Part 2Not Qualified to Save You

In front of sixty onlookers and thousands of viewers on his stream, Brandon queued up the video he’d taken the previous morning.

The footage was shaky, shot from chest height.

In the clip, I was swaggering down the third-floor corridor of Pain Management in the oversized white lab coat. George Hayes was sitting in a transport wheelchair near the water fountain. He raised a hand to flag me down.

I stopped.

On screen, I leaned down, said something to him, and then the video abruptly cut to black.

Brandon held the phone above his head like a sacred relic.

"You see that?" His voice broke with calculated melodrama. "That’s how she approached him! Don't talk to me about hospital protocol, and don't try to hide behind some IT glitch! My dad wasn't paralyzed by a computer system. He was paralyzed by her!"

He pointed his finger straight at my nose again.

"Paige Mitchell. I’m not suing the institution today. I’m holding you personally accountable."

Dan Lewis stepped forward, placing himself between Brandon’s spitting rage and my face. "Sir, step back. Calm down. Whether any medical procedure actually occurred will be determined by the investigation."

Brandon whipped around, spraying spit across Lewis’s lapel. "Stop making excuses for her! She talked to my dad, and two hours later he was paralyzed. That is an indisputable fact!"

I blinked. "Didn't you skip about twenty-eight episodes in between?"

Brandon’s face turned scarlet, the veins along his neck pulsing like thick cords. "You think this is funny? You’re making jokes while my dad lies there dying?"

Brenda reached into her oversized tote bag, pulled out a stack of crumpled papers, and flung them at my feet.

The sheets scattered across the floor, face-up, face-down, looking like discarded takeout menus.

"The proof is right here!" she yelled.

The top sheet was titled Lumbar Nerve Block Procedure Note.

The second was an official-looking diagnostic summary.

The third was a printed color photograph. It showed George Hayes’s lower back: a distinct red puncture mark circled by greenish bruising, undeniably resembling an injection site.

Brenda’s voice frayed into a desperate scream. "That’s the shot! He walked into this clinic, he crossed paths with this monster, and now he can’t feel his legs! If it wasn't her, who was it?"

The bystanders were practically baying for blood now.

"Lock her up!"

"Unlicensed impersonation of a physician—that’s a felony!"

"Make her pay out of pocket! Ruin her!"

Hearing the crowd back him, Brandon’s tone shifted. The wild, tearful rage vanished, replaced by a smooth, chilling precision.

"We’re reasonable people," he announced to his live stream. "We don't want to bleed the hospital dry. The person who did the crime pays the dime. Paige Mitchell, you write us a cashier's check for two million dollars right now for my father's lifelong specialized care. If you don't have it, get your parents on the phone."

I looked down at the photo of the bruised puncture mark.

Then I shifted my gaze to George Hayes on the gurney.

He was putting on quite the show. His brow was furrowed in theatrical agony, breath wheezing through parted, chapped lips, his torso tucked securely under that thick fleece blanket.

Only his face and shoulders were visible.

Except I distinctly saw the toe of his right sneaker twitch under the blanket. A subtle, reflexive curl.

A laugh slipped out of my throat before I could swallow it.

Brenda reacted as if I’d struck her with a whip. Her voice skyrocketed an octave. "What are you laughing at?"

I looked her dead in the eye, stuck out my tongue, and made a childish face. "Because I feel like it. You want to sue me for that too?"

Brenda turned purple. She lunged forward with her manicured nails bared, but the two security guards caught her by the elbows just in time. She flailed in midair, her nails raking across a guard’s forearm, leaving a chalky white scrape.

Brandon instantly pivoted his camera toward the scuffle, bellowing into the mic: "Did you all catch that? She’s mocking the victims! She thinks because she’s young and my parents are old, she can walk all over us!"

The mob pushed closer. Someone shoved a security guard. Dozens of phones were thrust into the air, and comments on the live stream were flying past at light speed:

Put this psycho behind bars!

How is she not in handcuffs yet?

Medical malpractice is out of control, our healthcare system is doomed.

I walked over to the lobby chairs and sat down with a quiet sigh.

Hospitals really were fascinating places. The concentration of lunatics per square foot was truly something else.