Chapter 13 - Under Federal Indictment
Two weeks later, the gavel fell.
The Defense Criminal Investigative Service, working in conjunction with the state attorney general’s office, concluded its formal review of the incident at St. Jude’s Memorial Hospital.
The findings were devastating.
Arthur Campbell was formally charged with third-degree reckless endangerment, criminal negligence resulting in bodily injury to a protected military asset, and making false statements to federal investigators during an initial inquiry. To avoid a public trial that would have landed him in a federal penitentiary for up to three years, he accepted a plea agreement that stripped him of his corporate pension, revoked his legal license to practice before federal courts, and levied a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar fine—payable directly to the Department of Veterans Affairs trauma research fund.
The Campbell family mansion was listed on the market at a forty-percent discount under an emergency foreclosure sale.
Jessica’s social exile was total.
The country club board voted unanimously to revoke the family's membership for life. When she attempted to show up at a high-end charity gala two towns over, the event coordinators politely but firmly escorted her to the valet stand before she could even check her coat. The video of her eviction was posted to TikTok, garnering twelve million views in under twenty-four hours.
May you like
Thomas Sterling didn't stay to watch the fallout.
He terminated his lease in the city, transferred his corporate division to their Chicago headquarters, and before leaving, made an anonymous half-million-dollar donation to the trauma surgical wing of Walter Reed Annex in honor of Nurse Claire Abbott and Captain Maya Campbell.
