Chapter 128: S7E3: The Doctor Asked to Repeat the Sin
The door to Aelyth’s hotel room clicked shut behind Berg, a sound of finality that seemed to echo in the minimalist space. He had practically thrown the notebook at her, his eyes skittering over the view of rainy Reykjavík rooftops instead of meeting her gaze.
“I didn’t read it,” he’d muttered, the words tight, already halfway back to the hallway. He fled before she could respond, his boots a heavy, receding rhythm on the carpeted corridor. The shame was a scent he left behind, sour and human.
Alone, the silence was a different creature. It was anticipatory. The only sounds were the distant swish of a car on wet asphalt and the subliminal hum of the climate grid. Aelyth stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, the glitter-coated notebook inert in her hands. It was a ridiculous object, lightweight, adorned with peeling star-shaped stickers. A child’s artifact in a game with adult stakes.
She moved to a sleek steel table and sat, placing the notebook before her with deliberate care. The cover squeaked faintly as she opened it.
The first pages were exactly as Iva had described. A colorful, chaotic lexicon of care. Otar – mint tea, no honey. Anjala – only uses black markers. Celestin – hates the silence, put radio on low, classic rock. Berg – licorice = instant bad mood. Smiley faces, little hearts drawn around names. Lists of birthdays with exclamation points. It was the architecture of a specific kind of power—the power to make someone feel singularly seen for the price of a hot beverage.
Aelyth turned the pages, her eyes scanning with algorithmic speed. The tone began to shift, almost imperceptibly. The entries grew longer, less about preferences, more about patterns.
Berg again today, lingering at the nurse’s station for 47 minutes after his shift ended. Asked three times if I needed help with the heavy supply cart. Iva mentioned he’d switched rotations with Gunnar. Again.
Olaf came by, not visiting hours. Said he was ‘in the neighborhood.’ Asked if Edith had been in to see Dr. Skellir. I said she had a consultation. He asked how long she was in there. I said I didn’t clock it. He laughed but his eyes didn’t. Bought me a terrible coffee from the vending machine.
Edith’s fourth visit this month. Complaint: ‘generalized anxiety, insomnia.’ Sat with her for 20 mins before appt. She asked if I thought Dr. Skellir took her seriously. I said of course. She looked relieved. More relieved than after the meditation app I showed her.
Iva lost the keycard to the pharmacy anteroom again. Found it in the staff fridge, next to her yogurt. She laughed it off. Said she was ‘distracted.’ Covered for her with Logistics. Again.
Aelyth’s finger traced the neat, looping script. This was no longer a manual of kindness. It was a schematic. Each entry was a pin in a map, marking points of emotional vulnerability, professional negligence, and obsessive fixation. Lisabet didn’t just observe; she connected. She saw Berg’s jealousy as a logistical fact. Olaf’s suspicion as a behavioral data point. Iva’s negligence as a predictable variable. Edith’s transference as a visible symptom.
Then, near the end of the most recent entries, Aelyth’s scanning gaze halted.
The page was dated two weeks prior. The usual rainbows and stars bordered a more densely written note.
Late shift. Edith came in at 21:45, no appointment. Looked flushed, agitated. Said she ‘needed to talk to Dr. Skellir urgently.’ He was in his office doing paperwork. I went to tell him. He paused for a long time. Said to send her in.
At 22:30, Iva was leaving. Skellir caught her in the hall. I was restocking the linens closet. I heard him. He asked her to backdate the system log for Edith’s visit to 19:30, and change the reason code from ‘walk-in psycho-social’ to ‘follow-up, somatic symptom review.’ Said the system auto-flags too many late psycho-socials for review. Said it was just paperwork. Iva said ‘okay’ in that little voice she uses when she’s confused but doesn’t want to admit it. He said, ‘Just enter it tomorrow, no rush.’
They didn’t see me. I didn’t move until they were gone. Edith left at 23:10. She didn’t look agitated anymore. She looked… quiet.
Aelyth read the entry twice. The air in the hotel room seemed to grow thinner, sharper.
Here it was. Not a feeling. Not a suspicion. A record.
Skellir had altered an official log. He’d subverted a protocol designed to catch exactly this kind of irregular, after-hours, emotionally charged consultation. He’d exploited Iva’s malleability to do it. And Lisabet, the cheerful, harmless curator of hearts, had borne silent witness, transcribing the breach into her starry notebook.
