Chapter 2Sugar Water And Thirty Six Graves

The interrogation room smelled of stale coffee and bleach. I was cuffed to the iron ring on the table, my shoulders aching from the unnatural angle.

"Dr. Thomas Aris. Senior fellow at the Bio-Institute. Head of experimental therapeutics."

Brody frowned, flipping through the leather-bound credentials they had pulled from my jacket. "The watermark looks authentic. But with today's tech, a private seal is easy to fake. We’re contacting the forensics lab to run a mass spectrometry on the compounds."

I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting back tears of sheer frustration. I slid out of the metal chair, dropping hard onto my knees right there on the linoleum floor.

"Captain Brody, please. A tox screen takes at least forty-eight hours. These people don't have forty-eight minutes!" I begged, abandoning every ounce of my pride, my dignity, my titles. My eyes were burning, wet and red.

"Take the serum to the ER. Cuff me to a radiator in the lobby, I don't care. Put me on a radio with the chief surgeon, and I will walk them through the infusion process. You can hold a gun to my head the entire time! If I try anything, you pull the trigger!"

"Thirty-six lives, Brody. Thirty-six families. If we lose them because of a bureaucratic delay, that blood is on your hands as much as mine!"

Brody shifted his weight, his eyes darting toward the two-way mirror. He was wavering. He was a cop, but he was human. He opened his mouth to speak.

The heavy steel door swung open. Kate practically skipped into the room.

"Captain, I need to tell you a little secret," she said, her voice pitched in a coquettish, little-girl whisper.

"You don't need to run those labs. Tom actually is a researcher at the Institute. The serum and the reagents are real. I was just trying to lighten the mood out there. Just a harmless little prank."

Brody’s face drained of color. His jaw clenched in sudden, furious realization. But before he could explode at her for wasting police time during a crisis, Kate’s face crumpled. Real, fat tears spilled over her cheeks.

"But I wasn't lying about him being a danger!" she sobbed, clutching her chest. "Just two weeks ago, he botched a thoracic surgery so badly he caused massive sepsis. He almost killed a pregnant woman and her baby!"

"The Institute board secretly voted to terminate him! They only kept it quiet out of respect for his past contributions. They didn't want the media circus!"

The sheer audacity of the lie sent the blood rushing to my head. I slammed my cuffed hands against the table, the chain rattling violently.

"That was your mistake! You were the one who scrubbed in drunk!" I roared.

Kate shrank back against the wall, crying harder. With trembling hands, she pulled a folded incident report from her designer purse. She slid it across the table to Brody.

Right there, under the 'Attending Surgeon - Liability' section, was my forged signature.

"The proof is right there! Nothing you say matters!" Kate sneered, a vicious gleam in her eye contradicting her tears. Right in front of Brody, she pulled out her phone and initiated a FaceTime call to the Deputy Director of the Institute.

"Dr. Wallace, hi. I'm so sorry to bother you, but I'm at the precinct. The police need to verify something about Tom."

The man on the screen adjusted his glasses, his expression grave and rehearsed.

"Our internal investigation concluded that Dr. Aris is a severe alcoholic with a crippling opioid addiction. Furthermore, he's begun exhibiting signs of paranoid schizophrenia. He harbors deep, violent resentments against the medical community and the public. We understand he's now involved in a criminal inquiry."

Wallace sighed heavily. "The board convened an emergency session. Dr. Aris is officially terminated, stripped of all clinical privileges, and barred from any future medical practice."

My vision blurred. My palms were icy, slick with sweat.

"Everyone at the hospital knows Dr. Wallace is your uncle!" I yelled, my voice echoing off the concrete walls. "He orchestrated this whole theatrical production just to save your career! You're sacrificing my life, my reputation, to cover up your own malpractice!"

Kate shook her head, adopting a look of profound pity.

"Officer, look at him. He's having a psychotic break. He doesn't even remember what he did!" She clutched her arms, looking genuinely terrified. "I'm so scared. He dragged me to the hospital today to deliver that serum. Was he planning to use me as his fall guy when his little poisoning experiment failed?"

Her manipulation was a masterclass in psychological warfare. Brody’s hands balled into tight fists. The sympathy that had been building in his eyes vanished, replaced by hard, righteous anger.

"Get a warrant for a psych hold. Solitary confinement," Brody ordered the officer at the door.

My eyes widened in absolute disbelief.

"Brody, run my background! Check the federal logs! I don't have so much as a speeding ticket! None of this is real!"

"Put him in shackles," Brody snapped, turning his back on me. "Save your breath, Doc. You sit here and rot until the lab gives me the truth."

The adrenaline crashed, leaving me entirely hollowed out. My chest heaved. I stared at Kate, who was now leaning against the doorframe.

"I gave you everything," I whispered, the heartbreak choking my words. "You came to me five years ago. I taught you how to hold a scalpel. I secured your grant funding. I gave you my own fellowships. When you sliced into that pregnant woman and left a hemostat in her chest, I spent nine hours in the OR fixing your mess. I saved that woman's life to save you."

As soon as Brody stepped out into the hall, Kate dropped the terrified victim act. She leaned over the table, idly scrolling through TikTok on her phone, her expression utterly bored.

"You stupid bitch," she said casually, not even looking up from her screen. "I wanted to destroy you. You know why? Because after I made that tiny, insignificant mistake in the OR, you had the nerve to dress me down in front of the entire surgical wing. You humiliated me."

She finally looked up, her eyes dark with pure entitlement. "Because of your little lecture, I lost the Chief Resident promotion. And my fiancé? He called off the wedding when he found out. My life is a complete mess right now. Did you really think I’d just let you go on being the hero?"

I was staring at a monster. I had yelled at her because she had consumed three mimosas before scrubbing in for open-heart surgery.

"You treat human lives like they are disposable," I said, my voice barely a rasp. "Do you ever think about the consequences?"

Kate rolled her eyes. "If they die, it just means they had bad genetics. How is that my problem?"

She popped open a compact mirror and began casually reapplying her lip gloss.

Suddenly, the door burst open. A young patrolman stood there, his face completely bloodless.

"Captain Brody! Sir, you need to hear this!" the kid stammered, panic pitching his voice an octave higher. "The hospital just radioed. The patients are crashing. Two of them just flatlined."

"The attending surgeon says... they have exactly thirteen minutes before the toxins reach the heart muscle."