Chapter 9 - The Intruder in White
The emergency red backup lights kicked on with a heavy, mechanical hum, casting long, bloody shadows across the walls.
“Stay in the bed,” Vance commanded, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a heavy metal penlight. “The backup generators only kick in if the secondary breaker on the floor is manually tripped. Someone is in the utility closet.”
She moved toward the door, but before she could turn the handle, the distinct sound of a keycard sliding through the digital lock beeped softly from the outside.
*Beep. Green light.*
The door slowly swung open.
It wasn't Richard.
Standing in the doorway was a woman wearing a pale pink trench coat over a high-necked cashmere sweater. Her hair was styled in a pristine blonde bob, not a single strand displaced. She carried a designer handbag in the crook of her left arm, and in her right hand, she held a set of blue legal folders.
“Livvy,” my mother, Cynthia Brennan, said softly, stepping into the red-lit room with a graceful, gliding step. “You really are making an absurd spectacle of yourself.”
Dr. Vance immediately stepped between my mother and the bed. “Mrs. Brennan, you are trespassing in an active trauma isolation ward. Back out right now.”
Cynthia didn't even look at Vance. She pulled a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses from her purse, perched them on her small nose, and opened the legal folder.
“Dr. Vance, is it?” Cynthia asked in that sickeningly sweet voice she used at charity galas. “You might want to review this before you make a terrible career mistake. This is an interim conservatorship order, signed ten minutes ago by Judge Robert Miller via emergency electronic dispatch. Olivia has been remanded to our custody as her designated healthcare proxies.”
“Miller is on your husband’s private payroll,” Vance spat.
“Miller is an officer of the superior court,” Cynthia replied smoothly, finally turning her cool, calculating blue eyes toward me. “Livvy, darling, look at you. Ruining your grandmother’s legacy out of spite. Your father has had to cancel three surgeries this morning just to deal with your tantrum.”
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“He tried to kill me, Mom!” My voice cracked, raw and wild. “He held my face to the fire! Look at me!”
Cynthia sighed, an exhausted, theatrical sigh. “You fell, Livvy. You were hysterical about the clinic taxes, you lost your balance, and Richard tried to catch you. It’s all in the affidavit. Now, sign the transfer of the Cedar Ridge deed right now, or your father will have Dr. Vance arrested for custodial interference, and you will spend the next six months in the psychiatric ward at St. Jude’s.”