Aelyth closed the cover slowly. The glitter scraped against her fingertips.
This changed the calculus entirely. Berg’s assault, Iva’s compromised access—those were levers of coercion, useful for turning individuals. But this… this was a fault line in the integrity of the system itself. A doctor, abusing his authority and a subordinate’s trust, to conceal the nature of a patient encounter. A patient who was emotionally entangled with him.
It was no longer about gathering leverage. It was about holding evidence.
She rose, notebook in hand, and walked back to the window. The city lights shimmered through the rivulets of rain on the glass, blurred and promising. A plan, cold and perfect, began to assemble itself in her mind. Skellir was now a node of profound vulnerability. Edith was the access point. Olaf was the unconscious pressure source. Iva was the unwitting accomplice. And Lisabet… Lisabet was the unassuming archivist who had just handed Aelyth the keys to all of them.
She intended to use it.
A soft chime echoed in the room—her secure comm, linked to a frequency only one other person used with any regularity. She didn’t need to check the identifier. She lifted the slender device to her ear.
“Yes.”
“How’s the Icelandic air?” Varek’s voice was a warm, familiar rumble, tinny through the connection. “Bracing, I hope. Full of interesting secrets.”
Aelyth’s eyes remained on the notebook. “It’s proving conductive,” she said, her voice even. “The local systems have interesting… feedback loops. A doctor is compromising his position. The details are recorded.”
A pause on the line, the faint sound of him shifting, perhaps smiling. “Recorded by you, or recorded by the system?”
“By a third party. A chronicler of small things. It’s more compelling that way.”
“It always is,” Varek agreed, his tone one of genuine appreciation. “A self-documenting flaw is a beautiful thing. Saves so much time on construction. What’s the emotional weather?”
“Stormy. Jealousy. Dependency. Professional vanity. Simple fear.” She listed them like ingredients. “The conditions are ideal.”
“Good.” Another pause, this one heavier. “Aelyth. Kelmen is making inquiries. He’s noticed your extended terrestrial focus. He’s framing it as a concern for your… alignment.”
Kelmen. The name was a pebble dropped into her calm. She could see his emerald-blue skin, the possessive linger of his gaze. “My alignment is not his jurisdiction.”
“He’s styling it as a concern for Laurian purity. The usual legacy talk. Your father is listening, politely.” Varek’s message was clear: Larothus was hearing the prince out, which was itself a signal. “You may want to accelerate your timeline. A definitive result would be a persuasive counter-argument.”
A definitive result. She looked at the notebook. She had one, coalescing in her hands.
“Understood,” she said. “Tell my father the local audit is proceeding. Yield will be higher than projected.”
“I’ll tell him.” She could hear the smile in his voice again, a private, shared thing. “Be careful, Aelyth. Doctors who break rules for love are the most dangerous kind. They have everything to lose.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s what makes them useful.”
She ended the call. The room settled back into its quiet hum. Outside, the rain intensified, sheeting down the glass. Aelyth placed the notebook squarely in the center of the steel table, where it glowed under the recessed lighting like an exhibit.
Then she moved to the room’s comm panel and tapped a sequence. A connection tone buzzed once before it was picked up.
“Landspítali, front desk,” a nasal voice answered.
“This is Aelyth Larothis, with the Interstellar Health Compliance review. I need to schedule a follow-up observation with Dr. Skellir Anthonysson at his earliest convenience tomorrow. Regarding patient Edith Duadottir’s ongoing care log.” She let the institutional jargon sit in the air, heavy and official. “Please inform him it’s a routine spot-check. But it must be tomorrow.”
A brief, flustered rustle of papers. “Of course. I’ll check his schedule and message you with a time.”
“Thank you.”
She switched the panel off. Routine spot-check. The words were benign, sterile.
Skellir would hear them and feel a jolt. He would scramble, checking logs, rehearsing stories, maybe even contacting Iva. He would become unstable, readable. A crack would widen.
And Aelyth would be there, notebook in hand, ready to measure the depth of the fall.
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Landspítali hospital area, Reykjavík, Iceland — Skellir’s consultation room.
