Part 3:
The scream came from trauma room 2. I was already running before the emergency lights flickered and bathed the corridor in pulsating red. Nurses were screaming. Someone bumped into me. Andreas was right behind me. When I ripped the curtain aside, Emilia’s bed was empty. For a frozen second, I thought they’d kidnapped her. Then I saw the trail of blood leading into the bathroom. I rushed in and found her crouching on the tiled floor, one hand pressed over her shoulder, the IV ripped out, blood running down her arm. She had dragged herself off the bed. “Dad,” she gasped. “They turned off the lights because they’re here.” I collapsed beside her. “Who?” “Not Daniel,” she said. That made me stop. Andreas locked the bathroom door. “Talk.” Emilia swallowed, trembling. “Six months ago, Daniel discovered that his company—Rhein-Biotech—was using hospital data to identify vulnerable patients for unauthorized drug trials. They had contacts everywhere—billing departments, private clinics, rehab centers. Daniel tried to get out when he realized how deep it all went.” I stared at her. “Then why didn’t he go to the police?” “He did,” a voice came from the doorway. Detective Ortmann entered, her weapon drawn, calm despite the chaos outside. “Quietly. Through federal channels. That’s why Düsseldorf was important.” Emilia looked at me. “In Düsseldorf, he met with their compliance officer. He thought he was going to uncover fraud. Instead, he discovered that the company’s chief legal officer had been covering up the operation for years.” “Who?” I asked. Emilia’s eyes filled with tears. She wasn’t looking at Ortmann. She was looking at Andreas. I slowly turned my head. Andreas Metz was standing motionless at the sink. His face was expressionless—no worry, no confusion, no denial. Just calculation. My voice broke. “Andreas?” Emilia pressed herself against the wall. “He was there that night when Daniel copied the files. Daniel didn’t know at first who was supplying the patient records to Rhein-Biotech. I did. I found emails on Andreas’s tablet. Contracts. Payments. Names.” Ortmann kept her gun pointed at him. “Dr. Metz, step away from the door.” Andreas smiled—and that smile was more terrifying than anything else that night. “You really should have stayed retired, Richard,” he said. The words hit me like a blade between the ribs. Everything in my mind rearranged—Andreas, insisting that I see Emilia first. Andreas, controlling the room. Andreas, processing the scans. Andreas, knowing exactly what had been discovered inside her. “The implant,” I said. “You put it in.” “Not personally,” he replied. “But yes. We needed to know where she’d run if she ran away.” Emilia began to cry silently. “I thought Daniel had set a trap for me. Andreas told me Daniel would betray me. He said if I talked, Daniel would die first.” “That’s why you said he wasn’t alone,” I whispered. She nodded. “Daniel got me out of the house tonight. He told me to take the files and come to you. Before I could leave town, someone grabbed me in the parking garage. I never saw his face. When I woke up, Andreas was there. He carved those words into my back and told me you’d blame Daniel. He wanted you to be angry. Distracted.” Rage surged through me. “You fucking bastard—” Andreas moved faster than I expected. He grabbed a metal oxygen cylinder and hurled it at Ortmann. Her shot missed. The bottle shattered the mirror, glass exploded all over the room. Andreas ran. Ortmann cursed and chased after him. I wanted to follow, but Emilia grabbed my sleeve.
“Dad—the files.” She pointed to the bandage stuck to her right side, near her ribs. Not her shoulder. Not the implant. Another hidden object. I ripped off the bandage. Underneath was a thin USB stick, sealed in plastic. Emilia whispered, “Daniel hid it with me before he sent me away.” Then my phone rang. It was Daniel. I answered on speakerphone. “Richard,” he said, tense and urgent, “don’t trust Metz. I’m in the hospital parking garage. I have copies of everything. Men are following me.” There was a crash behind him. Footsteps. “Daniel, listen to me,” I said. “Emilia is alive.” Silence. Then a choked breath. “Oh God.” “Come to the south stairwell,” Ortmann called from the corridor. “Now!” We started moving. Andreas had only gone about 30 meters before security and police surrounded him near the nurses’ station. He was lying on the floor in handcuffs when we reached the stairwell. Daniel burst in from downstairs—marked, shaken, but alive. The moment Emilia saw him, she collapsed. Not from fear. From relief. He crossed the landing and sank to his knees before her. He didn’t touch her until she nodded. Then he held her tight, as if she might vanish. “I thought you believed him,” he said. “I did,” she whispered. “Until he tried to kill me.” Ortmann took the USB drive and looked at all three of us. “That’s enough. Names, payments, study data, bribes. Metz is finished. And if this matches what Daniel has already given us, Rhein-Biotech is finished too.” Later, just before dusk—after the statements, after the surgeons had cleaned and stitched Emilia’s wounds, after the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) had taken Andreas Metz into custody—I sat by my daughter’s bed and watched her sleep. The revenge I had imagined never came as I had expected. My son-in-law wasn’t the monster. The monster had stood beside me for twenty years, carried my trust, and worked with me in operating rooms while treating human lives like inventory. Daniel quietly entered and handed me a coffee. “I know you hate that I kept things from you,” he said. “I hate that my daughter almost died because decent people waited too long to speak out.” He nodded once. “Justified.” I looked through the glass at Emilia—bandaged, but alive. Then I said words I never thought I’d say to him. “You saved her.” His eyes filled with tears. “She saved herself.” For the first time that night, I believed that there might still be something inside all of us that is worth saving.
