It started with a message. No name. No subject. Just a time stamp and a link.
Nora almost deleted it without thinking. She had received dozens of anonymous tips over the last few weeks - most of them rumors, empty threats, or traps. But this one was different. The tone. The timing. The way her own pulse shifted when she hovered over the play icon.
She clicked.
The screen flickered.
Low-resolution footage. A hospital corridor.
Two figures. One was her mother - Gracie Keane - standing outside Room 304, holding a file. Her voice was low but firm. The other was a man in a white coat. Arthur Brenner.
The audio was poor, muffled by distance and old walls, but parts of the conversation still came through.
"She's not stable enough for discharge," Gracie was saying.
"There's no budget for further treatment," Brenner replied coldly.
Then Gracie again, more urgent now - "If you sign off on this, she's going to die."
Nora's hand clenched on the desk.
The image shook as the camera repositioned, then steadied again.
The timestamp in the corner confirmed it - two days before Lily's death.
She watched the full clip three times.
And when it ended, she didn't cry. She didn't scream.
She copied the file to her drive, backed it up in two separate folders, and sent one version to Rowan with a single line:
"Now do you see?"
By morning, the footage had spread. Not publicly, not yet, but through the quiet back channels of Westbridge.
People stopped pretending.
Whispers turned to stares.
Some staff avoided her entirely. Others lingered near her office, waiting to be seen - waiting to decide if they were on the right side of this story.
And then came the second message.
This time, with a name.
Rosa Whitman.
Former night nurse. Tenure: 1997-2013.
Attached was a voice recording. Shaky. Tired. But real.
"She begged them," Rosa said. "Your mother. She begged Brenner not to send Lily home. I was there. I heard it. I signed a note about it in the shift report. It never made it into the final record."
Nora sat alone as she listened.
The sound of Rosa's voice was a tremor from the past.
One that carried both weight and grief.
"I left the hospital a year later," the voice continued. "I couldn't do it anymore. I didn't know who to trust. But I kept copies. I still have them."
Nora closed her eyes. Her breath was steady, but her hands shook.
The war she had waged alone was no longer silent.
The infection had spread.
Later that day, Rowan found her in the basement level, reviewing files under flickering lights.
He didn't speak at first. He just stood beside her, watching her scroll through lines of names and signatures.
"She kept everything," Nora murmured. "Shift reports. Notes. Complaints that never reached administration."
He nodded slowly. "Rosa's agreed to speak. I talked to legal. She'll testify if it comes to that."
Nora looked at him. Really looked at him.
His face was serious, but his posture had changed.
No longer hesitant. No longer afraid.
"They're going to come after you," she warned. "All of us."
"Then we stop running."
It wasn't dramatic.
It was a promise.
That night, Westbridge felt different.
Not quieter but charged. Like static in the air before a lightning strike.
People passed her in the halls without speaking, but they looked at her differently now.
Not with pity. Not with suspicion.
With caution. With curiosity. With something that looked like... respect.
And somewhere, in a locked office upstairs, Arthur Brenner read the email forwarded by a junior administrator subject line:
"Surveillance footage, Room 304."
For the first time in years, he sat down slowly.
And stayed silent.