Chapter 5 - The Antidote
Gareth stood solidly in the doorway, completely blocking my only exit from the hospital room.
Tessa scrambled frantically to her feet, rubbing her bruised knee and glaring at me with absolute, unfiltered hatred.
"You are incredibly, boringly predictable, Irene," Gareth said, stepping further into the room and locking the heavy door behind him.
"You could have run away with the cash and the car, but your pathetic hero complex brought you right back to me."
I gripped the handle of my medical bag, rapidly calculating my microscopic chances of fighting past him.
"The police are going to find the encrypted drive, Gareth," I bluffed, strictly maintaining intense eye contact.
Gareth laughed loudly, a cold, empty sound that sent terrible shivers directly down my spine.
"You mean the encrypted drive you currently have hidden right inside your bag?" he asked mockingly.
My heart skipped a terrifying beat, my face completely betraying my profound shock.
"Elias works exclusively for me, Irene," Gareth revealed with a smug, victorious grin.
"He was never trying to help you escape; he was just making absolutely sure you brought the flash drive directly to this room."
The massive betrayal hit me like a physical, brutal blow to the stomach.
I had blindly trusted the one person who seemingly offered me a desperate lifeline.
"Security is on their way up here right now," Tessa sneered, leaning heavily against the beeping medical monitors.
"They are going to find the missing, deranged nurse standing over her dead patient with a syringe full of poison."
Gareth pulled a pair of sterile latex gloves from his jacket pocket and slowly put them on.
He was going to finish the job himself and leave me physically holding the metaphorical murder weapon.
But Gareth had completely forgotten one crucial, life-saving detail about my extensive medical training.
I knew exactly what specific synthetic drug they had been using to meticulously simulate Bernard's strokes.
While Gareth was arrogantly gloating, I had subtly reached into my bag and palmed a vial of Sugammadex, the specific reversal agent for paralytics.
I didn't even need a syringe to administer it.
I cracked the glass vial open with my thumb and swiftly poured the concentrated liquid directly into Bernard's open feeding tube port.
"What did you just do?" Tessa shrieked, finally noticing my rapid hand movement.
Gareth lunged aggressively across the room, grabbing me by the throat and slamming me forcefully against the wall.
"It doesn't matter what she did," Gareth snarled, aggressively tightening his brutal grip on my windpipe.
"He is going to die tonight, and you are going to rot in a federal prison forever."
Suddenly, the flatlining heart monitor spiked violently with a loud, aggressive beep.
Bernard's eyes shot completely open, wide and filled with pure, lucid, unadulterated fury.
Before Gareth could even react, Bernard reached out with surprising strength and pressed the red emergency code-blue button on his bed rail.
Deafening hospital alarms immediately blared throughout the entire intensive care unit.
"Run, Irene!" Bernard croaked, his voice raw, raspy, and desperate.
May you like
Gareth dropped me in sheer panic as heavy footsteps thundered loudly down the hallway toward the locked room.
I grabbed my bag, kicked Gareth forcefully in the shin, and sprinted through the adjoining maintenance door just as the medical team violently burst into the room.
