“No,” I said. “It keeps her quiet. It keeps her from telling me what really happened.”

“You are letting your imagination run away with you,” he said. “We have a good life here. Why are you trying to ruin it?”

“A girl died, Nathan,” I said.

“It was an accident,” he snapped.

The sudden sharpness of his voice made me flinch, but I kept my grip on the phone.

“So there was a girl,” I said.

He realized his mistake immediately.

His eyes darted to the dark corners of the hallway, then back to my face.

“It was a complicated clinical trial,” Nathan said, his voice tight. “The patient had pre-existing conditions that were not disclosed to us.”

“But the dosage was wrong,” I said. “And you knew it.”

“The lead researcher made a calculation error,” Nathan said. “I was just a resident. If the truth had come out, the entire department would have been shut down.”

“So you helped him cover it up,” I said.

“I saved my career,” Nathan said. “I saved my mother from the stress of a public investigation. She was already showing early signs of illness.”