How Can I Kill Them with My Broken Arm? Chapter 08
“Nina’s still young. She just graduated. She…” His voice was raw, and he sounded like he was begging.
“She didn’t mean to do it. She got too nervous during the surgery and didn’t control the dosage. Can’t you just…” “Just what?” My voice was quiet. “Take the fall for your precious junior?”
He froze.
“Cole, when you sent me to my death in my last life, did you ever stop to think about what would happen to my parents? Did it ever cross your mind that they would jump off a building? That my name would be dragged through the mud? That every person in this state would believe I was a murderer?”
He blinked, caught off guard. “What do you mean in your last life?”
I did not explain. He did not need to understand.
“Do you want to know what I hate most?” I looked him straight in the eye and measured every word.
“It’s not that you set me up. It’s not that you lied under oath. It’s that after I was dead, everyone thought you were noble for turning in your own fiancée. They thought you were a good man. Even my parents died believing their daughter deserved what she got.”
His mouth opened, but nothing came out.
“I’m not going to protect her for you.” I held his gaze without flinching. “And you don’t deserve to ask.”
The door swung open and Captain Ross stood in the frame. “Dr. Barrett, time’s up.’
Cole stood at the edge of my bed like a man whose legs were about to give out, slowly folding in on himself. He gave me one last look, and I could see everything in it, the desperation, the disbelief, the silent plea, but not hatred.
He knew he had no right to hate me.
The door closed. His heavy footsteps faded down the hallway until they disappeared entirely.
I shut my eyes and counted silently.
This was only the beginning, Cole.
The days that followed were deceptively calm, like the surface of the ocean before a storm.
I stayed in the hospital, going through the daily routine of bandage changes, IV drips and checkups. My right arm was healing faster than expected, and the doctor said I could be discharged after a few more days of observation.
Outside the hospital, everything had erupted.
The medical examiner’s autopsy report came first. The anesthetic dosage had been three times over the safe limit, directly causing cardiac arrest.
Then came the surveillance footage. The tech unit recovered the raw data, and the proof that Cole had tampered with the recordings was undeniable.
After that came Nina’s case files, and the records Margaret had pulled for me were far worse than anything I had imagined.
Over the past few months, out of the 17 surgeries Nina had participated in, three had involved anesthetic dosage errors of varying severity.
Two of those mothers had been resuscitated, and in one case the newborn had not survived. The families had been placated, the medical records had been altered, and the incidents had been buried.
The person who buried them was Cole.
He had used his network of connections within the hospital to erase every trace for Nina. He altered records, swapped out nurses and even paid off families to sign settlement agreements.
Every single time, he told her it was the last. Every single time, there was a next.
Until tonight, when neither the mother nor the baby could be saved.
That was when he panicked. He knew this one could not be covered up. He needed a scapegoat, and he chose me.
The logic was simple. I was the most respected OB-GYN in the state with a spotless ten-year record. If I was the one who made a mistake, everyone would believe it, because someone that perfect was bound to make a catastrophic error when she finally slipped.
On top of that, I was his fiancée. His words would carry weight with the judge, with the press and with the public.
A nurse was the one who told me that an investigation team had moved into the hospital.
“I heard that Cole Barrett’s been detained. Nina Foster too.”
