Chapter 6 - THE FORGOTTEN WARD
By 8:00 AM the following morning, the lobby of the Crestview Clinic’s main hospital was swarming with corporate security. Olivia’s father, Arthur Gilbert, had already sent a team of high-priced corporate attorneys to lock down the executive servers, but Alistair had been three steps ahead.
He sat in a small, windowless office in the basement of the facility—the archives department—where the old paper medical files from the expansion era were stored before digital migration. Arthur stood beside him, a thermal mug of coffee in one hand and a stack of faded blue folders in the other.
"They're clearing your desk upstairs, Alistair," Arthur said quietly. "Olivia’s legal team has filed an emergency injunction to strip your voting rights on the board, citing emotional instability. They're going to use the scene under the bridge to claim you've had a nervous breakdown."
"Let them claim whatever they want," Alistair said, his eyes scanning an old, handwritten logbook from the night of the accident. "Did you find the attending paramedic’s report?"
"Yes," Arthur said, sliding a thin sheet of yellow carbon paper across the desk. "The paramedic who responded to Sector 4 was a young man named Marcus Miller. According to his notes, the boy was still breathing when they loaded him into the ambulance. He didn't die on impact, Alistair. He died in transit because the dispatcher received an order from the Crestview administration office to reroute the ambulance to the county hospital ninety miles away instead of bringing him to our own emergency room, which was fifty yards from the accident site."
Alistair closed his eyes, his knuckles turning white against the desk. Fifty yards. His son had been dying fifty yards from the most advanced pediatric trauma center in the state, but because his presence on the property would have triggered an automatic federal investigation into the construction site’s safety barriers, he had been shipped out like hazardous waste to a rural facility that didn't even have a thoracic surgeon on call.
"Where is Marcus Miller now?" Alistair asked.
"He left the private ambulance service three months after the incident," Arthur said. "He works for the city now, running an outreach program for migrant families down on Reid Street. I called him this morning. He remembers the night perfectly. He said he’s been waiting six years for someone to ask him about that boy."
"Call him again. Tell him we're coming to see him," Alistair said, standing up. "And Arthur... call the regional director of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. I want to buy a property."
"What kind of property, sir?"
"The old St. Jude’s orphanage on the north side," Alistair said, grabbing his keys. "The brick building that’s been boarded up since the nineties. I want the deed transferred to a private trust by noon. Use my personal liquid shares—the ones Olivia’s father can't touch."
"Sir, that building needs three million dollars in renovations just to pass a heating inspection," Arthur warned.
"Then we’ll spend three million dollars," Alistair said, his voice firm. "We’re going to build a real shelter, Arthur. One without corporate logos. One without cameras. And Nellie Fields is going to be the director."
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As they exited the basement through the service door, Alistair saw his wife’s white sports car parked in the executive slot near the main entrance. Olivia was standing on the steps, surrounded by three men in dark suits, her face a mask of pure, vindictive triumph. She saw him, lifted her chin, and tapped her gold watch, signaling that his time was up.
Alistair didn't look back. He climbed into his SUV and shifted into gear, leaving the shiny glass towers of his medical empire behind him like a shedding skin.
