Chapter 3 - THE GHOST IN THE ICU
By 8:00 AM, the morning sun was cutting through the heavy smog outside St. Jude’s Hospital.
I stood behind the double-paned glass of Room 412, watching the rhythmic rise and fall of Elena Santos’s chest. She looked far smaller in a hospital gown than she had on the cold marble floor of the fourteenth floor. IV lines snaked into her thin wrists, and a plastic oxygen mask covered half her face, fogging up with every labored breath.
In the corner of the room, sitting on a vinyl visitor's chair, was Maya.
She had washed her face in the lobby bathroom. Her dark hair was neatly combed, though she still wore the same oversized black coat over her red dress. She was holding a box of crayons my driver had bought her from a gas station across the street, quietly drawing a picture of a sun on a crumpled piece of paper.
I knocked softly on the doorframe and stepped inside.
Maya looked up instantly. Her green eyes weren't filled with fear anymore; they held a quiet, solemn trust that made my chest feel tight.
"Is my mom waking up?" she asked softly.
"The doctor says she’s sleeping because the medicine is working," I said, crouching down next to her chair just as I had done in the hotel lobby twelve hours earlier. "Have you had breakfast?"
She nodded, pointing to a half-eaten blueberry muffin sitting on the bedside table. "The nurse gave it to me. She said you paid for everything."
"I did," I said. "And I'm going to make sure nobody ever takes your mother's pay again."
A soft, raspy cough came from the bed.
Elena’s eyes fluttered open. She looked around the bright white room in a state of sudden, blind panic, her fingers clutching at the hospital sheets.
"Maya..." she rasped through the oxygen mask, her voice barely a whisper. "Maya, where are we... I have to finish the rooms... Mr. Victor said if I miss another shift..."
"Shh," I said, stepping closer to the bed and gently placing my hand over her trembling shoulder. "You aren't at work, Elena. You're in the hospital. And Mr. Victor is in handcuffs."
Elena stared at me. Tears welled up in the corners of her bloodshot eyes, spilling over her pale cheeks.
"Who... who are you?" she choked out.
"My name is Gabriel Vance," I replied. "I own the hotel."
Elena’s body went rigid with terror. She tried to sit up, her oxygen mask slipping down her chin. "Mr. Vance... please... don't fire me. I work hard... I swear I clean every corner... Maya was just waiting for me... she didn't mean to trespass..."
It took everything inside me to keep my posture steady. This woman was dying of pneumonia, her body broken by months of forced labor, and her first instinct was to apologize for her seven-year-old child existing in my lobby.
"You are not fired, Elena," I said, my voice firm and absolute. "Your back-pay, all four months of it, has been deposited into a private account in your name, multiplied by ten. You will stay in this hospital until you are completely healed. And when you walk out, you will never scrub another floor again."
May you like
Elena stared at me, speechless, as a deep sob broke from her chest. Maya scrambled up onto the bed, wrapping her small arms around her mother’s neck.
"He told the truth, Mommy," Maya whispered into her mother’s hair. "He stopped the bad man."
