Part 1Not Qualified to Save You

I was only at Mercy General for my routine psychiatric follow-up when the family who had asked me for directions the day before cornered me in the outpatient lobby.

"That's her! She’s the one who butchered my father! You quack!"

"She gave him an injection and paralyzed him for life! Is this how a top-tier teaching hospital treats human beings?"

The old man lay motionless on a transport gurney, a coarse gray hospital blanket pulled up to his chin, pretending to be in a comatose stupor. His son shoved a smartphone six inches from my nose, a TikTok livestream running hot, while his daughter-in-law shrieked at the top of her lungs, wringing her hands like a Victorian mourner.

Within seconds, a ring of patients and visitors gathered, murmuring in shocked indignation.

On the screen, hundreds of hearts and sympathy gifts were rolling across the chat. Viewers were demanding heads on spikes.

I stood there, clutching my appointment slip, completely dumbfounded.

I was an outpatient from the psychiatric wing. Where on earth would I have gotten a syringe to shoot up your father?

"Look at her! That's the face!"

I was backed against the self-service copay kiosk when the phone camera nearly clipped my nose.

Brenda Hayes lunged forward and grabbed the hem of my white lab coat, her face a slick canvas of tears and snot.

"Look at her, everyone! Yesterday she stood right there and promised my George that one single shot would take his back pain away!"

Her voice was shrill, cutting through the antiseptic hum of the atrium like a dentist's drill.

"And now my husband can't even stand up! She ruined him!"

Her husband, George Hayes, lay on the gurney, the gray blanket pulled to his chest. His eyes were clamped shut, a pitiful, rhythmic groan leaking from his throat.

The lobby filled fast. People drew their phones. Whispers turned to mutters, and mutters turned to open condemnation of "butcher doctors" and corporate malpractice.

Brandon Hayes, the son, glared at me with bloodshot eyes, his forefinger practically drilling into the space between my eyebrows.

"Still playing dumb? I saw you with my own eyes yesterday! You were wearing that exact coat, lurking in the Pain Management hallway, talking to my dad!"

That did it. The crowd ignited.

"Mercy General is letting butchers roam the floor now?"

"Film this! Put it on Twitter, tag the Department of Health!"

Dan Lewis, the director of Risk Management, rushed over, escorted by two campus security guards.

When his eyes landed on me—and specifically on the crisp white doctor’s coat hanging from my shoulders—his expression curdled. I had grabbed it off the back of Dr. Bailey’s chair that morning without thinking, and now that small, petty impulse felt like a bear trap clamped onto my leg.

"What department are you with?" Lewis asked, his voice low and defensive.

I looked at him. "You really don't recognize me?"

Lewis frowned, his jaw tightening. "I asked you a question. Where's your hospital badge? What's your employee ID?"

I patted my chest pocket.

Empty.

There hadn't been a badge pinned to it when I took it.

I shook my head. "Don't have one."

Lewis’s face went pale. He immediately signaled an administrative assistant to run my name through the hospital’s HR database.

A few minutes later, the assistant leaned in, whispering loud enough for the front row to hear:

"There's no Paige Mitchell in our personnel records. Not as staff, not as a resident, not as a contractor."

Brandon looked as if he’d just won the lottery. He immediately spun the phone toward Lewis.

"Did you hear that, chat? Did you hear that? She’s not even in their system! Mercy General let an unregistered ghost in a lab coat stick needles into my father!"

Sweat broke out across Lewis’s forehead. "Sir, please lower your voice. The hospital will conduct a thorough internal review. Please do not incite the public."

Brandon barked a bitter laugh. "Review? My father is paralyzed from the waist down, and you want to conduct a review?"

Brenda abruptly dropped to her knees in the center of the lobby. Her knees struck the hard linoleum with a sickening thud that made my own joints ache.

"We don't want trouble, we just want justice!" she wailed, slapping her thighs. "My husband walked in here on his own two feet for a pinched nerve, and your hospital turned him into a vegetable! God in heaven, is there no justice left in this world?"

She still had a death grip on the hem of my coat.

I looked down at her. "Excuse me. Could you let go?"

She shrieked up at me. "What, are you scared now?"

I pointed down. "No. You’re unraveling the hem thread. It’s Dr. Bailey’s coat."

The entire lobby went dead silent.

A beat later, the crowd erupted with twice the fury.

"How cold-blooded can you be?"

"The poor man is crippled, and she's worried about a stray thread?"

"Is this woman completely insane?"

At that last sentence, I looked up and blinked.

Well, I thought. You have no idea.