The Night Nurse

Chapter 7 — Alan

Alan Weiss called at 11:40 on a rainy Thursday night, and the first thing he said was, “Don’t say my name if anyone’s listening.”

Priya laughed — a short, ugly sound. “Alan, I’m sitting alone in my kitchen in my pajamas. Nobody’s listening.”

“Right. Sorry.” He sounded exhausted. Young doctors always sounded exhausted, but this was different. This was the wired, hollowed-out exhaustion of someone who hadn’t slept because his conscience wouldn’t let him. “I need to see you. Tonight. Not at the hospital.”

“I’m suspended, Alan. I can’t—”

“Not the hospital. The all-night diner on Western. The one with the terrible pancakes. Twenty minutes.”

He hung up before she could argue.

The diner smelled like burnt coffee and old grease, and Alan was already in the back booth when she arrived, hood up, nursing a cup of something black. He was twenty-nine, fresh-faced in a way that made the ICU look like a mistake, with kind eyes that had seen too much too fast. He’d been the resident on call the night Frank Delaney died. He’d held the defibrillator paddles. He’d called it at 3:11 a.m., his voice flat.

It took Priya a moment to really look at him. There were shadows under his eyes deep enough to drown in, and his hands — surgeon’s hands, steady hands — were wrapped around the coffee mug like he needed it to stay upright.

“You believe me,” Priya said. It wasn’t a question. She sat down across from him.

“I believe the evidence doesn’t make sense.” He glanced around, then leaned in. “Priya. I pulled the pharmacy dispensing logs. I shouldn’t have, and if anyone finds out I’m showing you this, I’m done. But you need to see it.”

He slid his phone across the table. On the screen was a screenshot — a dispensing log from the ICU’s automated cabinet. Rows of timestamps, drug names, badge numbers.

**MORPHINE SULFATE 10MG — DRAWN — 02:12:04 — BADGE #4471**

Badge 4471. Hers.

“Scroll,” Alan whispered.

She did. Three draws. Three nights. Each one timestamped between 2:00 and 5:30 a.m. Each one under her badge.

“I didn’t draw these,” she said quietly. “Alan, I swear to you, I never—”

“I know.” He took the phone back. “Because look at the times. Tuesday, 2:12 a.m. — you were in Room 8 with Mr. Okafor, repositioning him. I was there, Priya. I saw you. I charted it. You couldn’t have been at the dispensing cabinet and in Room 8 at the same time.”

Her throat closed. “You remember that?”

“I remember everything about that night.” His voice dropped. “And Thursday — 2:40 a.m., you were starting Mrs. Alvarez’s wound care with Dana assisting. There’s a chart note. Signed. Timestamped. And Saturday — 2:30 a.m., you were sitting with Mr. Delaney’s daughter in the waiting room. I walked past the room. You were *there*, Priya. In three places at once is not a thing people do.”

The waitress came by with a pot of coffee. Alan waved her off without looking up, and Priya realized he hadn’t touched his cup. His hand was shaking. He set the phone down and wrapped both hands around the mug instead, like he was trying to borrow its warmth.

“There’s more,” he said. “I checked the badge reader logs for the scrub room. Your badge was scanned out at 2:47 on that Thursday — you leaving for Mrs. Alvarez’s wound care. It was never scanned back in until 6:05 a.m. Someone took it off that shelf, walked to the cabinet, drew the morphine, and put it back. In between your patients. Like they were — like they were *shadowing* you.”

Priya felt the blood drain from her face. “That’s not just theft. That’s choreography.”

“Yeah.” Alan’s laugh was hollow. “Whoever did this knows the unit as well as you do. Maybe better.”

“Someone used your badge,” he said. “Someone drew morphine under your credentials while you were somewhere else.”

The diner tilted slightly. Priya gripped the edge of the table.

“That’s framing,” she whispered. “That’s — someone *framed* me.”

“Yes.” Alan’s eyes were bright and angry. “And here’s the part that keeps me up. To pull this off, they had to know your routine. They had to know where you’d be at 3:12 on a Tuesday, at 2:40 on a Thursday. They had to know when you’d be busy, when the cabinet would be unobserved, when your badge would be—” He stopped.

“When my badge would be what?”

He looked at her steadily. “When do you take your badge off, Priya?”

She thought. During codes, sometimes, when it caught on equipment. In the break room. In the bathroom. Hanging on the hook by the sink when she scrubbed in—

“The scrub room,” she said slowly. “I leave it on the shelf when I scrub for procedures. Anyone could—”

“Anyone,” Alan said, “who knew your routine.”

They sat in silence while the waitress refilled Alan’s coffee and didn’t ask why the woman across from him had gone the color of old milk.

“Why are you doing this?” Priya asked finally. “Why risk your career for me?”

Alan looked down at his cup for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “Because the night Frank Delaney died, I watched you do chest compressions for eleven minutes straight. You cracked two of his ribs and you didn’t stop. Nobody who does that — nobody who *fights* like that — walks down the hall and quietly overdoses the next patient.” He met her eyes. “Someone set you up. And I’m going to help you prove it.”

Outside, the rain had stopped, leaving the street slick and shining under the streetlights. Priya walked to her car on legs that didn’t feel like hers, Alan’s words replaying in her head.

*Someone used your badge. Someone knew your routine.*

The logins happened while she was in another patient’s room. Whoever did this hadn’t just stolen her credentials. They had *studied* her — watched her, learned her rhythms, waited for the exact minutes when she’d be unreachable and unobserved.

That took patience. That took access. That took someone who belonged on that unit as surely as she did.