“The saline bag was calibrated perfectly, Priyanka,” I said, reaching up to disconnect the IV line from the plastic cannula taped to the back of my hand with a quick, deliberate flick of my thumb.
*Drip.*
The clear liquid pooled on the blanket.
“Thad looked at the monitor four times,” I said, my voice settling into that quiet, polar diamond register that had once silenced a courtroom full of federal corporate raiders. “He saw forty-five drops a minute. He saw the catheter reservoir. He saw what he paid six hundred thousand dollars to see.”
“He saw what his mother’s private medical consultant told him to look for,” Dr. Oay corrected, pulling a high-resolution, military-spec Panasonic Toughbook from the pocket of her navy scrub jacket:
*CLACK.*
She set the terminal on the rolling bedside tray table and pivoted the matte screen toward my face.
“Look at the telemetry from OR Three, Coraly,” Dr. Oay murmured, her finger tracing a brutal crimson trajectory across the digital diagnostic chart:
