Part 1
My name is Angela Beaumont, and to the world-renowned specialists at Johns Hopkins, I don’t exist. I’m just the blue-scrubbed shadow emptying the trash and buffing the marble floors while they debate why Victor Blackwell, a man worth fifty billion dollars, is rotting away in Suite 402. Blackwell is a shell of a man now—liver failing, hair falling out in clumps, his nerves screaming in a pain that no morphine can touch. Twenty of the brightest minds in medicine are standing around his bed, scratching their heads over “idiopathic neuropathy,” but they’re looking at the monitors. They aren’t looking at the man.
I see what they don’t. Fifteen years ago, I was the top of my class in Chemistry right here at Hopkins before a car wreck took my parents and forced me into a mop bucket to feed my siblings. I still have the eyes of a scientist. As I wiped down the nightstand, I saw it: the way the light hit Blackwell’s fingernails. White transverse bands. Mees’ lines. Classic. Then there’s Jefferson Burke, Blackwell’s “best friend” and business rival, who’s been here every day, playing the grieving brother.
“The poor man’s skin is so dry,” Burke sighed today, pulling a sleek, silver jar from his pocket. “This Swiss ointment is the only thing that soothes him. Nurse, make sure he gets a thick layer every hour.”
I watched him massage the cream into Blackwell’s hands. My stomach did a slow, nauseating roll. That faint, metallic tang in the air wasn’t the hospital’s bleach. It was something else. While the doctors stepped into the hall to argue, I waited for Burke to leave for his “cigar break.” I slipped my gloved hand toward the silver jar he’d left on the tray. If I’m right, this isn’t medicine. It’s an execution. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. Just as my fingers closed around the cold metal, a hand clamped onto my wrist like a vice.
“Cleaning the jewelry, are we?” a voice hissed. I looked up. It wasn’t a nurse. It was Burke, and his eyes weren’t crying anymore. They were freezing.
