Broken Oaths in White Coats novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Raw Feed

I left the luncheon before the dessert came.

In the elevator down, I read Janelle's post a second time. I had not touched her. I had not been within ten feet of her.

Forty people had already shared it.

Norma called before I reached the lobby. "Do not answer it," she said. "Do not post anything. Get the video, and the video answers everything."

She was right, so I put the phone away.

Norma's nephew ran the hospital's audio and video desk, in a basement room with no windows and eleven monitors.

Norma had texted him before I got into the car.

He was waiting for me at the door in a hoodie, twisting a lanyard between his fingers.

"Aunt Norma said you needed the gala feed," he said.

"The raw one. With the sound."

He looked up and down the corridor. Then he pulled me inside and shut the door.

"The chief's office called me at nine-fifteen that night," he said. "They said to cut the stage audio and call it a fault."

"Did you?"

"On the version we posted." He swallowed. "But I made a copy first. It felt wrong not to."

He held out a small black drive.

I closed my hand around it. My bandage squeaked against the plastic.

"Why would you keep it?" I asked.

"Because I was there. I was at the back with the camera. I heard what you said." He shrugged, miserable. "Nobody else was going to say it was a real thing."

"Thank you."

"Please don't tell them it was me."

"I won't."

I did not play it in a private office. I took it up to the surgeons' lounge on the fourth floor, where thirty people ate lunch at a long table beneath a wall-mounted television.

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