Chapter 5 - The Waking Mistress
The surgical ICU was hushed, dominated by the rhythmic hiss of ventilators and the sterile beeping of cardiac monitors. The smell of betadine and rubbing alcohol hung heavy in the air.
I stood outside Cubicle 4, taking a deep breath to steady the hammering of my heart. Behind the glass partition, Madison Vale lay propped up in the hospital bed.
Stripped of her crimson coat, her designer makeup, and her polished corporate persona, she looked heartbreakingly fragile. Her face was a patchwork of yellowing contusions and lacerations stitched closed with fine black monofilament. Her left arm was encased in a fiberglass cast, and clear oxygen tubing curved into her nostrils. She looked barely twenty-six years old.
I slid the glass door open. The soft sound made her eyes flutter open.
They were wide, hazel, and brimming with unadulterated terror. The moment she saw my white lab coat and the surgical name badge reading *Dr. Lauren Cunningham, MD - Trauma Surgery*, her monitor spiked. Her heart rate leaped from seventy-eight to one hundred and ten.
"Don't try to move," I said, keeping my voice clinical, professional, and entirely stripped of emotion. "You have sixty-four staples holding your abdominal fascia together, a Grade IV splenic rupture that required an emergency splenectomy, and three fractured ribs. If you twist your torso, you’ll tear the internal sutures."
Madison stared at me, her dry, cracked lips parting. "You... you were the doctor," she whispered, her voice like sandpaper from the endotracheal tube. "In the ER... I saw your eyes above the mask."
"I was the trauma surgeon on duty," I replied, pulling a penlight from my pocket and checking her pupillary reflexes. "Equal, round, reactive to light. You’re lucky. You had no significant subdural hematoma."
Tears welled up in Madison's eyes, spilling over her bruised cheekbones. "Why did you save me?"
I stopped, holding the penlight between my fingers. "Because I took an oath."
"I slept with your husband," Madison sobbed, a tiny, broken gasp that hitched her chest and caused her to wince in agony from her broken ribs. "For eleven months. In your city. In hotels you paid for. He gave me jewelry bought with your family's money. I knew he was married. I knew you were pregnant."
"I know," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "I saw the bracelet on your wrist when I cut away your sleeve. I saw the photo you sent to my email six nights ago."
Madison's eyes widened. "You... you know I sent it?"
"I figured it out half an hour ago," I said, stepping closer to the bedside rail, resting one hand deliberately on my rounded stomach. "The question is: why? Why send me that picture, Madison? Were you trying to humiliate me? Were you trying to force Ethan to leave me so you could have him all to yourself?"
"No!" Madison gasped, grabbing the stainless steel rail with her uninjured hand, her knuckles turning white. "No! You have to believe me! I wanted out! I was trying to save my life!"
I stared at her, unmoving. "Explain."
"Ethan isn't who you think he is, Dr. Cunningham," Madison whispered, glancing frantically toward the glass doors as if expecting shadows to breach the room. "He’s been running an offshore skimming scheme through Vanguard for three years. He created four shell companies in the Caymans. He used my login credentials to authorize wire transfers totaling over fourteen million dollars."
My stomach plummeted. "He framed you."
"He told me if I stayed with him, if I kept quiet, he would protect me," she wept, shaking her head. "He told me he was going to divorce you and take half your joint assets so we could flee to Zurich before the internal audit hit. But two weeks ago, I found out the truth. He had already forged my signature on the Cayman holding accounts. He set it up so that when the audit triggered, the paper trail led entirely to me. I was the fall girl. He was going to walk away clean with eight million dollars and leave me to take twenty years in federal prison."
The pieces fell into place with the sickening finality of a closing coffin lid.
"The photo," I said, my breath shallow. "You sent it to me to blow up his life."
"I sent it so you would divorce him and freeze his assets before he could liquidate them!" Madison cried out. "I knew who you were! I knew you were brilliant, that you were respected, that you had resources! I thought if you filed for divorce, the court would issue an automatic injunction, and he wouldn't be able to move the money out of the country!"
"And what happened on Skyline Drive?" I asked, leaning in close, my heart thudding violently against my ribs. "Why were you in his car at midnight?"
Madison's face drained of every ounce of color. A look of primal terror washed over her features.
"I tried to run," she whispered, her voice trembling so hard her teeth chattered. "I took the flash drive with the encrypted ledgers from his apartment safe. I was driving to the federal courthouse in Chicago. But Ethan intercepted me at the gas station. He forced his way into my car. He grabbed the steering wheel, screaming that I was destroying everything he had built."
She reached out, her trembling, bruised fingers catching the hem of my white doctor's coat.
May you like
"He didn't lose control on the gravel, Dr. Cunningham," Madison choked out, staring into my eyes with horrifying certainty. "He saw the ravine coming. And when I tried to swerve back onto the pavement, Ethan pulled the handbrake. He tried to kill us both."
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