Chapter 864 - 864: Creel Kept His Old Signature

The request found D. Creel through Mercy General's retiree telephone service.

It never showed Caelin the number. His aide entered the incident code, Dorsey entered her administrator badge, and an automated operator asked whether the call concerned benefits, misconduct, or death.

Dorsey chose misconduct.

"That choice opens a formal review under Creel's employee record," hospital counsel said through Station Four's speaker. "Any statement he makes becomes part of the hospital file."

Caelin pulled his chair closer to the monitor. "Does it suspend the old authority while the review remains open?"

"Only the part carried by his signature. Emergency Authority Zero remains separate."

That was the split Ty remembered. Creel had signed the use. The authority above him had sealed consent. Time had buried the hand and kept the code clean.

Dorsey pressed the call button.

The retiree service rang twice before a man answered. A television played somewhere behind him, followed by the scrape of a chair and the click of a door closing.

"This is Daniel Creel. Who opened a misconduct call on my hospital record?"

Dorsey gave her name, title, and the Station Four incident number. Then she read the time attached to the old signature.

Creel stopped her at 23:08.

"Is this about the Hamberton transfer from Lower Hold?"

Ty's shoulders tightened. Creel remembered the transfer before Dorsey gave him the body label.

"It concerns that transfer and a new request using the same authority chain," Dorsey said. "The new request is trying to treat your old signature as present witness contact."

Creel asked her to repeat the last sentence. Dorsey did.

Paper moved near his telephone. He returned after nearly a minute with his retiree identification number and asked hospital counsel to confirm the call was recorded.

"I authorized that transfer before the end of my night shift," Creel said. "I witnessed a routing board, two staff assignments, and an emergency ward accepting the cart. I never saw the person on that cart."

Dorsey asked how he remembered one transfer after so many years.

"The orderly filed a safety complaint before breakfast. I spent the rest of my shift explaining why her pencil note stayed on my board while the cart left the floor."

Creel's voice tightened around the last few words. Mercy had moved him to daytime scheduling for thirty days. When two supervisors quit, the hospital put him back on nights and closed the complaint as retraining completed.

"They needed a body in my chair more than they needed an answer," he said. "I accepted the chair when they gave it back."

Ty kept that beside the signature. Creel had paid thirty days and then taken the same authority again. Neither part erased the other.

Zunoder heard him from the corridor. "The old signature still confirms preservation routing under staff absence."

Omina kept Creel's admission where it belonged. The signature confirmed an authorized transfer. It carried no firsthand body condition and no present witness contact.

Creel heard another voice through Dorsey's speaker and asked who was in the room.

"Hospital security, two relief workers, hospital counsel by telephone, and a public office reviewing the false appointment," Dorsey said. "The protected parties are listening through a separate proceeding."

"Then keep my home address away from every one of them."

Dorsey entered the privacy restriction before continuing. Caelin's aide closed the search window she had used to reach the retiree service. No one copied the private number.

The request opened on Creel's side while they spoke. He described a single question with two answers. It asked whether the original lower hand confirmed current witness unavailability.

Yes would let the authority proceed. No would mark his original signature disputed.

"Those answers are dishonest in opposite directions, so I will choose neither one," Creel said. "The old signature is mine, and this current witness has nothing to do with me."

Hospital counsel found an attachment path under employee incident review. It allowed Creel to preserve the historical signature while denying any new use. Opening it required a sworn statement and a review of whether he had ignored the contact deferral and the night orderly's check request.

Creel took longer with that consequence.

The television stayed quiet behind him. Ty could hear a refrigerator motor and the man's hand moving over paper.

"What happens to my retiree coverage during the review?" Creel asked.

"Your current coverage continues while the employee review remains open," hospital counsel said. "If the hospital finds deliberate record falsification, it can seek repayment of some retirement benefits. I cannot promise the finding."

Creel breathed near the receiver, once, then moved away from it.

Ty wanted him to refuse. Refusal would give the old signature a simple enemy. Creel could become the man who had signed, hidden, and protected himself when the same paper reached him years later.

That man would be easier to hate. Creel returned to the call with a pen clicking between his fingers.

"Open the sworn attachment and leave my old signature where it is," he said.

Caelin's aide asked why he wanted to preserve it.

"Because I wrote it. I can limit what it means today without pretending another hand held my pen that night."

The answer landed harder than a denial.

Ty looked toward Zunoder's borrowed face. The body had carried Hollis out of danger. Creel had moved the old cart toward an emergency ward. Both actions could remain true without owning the person caught inside them.

"Keep his transfer authorization on the old record," Ty told Omina. "Cut every road from that signature into the witness request today."

Omina entered Ty's limit. Zunoder objected only to the word every.

"The signature still supports the designed response purpose under emergency conditions," he said. "A current refusal cannot rewrite that historical function."

Ty gave him the narrow truth. "Then keep the old function beside the check that never happened. Creel still cannot witness anyone for us today."

Zunoder studied him before accepting the split. It strengthened the old purpose record and killed the easier present claim.

Hospital counsel read each sworn line to Creel. He confirmed the transfer signature. He confirmed he had relied on a deceased marker and emergency ward acceptance. He confirmed he had not seen the body, heard the subject, contacted family, or witnessed consent.

The final line denied any use of his signature as current contact, witness confirmation, or continuation authority.

Creel asked to add one sentence of his own.

"The night orderly requested a condition check before release, and my shift allowed the override to remove that request from the transfer path."

The staff-safety seal held N. Vale's full identity closed. Creel's statement named only the role and his own failure as supervisor.

Dorsey warned him that the sentence expanded the misconduct review.

"It should, because the pencil note was on my board before the cart moved."

Creel signed through the retiree service. Dorsey and hospital counsel countersigned from Mercy General. Caelin's aide attached Renee's incident report without adding Tessa, Nora, Mason, Hollis, or any other proposed witness.

The false interview returned to Station Four one last time with an empty witness field. Renee's refusal remained attached beside Creel's denial of extension. Emergency Authority Zero kept its old place above the transfer, but it had no current person willing to complete the contact.

Omina closed the direct witness lane.

Creel stayed on the telephone long enough to receive his review number. Before ending the call, he asked Dorsey whether the person from the old cart was alive.

Dorsey looked toward Ty's separate feed. She let him choose the answer.

"He is listening to this call from a protected location," Ty said. "That is all Creel gets from me tonight."

Dorsey repeated the sentence exactly.

Creel accepted it without asking for forgiveness. The telephone service disconnected him and left the review open under his name.

At the shelter, Jade pushed away from the table.

Her damaged eye had begun to bleed again. This time the blood ran white across her knuckles.

Kieran the Hunter reached her first and caught her before her knees struck the floor. The light above the cafeteria door cut out, followed by the fixture over the cots. Frost climbed from the floor into the gate bars.

Jade gripped Kieran's sleeve and forced the words through her teeth.

"Tell Ty the Reaper found the road we closed."