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Mrs. Wentworth enters with coffee, chicken sandwiches, and a look that warns me against arguing. She puts the tray beside the chessboard.
“Eat before you become another patient,” she says.
“I had breakfast.”
“You drank half a cup of coffee and took toast from Misha’s plate.” She looks at Artem. “Make sure she eats.”
His hands stop above the keyboard. “I work for Kirill.”
“Today you work for me.”
Artem waits until she leaves, then picks up a sandwich and pushes the plate toward my files. “She frightens Kirill.”
I take one and bite into it. “Good. Now open the ambulance stock records.”
The right screen shows the hospital transfer forms beside lists of sleep medicine, pain medicine, blood, and emergency supplies. Most forms have one signature from the hospital and another from the clinic receiving the patient. The Zarya forms have the hospital signature, but the clinic signature is missing. Chernov’s office added its own count later.
I move closer. “There.”
Artem follows my finger. “Zarya never signed for the medicine.”
“Open the pharmacy record linked to this transfer,” I tell him.
He finds it a moment later. New Harbor’s name appears beside the final count, and every missing ampoule is marked as used during transport.
“Our pharmacy accepted their count without checking it,” I say. I open the Zarya sheet. “New Harbor signed the supply count here.”
Artem compares the batch numbers. “The missing medicine was spread across several transfers.”
I look closer at the names on the sheets. One belongs to a dispatcher. Two are ward attendants. Another works in the ambulance bay, and one is a nurse from the emergency floor.
“Chernov has people inside the hospital,” I say. “He didn’t only use the waste crews.”
Each transfer took a few boxes of medicine, blood, or antibiotics. The requests came from different wards and used different patient numbers. Different workers signed the forms so the same name didn’t keep appearing.
The supplies left the pharmacy in sealed kits, but the hospital never checked the final counts. Some forms went missing. Others came back with empty spaces where the unused medicine should have been listed.
“We know the supplies left the hospital,” Artem says. “The forms say they went to Zarya, but we don’t know if they ever reached it.”
“Or where they went instead.” I place Marina’s list beside the transfer sheets. “We only know medicine went missing whenever these people were on duty.”
“Open the eleven admission files Alexei found,” I say. “Start with the patient names, then check who entered them and what medicine was taken out.”
Artem opens the first four files. The names are fake, but the hospital numbers belong to real people treated years ago. No one was brought in on those dates. Someone made the files, ordered blood, antibiotics, and emergency medicine, then wrote that the patients had been moved.
The next three files belong to real men brought in with gunshot or knife wounds. Two gave fake names, and one used the hospital number of a dead patient. They were treated before the police arrived, then taken away in ambulances. There’s no record of where they went.
Artem opens another file. “This man died in the emergency room.”
The death report is there, but the body never reached the morgue. Another form says he left alive for a different clinic.
The last three records are worse. Each patient came in awake and able to speak. Soon after, someone ordered a strong sedative. The transfer papers were signed by doctors who weren’t working, and no record shows where the ambulances took them.
Artem searches the names of the staff who handled the files. Chernov’s people appear again and again. A nurse enters the medicine order without authorization. A ward attendant moves the patient. A dispatcher chooses the ambulance. Another man removes the paper file before the next shift.
Artem leans back from the screen. “We started with a molehill.”
I look at the growing list of names. “And found a tunnel running through the hospital.”