Chapter 3

By noon, I was summoned to the Medical Administration and Ethics Office.

Sitting across the table were the Chief of Medicine, the Compliance Officer, and the Chair of Hematology.

A formal complaint sat front and center.

The heading was glaring.

Formal Ethics Complaint: Regarding Dr. Chloe Vance’s Misuse of Position, Improper Protocol Concerning Minor Relatives, and Suspected Billing Fraud.

Complainants: Rachael Vance, Brandon Vance.

My gaze locked onto the last name. A violent shudder ripped through my body.

Brandon. My own husband.

The Chief of Medicine took off his glasses. "Dr. Vance, we need you to explain this."

I opened the hospital intranet system. Every single step had been logged properly.

Typing tests, donor risk assessments, informed consents, post-op monitoring orders—everything was there.

Until I clicked into the donor’s chart.

My stomach plummeted into an abyss.

Maya’s post-op risk disclosure was gone. The sterile isolation recommendation was listed as 'Draft / Not Submitted.'

The consent signatures were blank.

My palms broke into a cold sweat.

"Someone tampered with the system. The records were deleted."

The Compliance Officer frowned. "Are you certain you uploaded them?"

"I know I did!"

I whipped out my phone to show the signed copies I had photographed.

They were gone. The photos, the cloud backups, even my text exchanges with the head nurse had been completely wiped clean.

A sickening realization hit me. Last night, I fell asleep from pure exhaustion with my phone on the nightstand.

Brandon knew my passcode.

With trembling fingers, I dialed Brandon’s number right in front of the board.

It rang three times before he picked up.

"Chloe, you still have the nerve to call me?"

My voice was ice. "Did you delete my files?"

A beat of silence hung over the line.

"Stop pointing fingers. If your hands were clean, the hospital wouldn't be investigating you."

I let out a breathless, broken laugh.

"Brandon, Maya is lying in a hospital bed right now! She just endured days of agony to harvest cells for your nephew!"

"And you signed an ethics complaint against me?!"

Rachael’s sneering voice carried through the speaker.

"Chloe, don't drag the kid into this. We just want transparency. If you did nothing wrong, why are you so afraid of an audit?"

The Chief’s expression hardened.

"Dr. Vance. Effective immediately, you are suspended pending a formal compliance investigation."

A white sheet of paper slid across the mahogany desk.

A suspension order.

I picked it up. The paper was light as a feather, but it weighed down on my chest like lead.

As I walked out of the administrative wing, Nurse Wendy caught up to me in the stairwell, panting as she thrust a folded note into my hand.

"Dr. Vance... I just overheard Rachael on the phone by the elevators. She said, 'Step one is done.'"

I whipped around. "Who was she talking to?"

Wendy’s face was drained of color. "Your husband."