Story code: ST-001468
Part 2: The Next of Kin
The text message slid down the screen, a glaring white banner over the looping video of the concrete plaza: *Ambulance took him to Memorial East. The guy filming is following them. He’s live on ViewGrid right now.*
David stared at the glowing letters, his chest seizing as if the phantom heart attack had bridged the digital gap to strike him, too. He dropped the phone into the passenger seat and twisted the ignition key. The engine roared to life, drowning out the faint, tinny sound of the laughing narrator that had been haunting the cabin. David slammed the car into drive and rocketed out of the parking garage, his tires squealing against the painted concrete.
The drive to Memorial East Hospital was a blur of erratic lane changes and blaring horns. With every mile, David felt the heavy steel doors of his carefully constructed life being forced open. For three years, his absolute no-contact rule had been his religion. He had changed his phone number twice, moved to a different zip code, and blocked every flying monkey relative who tried to broker a peace treaty. He had built a quiet, boring, safe existence where nobody threw plates, nobody screamed until their vocal cords tore, and nobody used guilt as a weapon.
Now, he was racing back into the blast radius.
He pulled into the hospital’s emergency parking lot, abandoning his car in a chaotic spot near the ambulance bay. The automatic doors of the ER slid open, hitting him with a wall of frigid, antiseptic air and the dizzying glare of fluorescent lights. The waiting room was a sea of misery-crying children, coughing patients, and exhausted nurses.
David marched straight to the triage desk. His throat felt like sandpaper. “A man was just brought in,” he told the clerk behind the plexiglass. “Cardiac arrest, I think. Picked up near the downtown transit center.”
The clerk barely looked up from her monitor. “Name?”
David swallowed hard. Saying the name out loud felt like a binding contract, a summoning spell he had sworn never to speak again. “Richard Hall. I’m… I’m his son.”
The clerk typed for a moment, her face impassive. “He’s in trauma bay three. The doctors are stabilizing him. You’ll need to wait until someone comes out to speak with you.” She pointed a pen toward a cluster of vinyl chairs. “Have a seat. Are you the emergency contact?”
“I guess I am now,” David muttered.
He turned away from the desk and scanned the crowded room. Almost instantly, his blood ran cold.
Standing by the vending machines, completely ignoring the hospital’s posted signs about privacy, was a young man in a neon yellow windbreaker. He was holding a smartphone mounted on a motorized gimbal, speaking in hushed, dramatic tones to the camera lens. It was the narrator from the video. The voice was unmistakable-that same cruel, nasal pitch that had mocked his father’s collapse.
“Yeah, chat, we’re posted up at Memorial East,” the streamer whispered, leaning into the microphone clipped to his collar. “The karma king just got rolled back. We’re waiting to see if he survives the ultimate vibe check. Hit that subscribe button if you want the first update. The nurses won’t tell me anything because I’m not family, but we’re holding the line.”
David’s hands balled into fists. The urge to cross the room and smash the gimbal into the tiled floor was overwhelming. This stranger was actively monetizing the worst moment of his father’s life, treating a dying man like a zoo animal for digital tips. But David stayed frozen, pressing his back against the wall. If he intervened, the camera would pivot to him. He would become part of the content. He would be forever immortalized on the internet as the son of the screaming, collapsing boomer.
Before he could figure out how to hide, a doctor in dark blue scrubs pushed through double swinging doors, looking around the waiting area. “Family of Richard Hall?”
David stepped forward, his heart hammering against his ribs. The doctor guided him away from the main seating area, down a quiet hallway lined with supply carts.
“He suffered a massive myocardial infarction,” the doctor said, keeping her voice low. “We’ve administered clot-busting drugs, but his left anterior descending artery is completely occluded. We need to get him into the cath lab immediately to place a stent, possibly multiple. Because he’s currently incapacitated and unable to consent, we need you to sign off as his next of kin.”
Next of kin. The phrase felt like a trap closing around his ankle. “Will he survive?” David asked, his voice trembling.
“It’s touch and go,” the doctor admitted. “The time he spent on the pavement before the ambulance arrived… it wasn’t ideal. Every minute counts with heart muscle. I need your signature to proceed.”
A nurse appeared beside the doctor, holding an electronic tablet and a clear plastic belongings bag. “I have the consent forms ready,” the nurse said, handing David the tablet. “And these are the personal effects we recovered from his pockets and wrist.”
David stared at the plastic bag in the nurse’s hand. Inside was the heavy gold watch with the jagged dent on the bezel, a worn leather wallet, a set of keys, and a crumpled piece of printer paper.
David took the bag, his hands shaking. Through the clear plastic, he could easily read the bold black ink on the crumpled paper. It was a printed page from Google Maps. The starting point was his father’s house in the suburbs. The destination printed in large, aggressive font was David’s exact apartment building. There was a thick red circle drawn around David’s unit number in his father’s unmistakable handwriting.
The transit plaza where the video was filmed wasn’t just a random location. It was exactly halfway between the highway exit and David’s front door. His father hadn’t been out for a casual stroll. He had tracked David down. He had been coming to break the boundary by force.
The electronic tablet beeped in David’s other hand, demanding a signature to save the life of the man who was hunting him.
“Yo, chat, hold up!” a loud voice echoed down the hallway.
David snapped his head up. The streamer in the neon windbreaker had slipped past the waiting room doors and was marching down the corridor, the motorized gimbal swiveling to lock the camera lens dead center on David’s face.
“Are you the family?” the streamer asked loudly, a hungry grin spreading across his face as he pushed the lens closer. “Hey, live viewers, we got the son! Tell the stream, man, what’s it like knowing your dad is the biggest joke on the internet today?”
The doctor stepped forward to block the camera, but the streamer easily sidestepped her, trapping David against the wall with the tablet buzzing in one hand and the terrifying map in the other.