Chapter 5 - The Silent Room
The glass doors of Room 712 remained closed as the sun began to set over the city, casting long, bruised shadows across the intensive care unit. Gabriel had returned to his vinyl chair, his leather coat draped over his shoulders like armor that had grown too heavy to carry.
The monitors were the only voices in the room.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
At 4:00 p.m., the primary neurologist, a thin woman with grey hair named Dr. Vance, stepped out of the room, pulling off her latex gloves with a sharp snap. She looked at Gabriel with the clinical compassion that always made his stomach turn.
"The sedatives are clearing her system, Mr. Finch," Dr. Vance said, consulting her digital chart. "Her brain activity is strong. We’re going to extubate her within the hour. She will be weak, she will be confused, and she will likely be in significant withdrawal depending on how long she’s been using these synthetics."
"How long?" Gabriel asked, his voice cracking.
"Judging by the liver enzymes and the old track marks between her toes... at least six months," the doctor said quietly. "She’s been hiding it well. The academy girls usually use the high-end patches or the crushed tablets. It doesn't look like street use until the money runs out."
Gabriel didn't answer. He turned his face toward the glass. Six months. For six months, his daughter had been slipping into the grey mist while he was busy negotiating the container shipping rights with the unions in New York. He had bought her a three-story townhome in Rittenhouse Square; he had given her an unlimited black card; he had sent two security details to follow her car from a distance.
He had given her everything except a father who was home before midnight.
The extubation was a brutal, physical process. Gabriel stayed in the room, his hand holding Chloe’s small, limp wrist as the respiratory therapist removed the thick plastic tube from her throat. Chloe gagged, her body arching off the bed, a harsh, dry cough tearing through her chest before her head fell back against the pillow.
Her eyes flickered. The hazel depths, so like his own, were bloodshot and clouded with a deep, disorienting fog. She looked up at the ceiling, then slowly turned her head toward him.
"Dad?" her voice was a tiny, shredded whisper that sounded like dry leaves scraping across concrete.
"I'm here, Chloe," Gabriel said, his voice breaking completely as he leaned down, his forehead pressing against her small, cold knuckles. "I'm right here."
She didn't reach for him. Her fingers remained limp inside his grip. She looked past his shoulder toward the empty corner of the sterile room.
"Where is she?" Chloe whispered.
Gabriel blinked, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. "Who?"
"The girl..." Chloe’s eyes drifted closed again, her breathing turning shallow as the residual sedatives dragged her back down. "The girl with the warm hands. She... she didn't let me fall."
Gabriel sat back in his chair, the silence of the room returning with an suffocating weight. He looked at his daughter’s pale, chipped black nail polish—the detail Sadie had used to identify her over the phone at two in the morning.
He pulled his phone from his pocket, opened his contacts, and scrolled down to the single letter G that Chloe had used to save his life in her phone. Then he dialed Angelo’s line.
"Angelo," Gabriel said.
May you like
"Yeah, boss? We're just finishing up at the rail yard. The Albanians won't be using this route again."
"Find out where Sadie Rossi lives," Gabriel ordered. "I want her schedule, her landlord's name, and her utility accounts on my desk by eight o'clock tomorrow morning."
