09/01/2025
I FOUND MY SISTER'S ROOM—BUT SHE WASN’T IN THE BED
The nurse said Room 214.
I remember because I repeated it back to her twice. “Two fourteen, right?” She nodded, distracted by her screen, like it was just another patient, just another night. But I knew something was off the second I stepped onto the floor. It was too quiet. Not hospital quiet—wrong quiet.
When I walked in, the bed was made. Neatly. Tucked corners, untouched pillow. The kind of tidy that screams no one’s been here.
But I had the text. “They’re finally admitting me. Come quick.”
So where the hell was Kendra?
I hit redial on my phone for the third time, pacing between the bed and the window. Voicemail again. My heart was pounding, not from fear exactly—more like this low-grade panic that had been building all week. Kendra had been acting weird. She wouldn’t say what the tests were for. She just kept brushing me off with, “It’s probably nothing.”
But this… this wasn’t nothing.
I cornered a night nurse and practically barked her name. “Kendra Bell. She’s supposed to be in this room. Where is she?”
The woman hesitated just a second too long.
“We transferred her earlier,” she said finally. “Downstairs.”
“Downstairs where?”
“Observation.”
“What kind of observation?”
Her lips parted, then pressed shut again. “Family’s not allowed right now. You’ll have to call in the morning.”
She turned and walked off.
I stood in the hallway for a few seconds, then headed back into the room. That’s when I noticed it—her phone, wedged between the mattress and the rail.
The last text wasn’t to me.
It was to a number saved as “Larkspur.”
No first name. No emoji. Just a single word.
“Done.”⬇️