“Cold in here tonight,” Peg said by way of greeting.“Maintenance says the HVAC is on the fritz again.Third time this month.”
“Peg.”Maren set her bag in the cabinet behind the station and pulled up the assignment board.“The Jane Doe from last night.Did anything come through today?Any follow-up from the supervisor?”
Peg’s expression tightened.Not much—just a flicker around her mouth, a slight narrowing of the eyes.But Maren caught it.
“Tammy flagged it for admin this morning.I got a call around two from Janet Creighton.”
“The night supervisor who signed for the transfer.”
“She said it was a miscommunication.Patient was transferred back to the originating facility before shift change.The records were updated in the system but there was a glitch during the sync.IT is looking into it.”
“A glitch.”
“That’s the word she used.”
“And the physician who signed the chart?Dr.Vasik?Did she explain why a doctor who doesn’t exist in any hospital directory admitted a patient to our ICU?”
Peg set down the cardigan she’d been adjusting and looked at Maren directly.Twenty-two years of night shifts lived in that look—the exhaustion, the institutional knowledge, the cost of knowing when to stop pushing.
“Janet said Dr.Vasik is a traveling physician contracted through a regional staffing agency.His credentials are on file with administration.”
“Convenient.”
“Maren.”Peg lowered her voice.“I’ve been doing this longer than you have.I’m not saying nothing happened.I’m saying that when administration hands you an explanation and tells you the matter is resolved, you have two choices.You accept it and keep doing your job.Or you don’t accept it and find out what happens to people who keep asking questions in a place where the answers come from above your pay grade.”
“Is that what happened to Rose Embry?”
The name landed like a stone in still water.Peg went very still.
Rose Embry had been an ICU nurse at Blossom Springs General until four years ago.She’d left abruptly—resigned, according to the official story.Moved out of state to be closer to family.Maren had never met her, but Rose’s name appeared in the notebook three times.She’d been on shift during two of the earliest sealed transfers Maren had documented, and a third notation read:
R.Embry asked same questions.Gone within two weeks.
“Rose left on her own terms,” Peg said.Her voice was careful.Practiced.
“Did she?”
“I’m not having this conversation.”Peg picked up her assignment tablet and moved to the other end of the station.The set of her shoulders said the subject was closed.
Maren let it go.For now.
She pulled up her charting access on the station computer and froze.
Her permissions had been changed.
She could still view patient records for her assigned beds.She could still enter vitals, medication logs, and nursing notes.But her access to the transfer module—the system she’d used to look up the SPT-7 code last night—was gone.Where the transfer tab used to sit in her navigation bar, there was a gray box with a lock icon and the words
Access restricted.Contact system administrator.
She stared at it.Then she closed the window, opened a new chart, and started her rounds.
It took forty-five minutes to work through her assigned patients.A post-op knee replacement in bay one who needed his pain meds adjusted.A seventy-year-old woman in bay two recovering from a fall, convinced her cat had tripped her on purpose.A cardiac monitoring case in bay three who slept through every vitals check.
She moved through each room with the same focus she always brought to the work—hands sure, voice calm, documentation clean.The ability to carry fear like a weight in her chest without letting it reach her hands.
At 9:15, she stepped into the medication room to pull meds for bay one.The door closed behind her with its usual pneumatic hiss.
Janet Creighton was standing at the dispensing cabinet.