Skellir’s consultation room smelled of antiseptic and the faint, vanilla-like scent of the stress diffuser he kept on the shelf. Sunlight, thin and weak, strained through the slatted blinds, painting bars of pallid light across the laminated floor. He was pretending to read a chart when Aelyth entered, his posture too casual, the smile he offered a fraction too wide.
“Compliance review, right?” he said, gesturing to a chair. “Makes it sound like I’m being audited by the tax office. Coffee? It’s terrible, but it’s hot.”
Aelyth sat, placing the glittering notebook on the edge of his desk. She did not smile back. “This concerns patient Edith Duadottir. Her visit on the eighteenth. At twenty-one forty-five.”
Skellir’s eyes flicked to the notebook, then away. He leaned back, steepling his fingers. “Edith. Yes. She has anxiety. Sometimes it crests in the evenings. She came in distressed. I provided a consult.”
“The log shows a follow-up for somatic symptoms at nineteen thirty,” Aelyth said, her voice devoid of inflection. “The entry was made the following day. By Nurse Iva. Under your instruction.”
The room felt suddenly smaller. The hum of the computer tower grew loud. Skellir’s affable mask tightened at the corners. “The system flags late-night psycho-social consults for automatic review. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare. Edith didn’t need a flag on her file, she needed someone to tell her she wasn’t having a heart attack. I simplified the paperwork to protect her from the system’s own clumsiness.”
“You changed the reason code,” Aelyth stated. “You delayed the entry. You used a subordinate with a documented tendency towards procedural error to execute the alteration. She believed she was helping a patient.”
“She was helping!” Skellir’s voice rose, then he smoothed it, forcing a tone of reasoned patience. “Look, it’s about care. The human element. The code in the computer matters less than the calm in the room. Iva understands that. She’s about care, not codes.”
Aelyth watched him. She let the silence expand, letting him hear the flimsiness of his own words. “You protected the patient,” she finally said. “And you protected yourself. A flagged file triggers oversight. Oversight would examine why a patient with non-urgent somatic complaints requires repeated, after-hours consultations with the same doctor. It would examine the doctor’s notes, looking for deviations. For emotional transference. For the point where reassurance becomes something else.”
Skellir stood up, turning his back to her, looking out the window at the grey car park. His shoulders were rigid. “That’s a hell of an insinuation.”
“It is a sequence of facts,” Aelyth corrected. “The altered record is one. Your reliance on Iva’s loyalty is another. Edith Duadottir’s pattern of seeking you out for non-medical reassurance is a third. You have built a private channel outside the protocol. The reason is currently irrelevant. The existence of the channel is not.”
He turned, his face flushed. “What do you want?”
“I want to see the boundary you claim exists.” Aelyth leaned forward slightly, the bioluminescent channels along her neck pulsing with a soft, emerald light. “Call her. Now. Tell her you need to see her again. Today.”
Skellir stared. “That’s… unethical. To summon a patient unnecessarily…”
“Is it more unethical than falsifying her records?” Aelyth picked up the notebook, holding it as evidence. “This is not a debate. It is a verification. Perform the act you claim is purely professional. With me as witness.”
He understood then. The cruelty was exquisite. It was a test of his own performance. To call would be to admit the relationship had a channel outside scheduled appointments. To refuse would be to admit he couldn’t trust himself to perform under observation. He was pinned.
His hand went to the phone on his desk. It looked suddenly archaic, a heavy lump of plastic. He picked up the receiver, the cord coiling like a viper. His finger hovered over the buttons. He knew her number by heart.
He dialed.
Each tone was a stab. The phone rang once, twice. Aelyth did not move, her alien gaze fixed on him, recording every micro-expression—the twitch under his eye, the dry swallow.
“Hello?” Edith’s voice came through, tinny and sweet with static.
“Edith. Hi. It’s Skellir.” His voice changed. It dropped, becoming warmer, porous, a tone meant to convey safe harbor. It was the voice from the darkened office at twenty-three ten, not the voice for a sunlit compliance review.
“Skellir! Is everything okay?” Her concern was immediate, laced with a familiar, anxious pleasure.
“Everything’s fine. More than fine.” He laughed, a soft, chuckling sound that was meant to disarm. “I was just reviewing your file, and I had a thought about those sleep patterns. I’ve got a cancellation now. I know it’s short notice, but if you could pop in, we could try to get ahead of it. I hate the thought of you worrying through another night.”
