Chapter 6 - System Failure
The administrative office on the fourth floor was dark, save for the blue glare of three synchronized workstation monitors.
Behind the closed door, Captain Raymond Aldrich stood over the desk of Gregory Vance—the civilian chief of operations for the hospital network and, not coincidentally, the second cousin of the receptionist on the first floor.
"Delete the initial intake timestamp," Aldrich ordered, tapping his finger against the glass. "The chart should show that the patient arrived at zero-one-thirty, not twenty-two-forty. If the Joint Commission reviews a pediatric tension pneumothorax that sat in our waiting room for two hours and forty minutes without a physician assessment, our federal trauma certification is suspended by morning."
"Raymond, these files have digital SHA-256 cryptographic hashes," Gregory argued, his brow beaded with sweat. "If the regional inspector pulls the server backup logs—"
"The server backup scheduled for zero-three-hundred experienced an unexpected power surge," Aldrich interrupted, his voice cold and calculated. "The base IT desk has already logged the ticket. The raw wait-time data was corrupted. All we have are the manual recovery files. Dr. Apprentice has already signed the backdated triage orders indicating that he ordered the needle thoracostomy and that Nurse Merrick acted as his bedside technician."
"And what if Apprentice breaks?"
"Apprentice is a resident on an active Navy scholarship," Aldrich said, a predatory smile curling his lips. "If he contradicts my signature on this report, his residency is terminated, his commission is revoked, and he spends the next six years paying back three hundred thousand dollars in medical school loans. He’ll sign."
Aldrich turned toward the window, looking out over the rain-swept base.
"As for Nurse Merrick... she has a disciplinary history of emotional instability following her discharge from the Army. We classify her intervention as an unapproved, rogue action that nearly compromised a physician-led resuscitation. The union won't touch her, the state board will revoke her license, and Captain Brandt will have no standing to file an IG complaint against a unified command structure."
"You're very confident, Captain," a quiet voice said from the darkened doorway.
Aldrich whipped around.
Standing just inside the office threshold was Tara Vance.
In her hands, she held an external solid-state hard drive connected to a high-speed data cord, the blue activity LED blinking in a furious, rhythmic flicker.
"Tara?" Gregory said, his voice cracking. "What the hell are you doing up here?"
"I work the night shift, Greg," Tara said, her voice shaking, but her gaze steady and unyielding. "I’ve worked it for seven years. I’ve watched you and Aldrich cut interpreter contracts, slash nursing staff, and falsify metric reports just so you could hit your quarterly bonus thresholds from the Bureau of Medicine."
"Hand that drive over, right now," Aldrich snarled, taking two aggressive steps toward her. "You are an hourly receptionist. You have no legal authorization to access the mainframe terminals."
"She didn't access them," another voice boomed from the corridor.
Daniel Brandt stepped through the doorway, his silhouette completely blocking the light from the hallway. Behind him, two men in civilian civilian windbreakers stepped into the room.
On their jackets were the gold-and-blue badges of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).
"Special Agent Miller," Daniel said calmly, gesturing toward the desk. "Meet Captain Raymond Aldrich. The man who just spent the last forty-five minutes attempting to destroy federal evidence involving the near-fatal medical neglect of a military dependent."
Aldrich’s face drained of color until he looked like a corpse. "Brandt... this is an internal administrative review! You have no authority to bring federal law enforcement onto this deck!"
"You're wrong, Captain," Special Agent Miller said, pulling a digital warrant from his coat pocket and holding it inches from Aldrich’s nose. "Under Title 10, United States Code, Section 928, an attempt to alter official records related to an active military medical inquiry constitutes a felony obstruction of justice. Step away from that terminal, sir. Put your hands on your head."
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"This is an outrage!" Aldrich shouted, looking frantically at Gregory Vance, who had already buried his face in his hands on the desk. "I am a senior medical officer in the United States Navy!"
"And at this moment," Daniel said, his voice colder than the rain falling outside, "you are a suspect in a criminal investigation. Back away from the computer."
