawline as his teeth clenched beneath his skin.
Yes, Willa, he screamed in his mind. Keep going. Don't stop.
Willa spent the next three hours sitting beside him, carefully analyzing the medical records she had secretly copied onto her phone. The timeline of Everett’s accident and subsequent decline was unnaturally clean. Eight months ago, he had suffered a traumatic brain injury in a highway crash. He had undergone emergency surgery at St. Ambrose Medical Center—the very same hospital where Willa had worked three years earlier.
Following the surgery, Dr. Alan Whitfield had been appointed as his sole private physician, funded by a newly created corporate healthcare trust managed entirely by Sterling Kane. Within two weeks of returning to the Kane estate, Everett had lapsed into an unalterable "vegetative state."
Willa tapped her pen against her notebook.
"St. Ambrose," she muttered to herself. "Grant Allison was the Chief Administrator when I was fired. He’s still on the board of trustees. And Whitfield was his personal pick for the hospital’s executive medical panel."
The dots were beginning to connect into a terrifying picture. Three years ago, Willa had been framed for a fatal medication error involving a wealthy patient named Harold Fisk. At the time, she had thought she was simply a scapegoat for an accidental hospital mix-up. But now, seeing Whitfield and Allison's names tied directly to Everett’s slow poisoning, a terrible suspicion took root in her mind.
What if Harold Fisk hadn't died of an accident? What if St. Ambrose Medical Center’s upper management had been using their ICU beds to execute quiet, untraceable assassinations for Chicago's elite for years?
At 7:00 AM, the heavy oak door opened again.
Dr. Whitfield walked in, carrying his silver leather medical bag. He looked crisp, professional, and entirely unbothered, wearing a tailored charcoal suit beneath his white lab coat.
"Good morning, Mrs. Kane," Whitfield said smoothly, stepping up to the IV pole without looking at her. "I trust the night was uneventful?"
"Mr. Kane had a slight spike in his heart rate around midnight," Willa said, standing near the window with a cup of black coffee in her hand. "And his pupil response has improved significantly."
Whitfield’s hands froze for a fraction of a second over the infusion pump. He adjusted his silver-framed glasses, turning his sharp gaze toward her.
"Improved?" he repeated, his tone dipping into a subtle, dangerous chill. "That is highly unlikely. Mr. Kane’s cortical damage is extensive. Fluctuations in autonomic reflexes are common in end-stage comatose patients. They are merely spinal spasms, not signs of recovery."
"A direct pupillary light reflex isn't a spinal spasm, Dr. Whitfield," Willa replied calmly, taking a slow sip of her coffee. "It’s mediated by the optic nerve and the oculomotor nerve in the midbrain. If his pupils are reacting to light in under two seconds, his brainstem is fully functional."
Whitfield’s eyes narrowed into slits. He set his leather bag down on the bedside table and stepped directly into Willa’s space.
"You speak with a lot of confidence for someone who was stripped of her nursing license for killing a man with an improper potassium chloride bolus," Whitfield whispered, his voice dripping with venom.
Willa didn't flinch. She set her coffee mug down on the windowsill with a soft, steady clink.
"I didn't kill Harold Fisk," she said, looking Whitfield dead in the eyes. "The electronic signature on that pump was generated from a terminal in your private office while I was down in the emergency room attending to a six-car pileup. I couldn't prove it three years ago because Administrator Allison wiped the server logs before the review board convened."
Whitfield’s face went pale, though he quickly recovered his composure, letting out a soft, mocking laugh.
"A conspiracy theory," he said, turning back to Everett’s IV line. "How sad. Disgraced staff always seek to blame their superiors for their own lethal incompetence. Be careful, Willa. If you start making wild accusations to the staff here, Sterling will have you removed from this property before sunset. And your mother’s care at the memory facility will be terminated immediately."
He pulled a fresh glass vial from his bag—a vial filled with the same dark, amber liquid he used to keep Everett paralyzed—and reached toward the infusion pump.
"Step away from the line, Doctor," Willa said softly.
Whitfield stopped, looking over his shoulder with a mix of amusement and contempt. "Excuse me?"
"You're not administering that dose today," Willa said, walking to the opposite side of the bed. She placed her hands firmly over the main stopcock valve of the IV tubing. "I ran a full fluid balance analysis on Mr. Kane this morning. His renal clearance is dropping. If you add another dose of a heavy sedative without running a full metabolic panel, he will go into acute kidney failure by tonight."
"You have no authority to dictate treatment!" Whitfield snapped, his voice rising in fury. "I am the attending physician!"
"And I am his legal wife and medical proxy under Illinois state law," Willa fired back, her voice echoing through the large room like a whip. "Unless you have a court order signed by a probate judge overriding my proxy rights, any medication administered against my explicit written refusal constitutes criminal battery."
Whitfield stared at her, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. He looked down at Everett, then back at Willa.
"You are making a catastrophic mistake," Whitfield hissed, snapping his leather bag shut. "I will be speaking with Sterling immediately."
He turned and stormed out of the room, leaving the door wide open.
Willa let out a long, shaky breath, sinking against the edge of the bed. Her hands were trembling now, the adrenaline coursing through her veins.
May you like
On the bed, Everett’s right eye slowly opened by a tiny fraction of a millimeter. Through the blurred, yellow-tinted veil of his recovering vision, he saw her—sitting beside him, her shoulders slumped, fighting a battle against the most dangerous men in the city, all to protect a husband who hadn't spoken a word to her.
Hold on, Willa, Everett thought, a fierce, protective fire raging through his awakening body. Just hold on a little longer. The king is coming back.
