Chapter 5 - THE TRANSFER ORDER
The transport team arrived with a gurney before Rebecca could finish reading the forged order.
Their supervisor claimed Chloe required a specialized center in Washington.
Our surgeon had recommended no transfer, and the hospital's charge nurse confirmed it in writing.
I stood in the doorway without touching anyone.
"Show me the name of the accepting physician," I said.
The supervisor gave a name that matched no physician in the receiving hospital's directory.
Rebecca asked him to wait while she called the medical director.
He tried to move around her.
Teresa Cole instructed hospital security to stop the transfer pending verification.
For a few seconds the hallway balanced on an edge, with everyone waiting for someone else to make the first terrible choice.
Then the transport supervisor walked away.
The hospital reported the attempt to state authorities.
Within an hour, the forged document disappeared from the hospital's scheduling system, but Teresa had already preserved a signed copy and access logs.
The authorization came from an account belonging to Dr.
Elias Warren, a physician who had retired three years earlier.
Marcus found the retired doctor's obituary in six minutes.
He had been dead for eight months.
"They aren't even bothering to make the lie believable," I said.
Rebecca shook her head.
"They don't need people to believe it forever.
They need everyone to hesitate for five minutes."
That afternoon the Kensington family held a televised press conference.
Chad stood between his parents in an expensive sweater, looking like a young man inconvenienced by the weather.
His mother called him compassionate.
His father called the allegations malicious.
Chad himself expressed concern for the injured student, carefully avoiding her name.
Then a reporter asked whether he'd ever met Chloe.
He smiled.
"Only briefly," he said.
"She was upset about her grades."
The cruelty of that answer exceeded any insult he might have shouted.
Chloe had spent the previous semester helping a professor rewrite an underwater mapping algorithm.
The university had just announced her nomination for a national research award.
Now the family of one of her attackers was trying to reduce her to a failing student with a grudge.
I watched my daughter's hand curl into a fist beneath the blanket.
"We have the recording," I said.
"We will use it carefully."
She pointed to letters on her communication card.
DO NOT TRUST PIKE.
"I don't," I told her.
She pointed again.
HE KNOWS MOM.
An hour later, Professor Vale's abandoned car was found at a highway rest stop.
His phone and wallet were inside.
There were no signs of a struggle.
There was, however, a fresh receipt from a coffee shop in a town where my wife had supposedly died.
Printed across the receipt was a message written in pen.
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ASK ALEXANDER WHAT HAPPENED ON THE PLATFORM.
