He paused outside room 712. The plaque beside the door didn't have a name, just the room number, but everyone on the floor knew who was inside. Raphael Gibson. Real estate magnate, billionaire, and currently a failing vessel of meat and bone succumbing to aggressive pancreatic cancer. The man owned half the commercial property in the tri-state area, but all the leverage in the world couldn't negotiate a truce with his own mutating cells. Dougal pushed the heavy oak door open. The room was expansive, featuring a sitting area with leather couches and a panoramic view of the city skyline. Its lights glittering like scattered diamonds against the black velvet of the night.
In the center of the room, elevated in a state-of-the-art bed, lay Gibson. He looked like a deflated balloon. His skin was the color of old parchment, pulled tight over the sharp angles of his cheekbones and jaw. Tubes snaked from his arms and his chest, tethering him to a bank of monitors that hummed and beeped, a digital choir singing the song of his fading vitals. "You're late." A voice rasped from the bed. It sounded like dry leaves scraping across pavement. Dougal checked his watch. "Shift change was 3 minutes ago, Mr. Gibson. I was getting your chart from the desk." "3 minutes is a lifetime when you're paying $10,000 a night for a room, Marshall." Gibson didn't open his eyes. His hands, bruised purple from endless needle sticks, twitched on the high thread count sheets. "But then, people in your tax bracket don't understand the value of time. You just punch a clock."
Dougal didn't sigh. He didn't react. He walked over to the IV pole and checked the drip rate of the morphine. He had spent 12 years in naval special warfare. He'd been screamed at by drill instructors, shot at by insurgents, and had held men as they bled out in the dust. The insults of a dying billionaire felt like the buzzing of a particularly tired gnat. "Pain levels?" Dougal asked, his voice low, steady, and entirely devoid of the patronizing baby talk many nurses adopted with the elderly. "Manageable," Gibson spat. "My throat is dry. Get me ice." Dougal moved to the small kitchenette in the corner of the suite. He scooped crushed ice into a plastic cup, added a tiny plastic spoon, and brought it back. He adjusted the bed, raising Gibson's head just enough so he wouldn't aspirate, and offered the spoon. Gibson knocked the spoon away. It clattered against the bedside table. "I can feed myself, damn it. I'm not an infant." "Never said you were," Dougal replied mildly. He set the cup down where Gibson could reach it.