Part 3
Dominic folded the empty wrapper and placed it beside the water bottle. The small, deliberate movement gave Claire time to choose the clearest possible words.
“Rafael arrived at one twenty-six,” she said. “A private sedan brought him to the emergency entrance. Whoever drove it left. Rafael was alone when we took him inside.”
Dominic’s face closed.
“Lawrence told us he rode with him.”
“I heard him.”
“You had a terrible shift that night.”
“I did. I still remember who came through my doors.”
“He may have been somewhere you didn’t see.”
“Not holding Rafael’s hand in the treatment room. We kept that area closed to visitors until morning.”
Dominic turned toward the windshield.
“When Elena died, Lawrence stayed,” he said. “When my father died, he stayed. Other men were measuring the room for my replacement, and he was beside me.”
Claire could hear the plea beneath his defense. She knew she was asking him to question the person who had helped him survive the loss he had just described.
“I’m not asking you to believe my opinion of him,” she said. “Find the entrance records. Look at the cameras. See what they show.”
He picked up the clip and put it in his coat pocket.
She waited for an answer. Instead, he got out of the car.
A moment later, Wade opened Claire’s door. Dominic had moved away to speak to him, his back turned.
She climbed out with her bag. The tenderness of the night made his retreat hurt more, and she was angry with herself for letting it.
Within forty-eight hours, her manager asked her to come to an administrative office.
Dr. Malcolm Sloane, the hospital’s chief administrator, sat behind the desk. He was a soft-voiced man who thanked employees for their sacrifices at staff meetings. Recently, photographs of his new sailboat had circulated among people working double shifts.
A folder lay open in front of him.
“We’ve received a concern about your conduct outside the hospital,” he said.
Claire remained standing. “What conduct?”
He pushed two photographs toward her. In one, she was getting into Dominic’s car. In the other, they were walking with coffee.
“Your association with an individual of Mr. Caruso’s reputation presents a serious problem.”
“Have I been accused of doing something to a patient?”
“The matter is under review.”
“Then what’s the allegation?”
Sloane brought his hands together on the desk. “For the duration of the investigation, you’re suspended. Without pay.”
Her manager wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Claire looked at the pictures once more. Whoever had supplied them had selected the angles carefully. There was no exhausted nurse asleep at the end of a shift, no man accepting a bottle of water, nothing except proximity.
She removed her badge when they asked for it. Her face remained composed as she left the office, as it had remained composed after delivering news families couldn’t bear.
Outside, she sat on a low wall and opened the banking app on her phone. The payment date was coming. Her mother’s name was still on the loan.
That evening, an unknown number sent Dominic a photograph.
Claire stood on a street corner in scrubs, speaking to a man in a gray coat. The frame excluded the hospital entrance and made their ordinary exchange look private.
The message asked whether he knew whom his nurse was meeting.
The man was a detective canvassing Riverview about an unrelated overdose. He had stopped Claire to ask how to reach the elevators. She had pointed him toward the correct entrance and gone on her way.
Dominic didn’t know that.
An hour later, Lawrence called. He sounded reluctant to speak, which made every word easier to accept.
“I wish I could tell you not to worry. But she has debts, Dominic. We don’t know who might have approached her, or what they might have offered. You’ve been generous with your confidence.”
Dominic stared at the photograph after the call ended.
At midnight, Claire’s phone rang. She was sitting at her kitchen table with the suspension notice and a pencil, trying to make the next month’s numbers work.
“Who’s the man in the gray coat?” Dominic asked.
She put down the pencil.
“How did you get a picture of that?”
“I need to know.”
“You needed to know whether Lawrence was telling the truth, too.”
He said her name, but she didn’t let him use it to soften what he was doing.
“I gave you information you didn’t like. Now you’re calling me at midnight as though I’ve been caught doing something.” Her voice stayed level. “I’m willing to answer a question from someone who trusts me. I won’t submit to questioning from someone who’s already decided I’m suspect.”
“Claire—”
“You don’t get both my trust and the right to treat me this way.”
She ended the call.
Dominic sat behind the wheel of his parked car. He had chosen the driver’s seat this time. Beside him, there was nobody to notice his hand tightening around the phone.
Eventually, he called Wade.
“Get the visitor entry records from the night Rafael was hurt. And the footage from the hospital entrance.”
“Does Lawrence know we’re looking?”
“No. He isn’t to know.”
At dawn, Wade brought a printout and laid it across the console.
Lawrence Fenwick had signed in at 7:43 a.m., more than six hours after Rafael’s arrival.
Dominic read the entry without speaking.
“There’s more,” Wade said. “We traced the sedan on the camera footage.”
He placed a second page beside the first.
“The registered owner is Fenwick Northline Properties…”
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