Night Shift

The patients on Ward 5 die at 2:17 in the morning. Every one of them was supposed to.ER charge nurse Naomi Kessler has worked nights at Millbrook Regional for eleven years, and she keeps a notebook for what the chart leaves out. When a man she stabilized and sent upstairs codes that night under a comfort-care wristband his chart never ordered, she checks the notebook. Two earlier nights carry the same notation. Same hour. Same ward. Same palliative program, whose peaceful deaths win grants and trust.The man who runs it chairs the mortality review, controls the referrals, and sits on the committee that will judge any nurse who accuses him. Within days her shifts are cut, her chart access flagged, a warning in her file. Proof will have to come from records nobody rehearses: dispensing logs, waste sheets that never close, a badge that opens a door for a nurse who was not in the building.The patients upstairs cannot advocate for themselves at 2 a.m. One of them, though, is awake, holding Naomi's wrist. She knows what the nights are for.How do you prove a mercy is a murder when the murderer owns the review?