My Parents Skipped the Funeral of My Husband and Two Children for My Sister’s Birthday, but Six Months Later, One Headline Made Them Panic When They Discovered What I Had Done. / Chapter 21 / 121

Chapter 21 - The Room Behind the Mirror

The security gate was locked with a heavy magnetic latch. I didn't stop to swipe Arthur’s card. I put my foot flat against the floorboards and rammed the Suburban’s reinforced steel bumper straight through the center of the chain-link gates.

The metal groaned, tore, and gave way with a shower of sparks as the gate collapsed beneath the undercarriage.

I brought the vehicle to a skidding halt at the base of the concrete loading ramp.

I grabbed the Sig Sauer, shoved the spare magazine into my pocket, and sprinted through the rain toward the double steel doors marked *AMBULANCE INTAKE ONLY.*

The electronic keypad beside the door was glowing red. I jammed Arthur’s keycard into the reader and punched in the numbers: *0-9-1-4.*

The light flashed green. The pneumatic lock hissed, and the heavy door released with a heavy metallic clunk.

Inside, the corridor smelled of bleach, damp concrete, and the sickly-sweet tang of medical ozone. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed with an erratic, flickering hum. The hallway was dead silent. No doctors. No nurses. Just long rows of blank, windowless doors with numbered brass plates.

I ran down the center of the hallway, my wet boots squeaking against the polished linoleum.

*Ward D.*

The sign pointed toward a heavy fire door reinforced with an electronic mag-lock. Again, I swiped the card. The door clicked open.

Behind it was a small, circular observation station surrounded by shatterproof two-way glass.

Inside the central bay, through the tinted glass, sat a single hospital bed surrounded by a forest of intravenous poles, automated syringe pumps, and a massive mechanical ventilator whose accordion bellows rose and fell with a rhythmic, mechanical hiss: *Huff... click... hiss.*

*Huff... click... hiss.*

I stumbled through the inner airlock door.

"Ethan?"

The word barely made it past my lips.

The man in the bed was unrecognizable at first. His body was skeletal, covered in a faded hospital gown, his skin pale and translucent like old parchment. A web of clear plastic tubing disappeared into his throat, his nose, and the veins of his scarred forearms. A thick white bandage was wrapped around his brow.

I dropped my gun onto the bedside table. My trembling hands reached out and touched his face.

His skin was ice-cold. But beneath his jaw, weak and fluttering like the wings of a trapped sparrow, was a pulse.

"Ethan..." I choked out, tears finally breaking through the dam of my fury, washing over my cheeks. "Ethan, it's Claire. I'm here. I'm here, my love... I found you..."

His eyelashes—thick, dark, the eyelashes Leo had inherited—fluttered slightly. A long, shuddering breath rattled through the plastic tubing of the ventilator.

Then, from the wall above the bed, a sharp, piercing alarm began to scream.

*BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.*

The digital screen on the automated drug pump beside his head flashed crimson:

*WARNING: POTASSIUM CHLORIDE INFUSION INITIATED. OVERRIDE CODE REQUIRED.*

The syringe plunger began to slide forward, pushing twenty milliliters of clear, lethal fluid directly into his central line.

At the exact same instant, the heavy magnetic door of the ward slammed shut behind me with the force of a bank vault closing.

A speaker in the corner of the ceiling crackled to life with a blast of static.