The silence on Edith’s end was charged. Aelyth could almost hear the calculations: the rearranged schedule, the excuse for Olaf, the flutter of being chosen, being needed.
“Now? Really? I… yes. Yes, I can be there in twenty minutes. Is that alright?”
“Perfect,” Skellir said, and the word was too gentle, too intimate for the sterile room. “I’ll see you soon. Don’t rush.”
He hung up. The click was deafening.
He did not look at Aelyth. He stared at the phone in its cradle as if it had betrayed him. He had just proven her point with devastating clarity. The professional boundary had dissolved in the space of a call, replaced by a urgent, personal summons she could not refuse. He had heard his own mistake speak, and the sound of it had hollowed him out.
Aelyth stood, retrieving her notebook. “The audit is complete,” she said, her voice once again a neutral instrument. She turned and walked to the door.
As her hand touched the handle, Skellir found his voice, a shattered thing. “What happens now?”
She paused, glancing back. “Now,” she said, “you wait for your patient.”
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Landspítali hospital area, Reykjavík, Iceland — quiet waiting corridor near Skellir’s consultation rooms.
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Landspítali hospital area, Reykjavík, Iceland — quiet waiting corridor near Skellir’s consultation rooms.
Edith arrived in thirteen minutes. Her steps were a quick, scuffing beat on the linoleum, a hair’s breadth from a run. She clutched a worn canvas bag to her chest like a shield, a folded piece of paper—the latest symptom list—peeking from its mouth. Her breath came in shallow puffs that fogged the cold air slightly, and her eyes darted past Aelyth toward Skellir’s door immediately, drawn by a magnetic worry. Or want.
Aelyth materialized from the shadow of a water cooler, intercepting her path without seeming to move. “Edith Duadottir.”
Edith jerked to a stop, blinking. Recognition flickered, mixed with confusion. The woman from the compliance review. The one with the impossible eyes. “Oh. Hello. I have an appointment, I’m just—”
“A word.” It wasn’t a request. Aelyth guided her, with just the subtle pressure of her presence, a few steps away from the door, into a recessed alcove lined with empty chairs. The hum of a vending machine across the hall filled the space.
“Is there a problem?” Edith’s fingers tightened on her bag. “With my file? Skellir said the review was just routine.”
“It is.” Aelyth studied her: the faded jeans, the soft sweater with a pill of wool on the sleeve, the honest, anxious face already primed for bad news. “Your cooperation is required for the next phase. You will go into that room. You will tell Dr. Skellir you need to be admitted. For observation. For any reason he will accept.”
The words landed softly, with the weight of dead stars.
Edith stared. Aelyth expected the flutter of panic, the protest, the barrage of questions about liability and fear and why. She watched Edith’s mind work behind her eyes, a rapid shuffling of realities. The symptom list in her bag was suddenly pathetic, a child’s prop. This was real. This was a command that spoke to the secret her body had been screaming for weeks.
“Okay,” Edith said.
The agreement was so swift, so devoid of resistance, it momentarily reframed the girl before her.
“Okay?” Aelyth echoed, needing to verify the mechanism.
“Maybe… maybe it would be better.” Edith’s voice was a thin, decided line. “If I was here. Someone could actually monitor me. The twinges. The dizziness. It’s not fair to Olaf, is it? Making him carry it all.” She was justifying it, building the case aloud, but the foundation was already laid. “I wouldn’t have to keep… inventing reasons to come back.”
She didn’t say the last truth. It hung between them, more tangible than the antiseptic smell. Staying in the hospital meant staying near him. It meant legitimacy. It meant his attention would be a documented necessity, not a secret she had to mine for with fabricated pains. It was a permission slip to surrender, written in the language of care.
Aelyth said nothing. She simply gave a shallow, single nod.
Edith nodded back, a strange, determined calm settling over her features. She smoothed her sweater, adjusted her bag on her shoulder, and turned toward Skellir’s door. She didn’t look like a pawn being pushed forward. She looked like someone walking toward a reprieve she’d been too afraid to name.
Aelyth watched her go. The door opened, spilling out a wedge of warm, vanilla-scented air and the low mumble of Skellir’s voice, before clicking shut.
