I SAW MARK’S NAME ON THE HOSPITAL BOARD AND EVERYTHING WENT COLD
I was just walking past the nurses’ station when I saw the name on the board and my blood ran instantly cold. Mark Miller. Room 312. It couldn’t possibly be him, not after yesterday, after that awful sound. My chest tightened, a sudden, sharp pain like I’d been hit. This felt so wrong.
My feet just seemed to move entirely on their own, pulling me down the long, quiet corridor towards the room number. The air here smelled so intensely sterile, so empty and wrong, and outside 312, two people from HR were standing there, talking low under the harsh fluorescent light.
I ducked back down the hall, pressing hard against the cool wall, trying desperately to hear their words over the distant hospital sounds. Through the glass panel, I saw Mark inside, impossibly pale and still, hooked up to tubes and monitors that hummed faintly. I heard one of them say, voice tight and cold, “He shouldn’t have gone poking around.”
The other replied immediately, voice hard and flat, devoid of sympathy, “Yeah, well, now he won’t be asking anything. Problem solved.” My breath hitched. This wasn’t an accident. It was connected directly to that meeting, that noise I heard… everything just clicked into place.
Just as I heard their words, the person by the bed turned and looked straight at me.
👇 Full story continued in the comments…My blood froze completely. For a split second, the HR representative, a woman named Carol with a perpetually tight bun and eyes that could strip paint, simply stared. Then, a slow, knowing smile spread across her face, utterly devoid of warmth. The kind of smile that made my stomach clench tighter than my chest already was. The other HR person turned too, his expression shifting from blank to calculating in an instant.
Panic seized me. I didn’t wait for them to speak, didn’t wait for them to move. I just turned and ran, not back the way I came towards the nurses’ station, but towards the emergency exit at the far end of the corridor, the fire door slamming shut behind me with a dull thud. I stumbled down the stairs, my heart hammering against my ribs, the sterile hospital air replaced by the dusty, unused smell of the stairwell.
Outside, I gulped down the cooler evening air, leaning against the brick wall of the hospital, trying to regain control. Mark… in Room 312… ‘Poking around’… ‘Problem solved’. The meeting yesterday. Mark had been asking pointed questions about the sudden disappearance of the R&D budget line item, asking where the money had *really* gone. He’d been persistent, even when the explanation was flimsy. Then that awful noise, a sickening crunch and a cry cut short, heard from the hallway near the seldom-used storage room after the meeting. I’d dismissed it then, attributing it to movers or maintenance, something innocent. But now… paired with Mark’s state and those words from HR… it wasn’t an accident. They silenced him.
And they saw me. They knew I heard them.
My phone felt heavy in my hand. Who could I call? The police? What would I say? “My colleague is in the hospital after asking questions, and HR people who look like they’d eat their young said something suspicious”? They’d laugh me out of the station. The company? Reporting it internally would be corporate suicide, especially now that they knew I was listening.
No. This wasn’t just about Mark anymore. It was about me too. They silenced Mark because he found something. I had to find out what that was, before they came for me. I had to finish what Mark started, not just for him, but to protect myself. The sterile air, the humming machines, the cold words – they weren’t just part of a hospital visit. They were a warning. And I wasn’t going to ignore it. I squared my shoulders, the panic giving way to a cold, hard resolve. I needed to find out what Mark knew, and make sure it didn’t stay buried with him.