The Captain's Quiet War

Captain Ines Marlow came home from Kandahar with a limp and a fellowship. Six weeks later a veteran died on her ward with three times the morphine ceiling in his blood and her signature on the order. She didn't write it. She knows her own hand. The hospital wants a quiet resignation. The criminal referral arrives anyway. Only the night nurse, Ozzy Reyes, saw the pharmacy tech pull the vial — and he has spent four years being told he isn't credible. Two people who served their country and were used by it start tracing Tuesday-night doses through a hospice floor, and every chart they pull points up the chain to the one person Ines trusted with her career. Nobody dies spectacularly in this hospital. They just stop waking up.