Chapter 4 - The Medical Log
The heavy mahogany door of the study clicked shut behind us, muting the distant, frantic wail of the twins from the nursery upstairs. I set the polished silver pen down on the blotter, the sharp clink sounding unnaturally loud in the quiet room. Across the oak desk, the doctor in the white lab coat and glasses adjusted his frames, his fingers twitching slightly against the edge of the leather-bound appointment ledger.
"I need every name, every entry, and every signature from the past thirty days," I said, keeping my voice level, though my jaw ached from the tension. "Anyone who stepped foot inside that suite."
The doctor swallowed hard, his gaze dropping to the cream-colored pages of the open logbook. "As I told you downstairs, Mr. Vance, our protocols are rigorous. Every staff member, every specialist, every technician is vetted thoroughly before they ever cross the threshold of the west wing."
"Vetted protocols didn't stop a transmission device from being wired directly into the baseboard studs," I replied, leaning forward against the desk. "Let's skip the institutional defense and look at the paperwork."
He cleared his throat, turning the pages back toward the first of the month. The soft rustle of paper filled the silence as his finger traced down a column of neat blue ink. "Regular pediatrician checkups. Twice weekly nurse rotations for the infants' feeding schedules. The housekeeping staff on Tuesdays and Thursdays." He paused, his finger hovering over a line near the middle of the page. "And the routine medical supply restocking."
"Supply restocking," I repeated, narrowing my eyes. "Explain that."
"Standard replenishment for the nursery pharmacy cabinet," the doctor said, his voice defensive now, though an undercurrent of nervousness strained the edges of his words. "Gauze, sterile wipes, infant formula supplements, replacement parts for the monitor systems. A local distributor handles the drop-off."
"Which distributor?"
"Metro Medical Supply out of downtown," he said, turning the ledger toward me so I could read the signature. "They've used the same courier service for over a year. A driver named Miller, usually. He drops the crates directly into the ground-floor utility room, and our staff transfers them up."
Before I could press further, a soft knock rapped against the heavy wood of the study door. It creaked open before I could answer, revealing the nanny in her crisp black-and-white uniform. Her face was pale, her hands trembling as she clutched a small white apron against her waist. She looked from the doctor to me, her chest heaving with shallow breaths.
"Mr. Vance," she whispered, her voice cracking. "I... I heard shouting from the hallway. Is everything all right with the babies?"
"The babies are safe," I said, standing up from the desk to close the distance between us. "But I need to know what you saw in that hallway yesterday afternoon, or the day before. Anyone lingering near the nursery baseboards?"
The nanny let out a sharp, ragged gasp, and tears spilled instantly over her lower eyelids. She shook her head violently, stepping back until her shoulder hit the doorframe. "No one! I swear to you, sir, I was only ever tending to the cribs or folding linens. I didn't see anything. I didn't know anything was inside the wall!"
"Nobody is accusing you yet," I said, softening my tone fractionally as I watched the genuine terror ripple across her features. "Just think back. Did a delivery man ask for extra time alone in the nursery? Did anyone bypass the standard drop-off procedure?"
"The delivery crates," she sobbed, burying her face briefly in her hands before looking back up. "The boxes were heavy last Tuesday. The driver—the man with the courier jacket—he insisted on carrying them all the way inside the nursery himself because he claimed the seals were fragile. I didn't think anything of it. He wore the uniform, he had the clipboard..." Her voice trailed off into a muffled sob as the weight of her oversight crashed down on her.
The doctor shifted uneasily in his chair, pulling his lab coat tighter around his chest. "If an unauthorized modification was made during a supply delivery, that's a breach of the facility contract, not a failure of our internal medical oversight."
"It's a failure of perimeter security," I said, my gaze locked on the specific entry in the open ledger.
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The name of the downtown distributor stared back at me in bold, ink-stamped lettering. Metro Medical Supply. The thread was thin, but it was the only concrete anomaly in an otherwise pristine house of cards. I reached out, tore the specific page cleanly from the ledger, and folded it into my breast pocket. The time for administrative reviews was over; I needed to trace that delivery truck before the trail went cold.
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