Chapter 11 - The Badge That Opened the Door
Leo had not been medically discharged.
That mattered.
The chart showed a transfer to an outside pediatric facility.
The transfer was fake.
The ambulance company listed on the form did not exist.
The receiving physician was fictional.
Yet every electronic step looked clean enough to fool a busy unit clerk for twelve minutes.
Clara’s login.
My signature.
A valid transport template.
Martha had accompanied Leo.
That made her either a participant or a victim again.
I called her.
No answer.
Marcus called.
Nothing.
Security pulled badge access.
Clara had entered the pediatric floor at 10:14.
She had left at 10:22.
The fake transfer was entered at 10:31.
“How?”
Clara demanded.
Her face was red with fury.
“I was downstairs with Sarah.”
The IT administrator checked.
“Your credentials were used from a workstation on the pediatric floor.”
“Which workstation?”
“Nurses’ station three.”
“Camera?”
Security opened the footage.
At 10:29, a person in blue scrubs approached the station.
Male.
Medium height.
Surgical cap.
Mask.
He sat for ninety seconds.
Then left.
Marcus whispered, “That’s not David.”
“No way to know.”
“David’s taller.”
He was right based on the footage we had seen.
The masked man’s badge lanyard was turned backward.
I watched the clip again.
Something about his movement bothered me.
Clara noticed it too.
“He knows the floor.”
No hesitation.
No searching.
Straight to the exact workstation.
Straight to the staff elevator afterward.
An insider.
Or someone who had worked here.
“Raymond?” Marcus asked.
“No.”
Allison had shown us recent photographs.
Raymond was in his sixties and walked with a slight limp.
The man on-screen moved quickly.
Clara said, “Check my badge.”
Security did.
Her physical badge had been used at a stairwell door at 10:27.
While Clara was standing beside me in administration.
Her badge was still clipped to her scrubs.
A duplicate.
Someone had cloned access.
“Who could do that?” Martha’s attorney asked by phone.
Hospital IT answered carefully.
“Someone with access to credential data or physical proximity to the badge.”
Harris Medical Supply had supplied badge-access hardware years earlier during a hospital renovation.
The company’s contract ended four years ago.
David had known the system.
But current credentials should not have worked with old data.
Unless someone inside was helping him.
The security footage showed Martha leaving with Leo at 10:38.
She walked beside two people in blue transport uniforms.
Leo sat in a wheelchair.
His new temporary splint visible.
He did not appear physically restrained.
Martha kept looking behind her.
At 10:41, the group entered a service elevator.
At 10:44, they left through the loading area.
A white medical transport van waited.
License plate partially obscured.
I stared at Martha’s body language.
She wasn’t fighting.
But she wasn’t relaxed.
“She thinks it’s a real transfer.”
Marcus nodded.
“Probably.”
We searched the phone record.
At 10:20, Martha received a call.
Unknown number.
Duration: three minutes.
At 10:24, she texted her attorney.
Sarah arranged a safer hospital for Leo. We’re being moved.
I felt sick.
“I arranged nothing.”
David had used my name again.
That was the pattern.
Nathan’s name protected the cast.
My name got David into the hospital.
My name destroyed records.
My name moved Leo out.
Every forged Jenkins signature turned institutional trust into a weapon.
We traced Martha’s phone location as permitted through her own previously enabled family-sharing account that her attorney could access with her authorization paperwork.
The signal moved south.
Then stopped.
Harris Medical Supply warehouse.
Of course.
Security and legal authorities were notified.
I did not chase the van.
I hated staying behind.
But running blindly into a warehouse would not help Leo.
Then something unexpected happened.
My phone rang.
Martha.
I answered immediately.
“Where are you?”
She whispered, “Bathroom.”
“Where?”
“The warehouse.”
“Is Leo with you?”
“Yes.”
“Is he safe?”
“For now.”
“Who brought you?”
“I don’t know them.”
“Is David there?”
“Yes.”
My pulse hammered.
“Listen to me. Do not confront him.”
“He knows the card is gone.”
“I know.”
“He wants the index.”
“He doesn’t have it.”
“He thinks Leo knows where Ethan put the originals.”
Leo probably knew almost nothing.
That didn’t make David less dangerous.
Martha began crying silently.
“I did this.”
“Stay focused.”
“He said Ethan is alive.”
I gripped the phone.
“Did you see Ethan?”
“No.”
“Did you hear him?”
“No.”
“Then do not believe it yet.”
“He says if I bring him the card, I can see Ethan.”
“He knows the card was copied.”
“No.”
I froze.
“What?”
“He thinks I still have the original.”
The forensic service had returned the physical card to hospital legal custody after imaging.
David didn’t know that.
Useful.
Then I heard a male voice in the background.
Martha inhaled sharply.
“I have to go.”
“Wait—”
The call ended.
Hospital security traced the loading-area credential used by the fake transport worker.
The badge number belonged to a former employee.
Terminated six months earlier.
Name:
Marcus Reed.
Every person in the room turned toward Marcus.
He stared at the screen.
“That is not me.”
But the duplicate badge carried his identity.
And according to IT, Marcus’s employee file had been accessed three times in the past month.
May you like
From a workstation inside Trauma Room 2.
📖 Read why Marcus’s identity had been used to move Leo—and what we discovered hidden in Trauma Room 2 after realizing the conspiracy had reached my own staff—in CHAPTER 12. 👇
