THE PATIENT
The Patient – Chapter 5
Theme: the violence of willful blindness. How much truth are we willing to sacrifice for love?
Settings: port Amber, Port Amber, a fictional gray coastal city. St. Dymphna’s Hospital. The ghost town of Blythe in the northern hills.
Genre: dark romantic suspense•••••
Mystery:What really happened in Blythe? Where is Clara? And is the man in Willa’s care a survivor, a savior, or a monster?
Tags: gothic romance, missing child, anti heroine protagonist, forced proximity••••
® FINESSA.
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The Number
Willa didn’t go home.
Instead, she walked to the nurses’ station on the fourth floor, her footsteps echoing in the empty corridor like a whispered warning. The night shift was running on skeleton staff, and the desk was unattended, a single computer monitor glowing in the dark like a lighthouse with no keeper. She slid into the chair and pulled up the patient intake system, her fingers moving before her conscience could catch up.
John Doe. Case #4721. Admitted: 03/14. Attending: Dr. Masood. Nursing Lead: W. Calloway.
She scrolled past the medical notes—the CT scans, the bloodwork, the stitch count on his cheek—until she found the attachment she was looking for. The paramedic intake form. The one Gloria had mentioned.
It was buried near the bottom, scanned in crooked and slightly blurred, as if the person operating the scanner had been in a hurry. Willa opened it and read.
Vehicle: 2007 Chevrolet Silverado, dark blue, no plates. Significant front-end damage. Driver extracted via Jaws of Life. Subject unconscious, pulse thready. Defensive wounds on hands and forearms. No ID. No registration. One personal item recovered: prepaid cellular phone, Nokia 225, found on passenger seat. Phone powered on. Last call placed 10:47 PM, March 13. Duration: 2 minutes 14 seconds. Number: [REDACTED].
Redacted.
Willa stared at the word until her vision blurred. Someone had blacked out the number. Not just in the digital file—there was a note in the margin, a scrawled comment from the admitting officer that read: Per Detective Cross, all call records to be sealed pending investigation.
Cross had gotten there first. Of course she had.
Willa closed the file and sat back in the chair, her mind racing. The paramedic had seen the number before it was redacted. Gloria had seen it too, or knew someone who had. A local area code. Port Amber. Someone the patient had called two hours and thirteen minutes before the first body was found.
She needed that number.
She needed to know who was on the other end.
—
The records room was in the basement, two floors below the morgue and one floor above the boiler room that groaned and clanked like a living thing. Willa had been down here exactly once before, during her orientation, and she had sworn she would never come back. The fluorescent lights flickered with the enthusiasm of dying fireflies, and the air smelled of old paper and cold concrete and something else, something organic that she didn’t want to name.
She used her keycard to access the physical file archive, a cramped room lined with metal shelving units that stretched from floor to ceiling. The paramedic reports were stored by date, not by case number, which meant she had to pull three boxes before she found the right one.
March 13. The night of the massacre.
The file was thin—thinner than she expected. A single page, handwritten, the carbon copy of the original intake form. The paramedic’s name was scrawled at the bottom: E. Reyes. Willa flipped it over, her heart hammering.
There. On the back. A phone number.
The paramedic had written it down. Not in the official report—that had been redacted—but here, in a private note to himself, a string of digits scratched in blue ink with the words: Victim’s last call. Local. Check with PD.
Willa pulled out her phone and took a photo. Her hands were shaking.
She had a name now. Not Clara’s. Not yet. But a lead. A local number. Someone in Port Amber who had spoken to the patient on the night of the massacre. Someone who might know who he was, what he had done, what he was running from.
Someone who might know where Clara was.
—
She was halfway to the elevator when her phone buzzed.
A text from a number she didn’t recognize. No name. No contact photo. Just ten words that made her blood stop moving.
Stop looking for Clara. You won’t like what you find.
Willa stood frozen in the dim corridor, the hum of the boiler the only sound. She looked up at the ceiling, at the corners of the hallway, at the shadows that pooled between the flickering lights. It felt, suddenly, like she was being watched. Like the walls themselves had eyes.
She typed back with numb fingers: Who is this?
The reply came almost instantly.
A friend. One you haven’t met yet. One you’ll wish you never needed.
Then, a second message:
But since you’re already digging, here’s a gift. The number you found belongs to a woman named Lydia Marsh. She lives at 14 Salt Line Road, Apt 3B. She hasn’t left her apartment in four days. She’s terrified. And she knows what happened in Blythe.
Willa stared at the screen. Her thumb hovered over the keyboard, trembling.
Why are you telling me this?
The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Then:
Because Clara is real. And she’s running out of time.
The screen went dark. Willa tried calling the number, but it rang once and went to a dead tone. Burner phone. Untraceable. Just like the patient’s.
She leaned against the cold concrete wall and pressed her palm to her chest, feeling her heart beat against her ribs like a trapped bird. Someone else was out there. Someone who knew about Clara, about Blythe, about the patient. Someone who was helping her—or leading her into a trap.
Either way, she had a name now. Lydia Marsh. 14 Salt Line Road. Apt 3B.
And she had a choice. Go to the police. Tell Cross everything. Let the system take over and hope it found Clara before it was too late.
Or go to Salt Line Road herself.
Willa looked down at her phone. At the photo of the paramedic’s note. At the text messages from a stranger who called themselves a friend. She thought of the patient’s ruined hands. The lullaby he couldn’t forget. The way he had said her name. Willa. Like a promise.
She thought of Clara. A girl she had never met, whose face she couldn’t picture, whose voice she had never heard. A girl who might be real. Who might be scared. Who might be waiting for someone to come.
Are you going to help me?
Willa pushed herself off the wall and walked toward the elevator. Not up—toward the exit. Toward the parking garage. Toward the cold, salt-tinged air of Port Amber at two in the morning.
14 Salt Line Road.
She was done waiting for answers.
She was going to find them herself.
—
Wowwwww😯