The test had changed. It was no longer only about the doctor and his exploitable weakness. It was about the patient who saw the trap and asked for the key to her own cage. Edith wasn’t just a point of leverage. She was a voluntary participant. This changed the yield. This changed everything.
Aelyth leaned against the cool wall, the bioluminescent channels along her skin dimming to a dormant glow. She pulled out her comm unit.
“Varek.”
“That was fast,” his voice came, laced with background sounds too fluid to be Elarion—maybe rain, maybe a fountain.
“The variable is cooperating. Voluntarily. She is requesting institutionalization to formalize the connection.”
A low whistle traveled through the connection. “Well. That’s commitment. Or sickness. The line gets stylishly thin, doesn’t it?”
“It is efficiency,” Aelyth corrected, her eyes on the closed door. “She has removed the need for persuasion. The doctor must now either refuse her, exposing his prior care as theater, or comply, locking her into his direct orbit. Either outcome is useful.”
“And Kelmen?”
“This level of result quiets pedigree concerns. It demonstrates strategic harvesting, not emotional drift.” She paused. “I will need the admission logged through the TDC oversight channel. To give it the proper… weight.”
“Consider it done,” Varek said. “I’ll file it as a procedural intervention for participant welfare. It’ll land on your father’s desk with a nice, official stamp. He does love a good stamp.”
Inside the consultation room, a muffled voice rose—Edith’s, steady, rehearsed. Then silence. He was listening.
“It’s in motion,” Aelyth said, more to herself than to Varek.
“Then I’ll let you orchestrate. Just remember, voluntary cages have the sturdiest locks.” The call ended.
A minute passed. Two. The vending machine across the hall buzzed and clicked, cycling through its colorful, plastic interiors. Aelyth didn’t move. She was a statue in the alcove, measuring the silence from the room, parsing it for the sounds of collapse or complicity.
The door opened.
Edith stepped out first. Her eyes were red-rimmed but dry, her posture straighter. She held a triplicate admission form, the top sheet fluttering slightly in her grip. Skellir loomed behind her in the doorway, his face ashen, his professional composure sandblasted away. He looked at Aelyth, not with anger, but with a dawning, horrific understanding. He had been led to a cliff, and his most vulnerable patient had just asked him to jump. He had no choice but to follow.
“72-hour observation,” Edith said to Aelyth, her voice clear. “For unmanageable somatic anxiety and sleep disruption. He’s phoning it in to the ward now.”
“Good,” Aelyth said.
Skellir found his voice, a ragged thing. “This is… unprecedented. I…”
“It is treatment,” Aelyth interrupted, her gaze sweeping over the form in Edith’s hand. It was a contract. “You are providing the care the patient requested. That is the core of the Hippocratic oath, is it not?”
He had no answer. He just stared, hollowed out, at the glittering notebook she had left on his desk, now a silent accusation in a room that smelled of vanilla and bad decisions. Edith didn’t look at him. She looked at Aelyth, a silent question in her glance: what now?
Aelyth reached out and took the admission form’s carbon copy. The paper was still warm from the printer. “Come,” she said to Edith. “I will escort you to the admissions desk. Your belongings will be sent for.”
She led Edith away, down the corridor. Their footsteps echoed, a synchronized march. Skellir remained in his doorway, a silhouette shrinking behind them, swallowed by the light of his own betrayal.
Edith hugged her bag closer as they walked. “Will he be in trouble? Because of me?”
“That is no longer your concern,” Aelyth said, not unkindly. “Your concern is your health. All other systems are auxiliary.”
They turned a corner, leaving the consultation wing behind. The sounds changed—the clatter of a meal cart, the distant beep of a monitor, the murmur of a public waiting area. The real machinery of the hospital.
“Will Olaf be notified?” Edith asked, her bravery faltering for the first time.
“Standard protocol,” Aelyth said. “He will be listed as your emergency contact. He will be told you are safe, under supervision.”
Safe. The word hung between them. Edith nodded, a small, decisive motion. She was where she wanted to be. The door to the gilded cage was shutting, and she was holding the lock herself.
Aelyth watched her from the corner of her eye. This human curiosity, this capacity to mistake dependence for sanctuary, was a fascinating, fertile flaw. It was the soil where control took deepest root. She had come to audit a doctor’s corruption. She was leaving with a patient’s surrender.
The yield, as Varek would say, was indeed higher than projected.