Chapter 5 - WHERE MARCUS WENT THAT NIGHT
The badge logs did not tell me where Marcus went.
Security cameras did.
I did not access them myself.
That would have crossed a line.
Compliance did.
Denise called me into Metropolitan General three days later.
Walking through those doors made my stomach turn.
The same lobby.
The same elevators.
The same polished floors where Marcus could have walked toward me at any time.
Instead of going upstairs, Denise took me to a conference room.
Two people waited.
Hospital counsel.
Chief Compliance Officer Martin Shaw.
That was when I knew the situation had moved beyond a privacy complaint.
Martin began carefully.
“Ms. Hayes, we’re conducting a formal internal review.”
“Of Marcus?”
“Of several individuals and processes.”
Good answer.
He did not presume conclusions.
Then hospital counsel slid a printed timeline toward me.
October 7.
11:16 p.m.
Marcus and Elena exited the restricted transplant floor using emergency clearance.
11:22.
They entered a private physician workroom on the tenth floor.
12:54.
They exited separately.
1:07.
Both returned to the transplant unit.
My room was on seventeen.
Marcus had spent ninety-two minutes outside quarantine.
He had not visited me.
I stared at the timeline.
“Why were they in the workroom?”
“We don’t know.”
“Cameras?”
“No interior camera.”
“Access logs?”
Martin hesitated.
“That room contains research terminals.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did they access?”
He looked toward counsel.
Counsel nodded.
Martin answered.
“Your chart.”
Again.
“And?”
“Several transplant patient records.”
“Why?”
“We’re determining that.”
Then came the line that shifted everything.
“One research dataset was also modified during that period.”
“What dataset?”
“Infection outcomes.”
I went completely still.
“What kind of modification?”
“Several adverse-event classifications were changed.”
Serious infections had been recoded.
One from “probably related to protocol” to “unlikely related.”
Another from “unexpected adverse event” to “expected complication.”
Those classifications mattered.
They affected regulatory reporting.
Research publications.
Whether the experimental protocol looked safe.
“Who changed them?”
Martin replied:
“Credentials belonging to Dr. Elena Walsh.”
“Marcus?”
“No direct changes identified so far.”
Important.
I refused to make him guilty of something the data didn’t show.
“But he was there.”
“Yes.”
Then counsel asked me an unexpected question.
“Did Marcus ever discuss your quality-audit work in detail?”
“All the time.”
“Specific methodologies?”
“Yes.”
“Ways hospitals detect reporting inconsistencies?”
My chest tightened.
“Yes.”
“Could he know how you would search?”
“Yes.”
That was when I understood why my chart bothered him.
I wasn’t just his sick wife.
I was a healthcare auditor lying seventeen floors above a research project with potentially manipulated data.
And if I had died, nobody would know what I might have noticed.
May you like
But if I survived—
Marcus knew exactly how I thought.
