“Boss,” Daniel said grimly, turning the screen toward me, “two of Bellini’s south-side hitters just checked into the lobby of St. Jude’s Metro Hospital asking the nurses on the fourth floor for every John Doe coma patient admitted from I-94.”
I didn’t waste a second debating protocol. Before I even pressed my thumb to the panic-room scanner, I had my encrypted phone to my ear, connecting directly to Dr. Paul Vance, chief of cardiothoracic surgery at Northwestern Memorial—a man whose medical school debt my family’s foundation had paid off fifteen years ago.
“Paul, I have a critical trauma patient under a John Doe chart in ICU Bed 6 at St. Jude’s Metro,” I ordered as Daniel simultaneously dispatched our six fastest tactical operatives in two armored Suburbans three blocks away from the hospital. “Send a private critical-care mobile ICU rig with armed security escort to St. Jude’s loading bay right now. Transfer him to your locked tenth-floor executive wing under my personal medical power of attorney, and post four off-duty sheriff’s deputies outside his door.”
When I twisted the bronze bust and slid the mahogany panel open, the cool air of the panic room greeted me. On the padded bench inside, three-year-old Lily had fallen fast asleep, her cheek pillowed against her velveteen rabbit and her small legs curled under the hem of her faded yellow dress.
Olivia was sitting on the floor beside the bench, her knees drawn up to her chest, staring at a folded sheet of paper resting in her lap.
When she looked up and saw my face, she didn’t ask if she was safe. She whispered, “Did he come looking for my uncle?”
“My men are six minutes from St. Jude’s right now, and a private surgical ambulance is moving your uncle to a locked executive floor at Northwestern where Bellini can’t touch him,” I said, crouching down beside her so my eyes were level with hers. “He’s going to make it, Olivia.”
A ragged breath escaped her lips, and she pressed both palms over her mouth to stifle a sob so she wouldn’t wake Lily. As her hands lifted, the folded sheet of paper slipped from her lap onto the carpet between my boots.
I picked it up to hand it back to her—and stopped.
On one side, it was an itemized past-due notice from St. Jude’s Metro Hospital for $48,600 in ICU ventilator fees, stamped FINAL NOTICE BEFORE STATE CUSTODY TRANSFER, with receipts stapled to the corner showing Olivia had pawned her mother’s wedding band, her late father’s watch, and every dollar of her housekeeping wages over the past six weeks just to keep the private ICU room paid in cash so her uncle wouldn’t be moved to a public ward where Bellini’s spotters checked fingerprint registries.
On the blank back of the hospital bill was a crayon drawing.