Chapter 4 - THE NOTEBOOK
Willa remained completely motionless until the heavy click of the door signaled Whitfield’s departure.
She walked slowly to the edge of the bed and looked down at Everett’s pale, immobile face.
“So that’s the kind of trouble you’re in,” she murmured.
That first night, a nervous maid arrived to escort Willa to a guest bedroom in the opposite wing of the sprawling mansion.
“Bring me a chair instead,” Willa said, standing her ground.
“You’re expected to sleep in your designated room, ma'am.”
“My husband is unconscious and surrounded by people who talk about him like he’s a piece of discarded furniture. I’ll sleep right here.”
The maid stared at her in disbelief, then quietly departed, returning a few minutes later with an old velvet armchair and a thick wool blanket.
For three nights, Willa watched.
On the first night, she tested Everett’s pupil response while pretending to wipe his face with a warm cloth. His pupils reacted sluggishly to light—not the typical response of a man suffering solely from traumatic brain damage following a car accident, but precisely like a patient deliberately maintained under powerful chemical sedation.
On the second night, she recorded the replacement times on his IV bags. They followed no recognized medical treatment schedule, changing at erratic hours designed to bypass standard hospital logging.
On the third night, she pretended to sleep in the armchair when Whitfield arrived shortly after midnight.
Through half-closed eyelids, she watched him open his leather case, pull out an unlabeled vial, and inject a clear, viscous liquid directly into Everett’s IV port.
He wrote nothing in the bedside medical chart.
He carried the empty vial away in his pocket.
After the door clicked shut, Willa reached into her canvas bag and pulled out a worn, spiral-bound notebook. It was the exact same notebook she had carried during her years as an ICU nurse.
On the first blank page, she wrote down the date, the exact time, Everett’s heart rate, his sluggish pupil response, and the precise moment Whitfield had entered and exited the room.
May you like
At the bottom of the page, she added a single sentence:
This man is not sleeping because of the accident. This man is being kept asleep.
