KIARA'S POV
Kiara walked down the halls in no particular hurry. She knew there was no point in getting there early if she wanted to catch Karen in the act.
It should be noted she wasn't angry with Karen, quite the opposite. She was excited. It had been awhile since the last time one of her residents had tried to run an experiment in secret and that one had paid dividends for the hospital once she'd taken control of it.
That was one of the things the old guard hadn't understood about her management style, her focus on the residents. Not that they'd ever understood her. If they had, they wouldn't have hired her in the first place.
She'd known she was a diversity hire from the moment the job was offered to her. There was no way that a black woman as young as she was would have ever been offered the job otherwise. No, the old white men had hired her so they could tout their progressive hiring practices before the media. Then when she'd inevitably start to break under the pressure, they'd offer to 'assist' her, in exchange for some 'favors.' Then once they'd finished fucking her both physically and mentally, they'd sit back, let her collapse and then remove her, using her failure as proof that black women just can't handle the responsibilities that belong to white men.
It must have really burned them when she'd taken to the job like a fish to water.
Their stubbornness when it came to acknowledging reality though was quite useful. They were so confident that any day now she was going to come crawling to them for help that they didn't even notice as she slowly moved her own people into the proper positions. The look on their faces when they realized they couldn't stop her from ousting them from the board had been priceless.
And now that they were gone, she could put the policies SHE wanted in place.
Case in point, the residents. She'd given them a far greater leash then most hospitals would have allowed. Her reasoning for this was simple, innovation.
People often forget just how important innovation is to being at the forefront of your field. That wasn't to say that incremental improvement was a bad thing. That was how most science worked. But if you truly wanted to make your mark in history, then you needed to break conventional thinking in half.
The problem was that innovation was usually something that was the purview of the young. Sure, occasionally an older gentleman would make some amazing breakthrough, but it was usually the newbies, the people who hadn't been indoctrinated into the idea that this was just THE WAY THINGS WERE that were the ones who made the big leaps forward.
Of course, most of these ideas were wretched, the status quo was the way it was for a reason after all. But every now and then, someone had an idea that was revolutionary and Kiara planned to be there on the ground floor when it happened.
Which brought her to Karen. It had been obvious from the first day that Karen was planning something. She'd been holding on to the straight and narrow, but when she thought people weren't looking, she'd been working on something. She had a little notebook that clearly wasn't being used to take notes on what she'd been learning as a resident. In addition she'd been looking into exactly what drugs they had in storage. For what purpose Kiara didn't know, but she was looking forward to finding out.
And tonight she was going to do just that. Karen had been eyeing the shift schedules quite a bit recently. It hadn't taken her long to realize that there was a tiny gap where one could get some tests done without anyone watching if one were inclined to do that. Kiara didn't actually look at the work schedule to find that out of course, she already knew the exact time it was, since she'd been the one to have it put there in the first place.
Now that things were set up, it was a simple job of walking in on her in the middle of whatever experiment she was running. Catching her like that would force Karen to tell her exactly what it was she was trying to do. Once she knew that Kiara would have a better handle on whether to shut her down entirely, let her keep doing it on her own time, or hopefully whether she should put the hospital's resources behind her.
Obviously it was the later prospect she was hoping for. If this turned out be gamebreaking, then she'd happily put not just the hospital's money, but her own as well behind it. Then, once they got FDA approval, she could relax, sit back and let the money pour in. So, keeping her fingers crossed, she opened the door to the operator's room of the brain scan.
What greeted her on the other side was chaos. Karen was screaming in pain as she writhed on the floor while holding her head. A quick glance through the glass showed that in the scanning room itself there seemed to be a patient who was similarly screaming out while holding his head. Strangely there also seemed to be a girl dressed up in some sexy nurse cosplay who was desperately holding onto the patient, trying to find something she can do to help him.
However before she could really react to just what she had seen, the incident ended. Both Karen and the patient suddenly stopped screaming. The patient seemed to relax and try to gingerly check himself to see if he was okay, while Karen quickly leaped up from the ground to check on him.
Kiara didn't know exactly what had been going on here, but clearly it was far beyond what she could classify as acceptable risk. Running a few experiments in her spare time was allowable, but endangering the life of a patient, that just could not be allowed. Seeing as Karen still hadn't seemed to notice she was here, she gave a little cough to get her attention. Once she did she could see Karen slowly turn her head, her face showing the expected sight of horror at being caught by her boss.
"So, do you want to explain what all of this is to me?"
DERRICK'S POV
Derrick lay in Sarah's arms as she clung onto him, seemingly consoling him but really just reassuring herself that he was okay. Not that he blamed her as he wasn't exactly sure how okay he was himself.
Everything had been going fine right up until the point Sarah had poured the liquid in the second vial on his arm. As soon as it came into contact with him, he felt the same burning sensation that he had three months ago when the chemicals had first been poured onto his head. This time however the burning sensation felt stronger, likely due to it not being diluted by two other chemicals. Then his brain tried to rip itself out of his skull.
HIs body began jerking uncontrollably, though it was somewhat abated by the fact that he was currently restrained. However Sarah, seeing his condition, immediately rubbed off the liquid on his arm. When that didn't solve the problem she removed his restraints. Derrick's hands flew to his head, as though trying to somehow keep his head from tearing his head apart.
In a strange way it felt like he was trying to get through a door that had been slammed shut in his face. The problem was that he was being blasted with water as he attempted to do this and every second that door remained shut, the pressure on the hose would increase. Derrick didn't know what to do but instinctively he felt that if that door didn't give soon, he'd be crushed under the pressure.
Then something changed. He didn't know what exactly, but suddenly the pressure on his head stopped. There was still some residual aches, but he could finally see the world around him again. Once he recovered enough to pay attention to anything but Sarah whimpering in fear for him, he looked through the glass to the operator's room and saw his sister being yelled at by some black woman in a suit. It didn't take a genius to figure out what was going on. They'd been caught.
He quickly motioned for Sarah to stay where she was, though given her current mental state he wasn't sure if she'd actually obey him, before rushing out of the room and into the control room where he knew his sister was.
When he got there he saw his sister just standing there, her head down as the lady in question was yelling at her. That yelling stopped abruptly when she heard the door opening behind her as she turned to see Derrick rushing in. Her eyes showed a bit of surprise, so he decided to barrel forward before she could recover and take control of the conversation. "This was my fault!" he yelled as quickly as he could.
