Justice of the Supreme War God

Chapter 22: Meridian General PART 2

"Don't you speak to my daughter," she said. Her voice had the terrible, quiet precision of someone who had moved past shouting into something colder. She looked at Marcus with the accumulated fury of every interaction since the first morning — the checkbook, the birthday party, the contract, all of it — compressed and focused and aimed. "What did you do to my daughter?"

"Nothing," Marcus said. "She collapsed from exhaustion and malnutrition. I brought her to the best hospital in the city."

"Malnutrition." Catherine repeated the word like it was an accusation. "She was perfectly healthy before you showed up in her house —"

"She wasn't eating," Marcus said. "I made food every morning and every evening for the past several days. She didn't eat it." A pause. "That's not something I can force."

"Don't." Catherine took one step closer and put her finger up between them. "Don't stand there in your discount suit and explain my daughter's life to me. You have been nothing but a source of chaos and embarrassment since Diana made the catastrophic decision to involve you, and now she is in a hospital bed, and you are standing in this lobby looking calm, and I want to know why you're calm, and I want you gone from this building, and I want you gone from my daughter's life —"

"I'm calm," Marcus said, "because she's going to be fine."

"Get out," Catherine said.

"I'm her husband. I'll stay."

Catherine stared at him for a long, rigid moment. Then she turned away from him with the sharp, decisive motion of a woman who has identified a different lever to pull, and raised her voice to the level required to reach the nurses' station, the intake desk, and the general population of the lobby simultaneously.

"I need to speak with hospital management," she announced. "Immediately. This is an emergency."

The lobby went quiet in the particular way lobbies go quiet when a well-dressed woman with an expensive haircut raises her voice and means it. A nurse appeared. A desk administrator materialized. Whispered consultations happened in quick succession.

Three minutes later, a tall man in a white coat with the measured bearing of institutional authority came through the corridor door. His name badge read Dr. Franklin Morse, Dean of Medicine. He had the expression of a man who had been summoned from something important and was being professional about it.

"Ma'am," he said, approaching Catherine with his hands folded in front of him. "I understand you have a concern. How can I help?"

Catherine pointed at Marcus.

"This man," she said, with the clarity of a formal declaration, "is a danger to my daughter. Diana Morrison — she was brought in this evening. He brought her here." She let that sit for a moment, as though the act of bringing someone to a hospital was inherently suspicious. "I don't know what he did to her, but I want him removed from this building. He is not to have any access to my daughter or any information about her condition."

Dr. Morse looked at Marcus.

Marcus looked back at him with an expression of complete, cooperative calm.

The lobby waited.