Chapter 2: The Diagnosis

I scrapped any plan of taking him home. I got him into the passenger seat of my SUV and drove straight to the emergency room at City General.

The triage nurse took one look at his sunken face and flagged him for a private trauma bay. The attending, a sharp-eyed woman named Dr. Aris, ran a rapid examination while I stood at the bedside with my arms crossed to keep my hands from shaking.

The assessment was grim. Dad was dangerously dehydrated. His heart rate was fluctuating erratically. A blood panel confirmed what I already suspected: he’d been deprived of his cardiovascular medication for at least three consecutive days.

Dr. Aris took his arms and inspected the discoloration ringing his wrists, clicking on a penlight to check the skin integrity for abrasions and burst capillaries.

She switched it off and looked at me.

“Agent Thorne. These bruises aren’t from a brief struggle an hour ago. The hematoma degradation puts them at a minimum of four to seven days old. These are sustained restraint marks — consistent with industrial plastic zip-ties.”