Chapter 13 - The Echo in the Halls
"You can't do this!" Maya’s voice cut through the clinical silence of the fourth-floor executive suite like a scalpel.
She was standing across from Gregory Sterling, slamming her bar association credentials onto his mahogany desk. Gregory was sixty, with silver hair clipped with military precision and eyes as gray and emotionless as granite slabs. He didn't even flinch.
"Ms. Lin," Gregory said calmly, folding his hands over a leather-bound file folder. "As the primary trustee of the Sterling Medical Foundation, I oversee institutional ethics. My brother, Richard, exhibited gross procedural misconduct by retaining unredacted pediatric records in his personal residence. The board voted unanimously at dawn to suspend his clinical privileges."
"You did this because he wouldn't sign off on an amended toxicology report," I said, stepping past Maya. My boots clicked sharply against the hardwood floor. "Chloe paid you. Or rather, my mother paid you."
Gregory offered a thin, patronizing smile. "Lauren. Always the dramatic older sister. Your family’s trust funds more than forty percent of this research wing. When your mother informed us that private medical assets were being weaponized in an intra-family civil dispute, it became a matter of corporate liability."
"She poisoned my daughter," I said, leaning over his desk, my face inches from his. "She took a nine-year-old child’s medicine and replaced it with sugar so she could afford an ice sculpture and an orchestra. If you touch my daughter's charts, Gregory, I will not sue you in family court. I will burn this entire foundation to the foundation stones."
Gregory didn't blink. "The subpoena has already been honored, Lauren. The courier departed for Delaware twenty minutes ago."
Before I could speak, my mobile phone shrieked in my coat pocket.
It was the private direct line from Emma’s elementary school.
My heart seized. I tore the phone from my pocket and jammed it against my ear. "Lauren speaking."
"Mrs. Cole?" It was Mrs. Gable, the principal. Her voice was pitched up, trembling with suppressed hysteria. "You need to come to the main office immediately."
"Is Emma alright? Is she hurt?!"
"She’s physically fine, she’s with me," the principal stammered. "A woman... a woman arrived at the front desk with a court-ordered custody amendment signed by the county circuit judge. She claimed to be her legal guardian. Lauren... she was trying to sign Emma out for an early dismissal."
"Did she take her?!" I roared, terrifying the administrative staff outside Gregory’s office.
"No! The front desk flagged the discrepancy in the system, but the woman... she walked out toward the bus loop before security could detain her. Lauren, the woman told the receptionist that Emma wouldn't need her inhaler where they were going."
I didn't hang up. I didn't say goodbye to Gregory Sterling.
May you like
I bolted down the corridor, the smell of sterile floor wax burning my throat, the image of my sister’s face flashing behind my retinas like a recurring nightmare that refused to die.
***
