Legacy of the Divine Healer

CHAPTER 4: A Stolen Crown Fits No One

Commissioner Blake turned to Voss with the patient measured, the look of a man who asks questions he already knows the answers to.

"Complete recovery? No residual symptoms?"

"Complete," Voss said smoothly. "Textbook response to treatment. The family left satisfied. I've rarely seen such a clean resolution."

Blake glanced at President Park beside him.

Park nodded slowly, as if filing something away.

"Impressive Harold," Blake said. "I'll be honest, I didn't know you had that depth of diagnostic range."

"Medicine keeps you humble," Voss said, with the smile of a man who had never once been humble. "You study, you learn, you apply. That's all."

Blake pulled out his phone.

"Then I have good news for Mr. Hargrove."

He stepped toward the window and dialed. Voss stood very still in the center of the room, his expression pleasant, his jaw tight enough to crack a walnut.

"James. Good news. Dr. Voss at Riverside Medical has cracked it. Bring your son in immediately." A pause. "Yes. Effective treatment, confirmed case. Come now."

He ended the call and dialed again before Voss could exhale.

"Deputy Director Mercer. Redirect all the Central Academy cases to Riverside Medical. Dr. Voss has an effective protocol. Yes, all twelve."

Twelve.

The word landed in the room like a dropped weight.

Voss blinked.

President Park leaned toward him slightly. "Harold. Is everything alright?"

"Fine," Voss said. "Perfectly fine."

But the hand at his side had closed into a fist.

Park turned to Ethan and Clara, who were still standing near the second bed. His tone was polite but clear. "This is a restricted ward. If you're waiting on discharge paperwork, please take a seat in the family area down the hall."

Voss moved quickly. "Yes.. yes, we were just discussing their account. I'll follow up with them shortly."

He looked at Ethan.

The look said: Stay quiet and the bill disappears. Open your mouth and I'll hand you to the police for unlicensed practice.

Ethan looked back.

His look said something too. It didn't say what Voss was hoping for.

But Clara's hand found his elbow, and she steered him gently toward the door.

Not yet, her touch said. Wait.

They found a bench in the corridor outside the ICU, the long, hard kind that hospitals put in hallways to technically provide seating without technically encouraging anyone to stay. Clara sat down carefully. Ethan sat beside her.

She looked at the envelope in her hands. She hadn't opened it yet.

"Son."

"Mm."

"When did this happen to you?" She wasn't talking about the money. She was talking about the needles. The boy who had been convulsing thirty minutes ago and was now going home on his father's back. "I raised you. I know you. You were a second-year medical student who couldn't afford his own textbooks. And now you're.."

She stopped.

"I know," Ethan said quietly.

"Is it real? Or am I still in that room, and none of this.."

"It's real, Mom." He covered her hands with his. "I don't fully understand it either. But it's real."

She looked at him for a long moment. Then she nodded, once, and opened the envelope.

Twenty thousand dollars in crisp bills.

She closed it again carefully.

"We have the bill money," she said.

"We're not paying that bill."

"Ethan.."

"He overcharged us by thirty thousand dollars using medications you never received. Paying it rewards him for doing it." His voice was calm. "We'll pay what we actually owe. Not a cent more."

Clara looked down the corridor toward the ICU doors.

"He's going to try to treat those children," she said quietly.

"I know."

"He doesn't know how."

"I know."

She looked at her son. "Then why are we sitting here?"

"Because," Ethan said, leaning back against the wall, "he needs to figure that out for himself first. I want him to understand exactly what he stole before I take it back."

Inside the ICU, Harold Voss stood at the bedside of a boy he had never seen before and tried very hard to remember exactly what he had watched Ethan do forty minutes ago.

He'd been paying attention. He was certain of that. Twelve needles no more. Along the chest meridians. Specific points. He had watched the sequence. He had counted.

He was a physician. He had studied traditional Chinese medicine as a supplementary discipline in his residency, twenty years ago. He remembered the meridian maps. He had placed acupuncture needles before, under supervision, half a dozen times, in a context where the stakes were academic rather than cardiac.

He could do this.

The boy on the bed, James Hargrove's son, Thomas, nine years old, burning at a hundred and four degrees, lay motionless except for the shallow, labored rhythm of his breathing.

Voss picked up the first needle.

He found the point on the boy's chest. Shencang, he was fairly sure. Or close to it. The margin was small.

He placed the needle.

The boy's body jerked.

Voss told himself that was normal. The body responding to the stimulus. He had seen that when Ethan worked, too.

He placed the second needle.

Thomas Hargrove's face, already pale twisted. A frown pulled at his small brow that even unconsciousness couldn't smooth away. The expression of a body registering something wrong and having no way to say so.

James Hargrove, standing on the other side of the bed in a dark suit that probably cost more than Ethan's monthly rent, watched with the intense, focused anxiety of a man who was used to solving problems with money and was encountering one that hadn't responded yet.

"Dr. Voss. You're certain this works."

It wasn't quite a question.

"The previous case responded within minutes," Voss said. "Every patient presents slightly differently."

He picked up the third needle.

The Tiantu point. Base of the throat. He was less certain about this one, but he had watched. He was fairly sure. He pressed the needle to the boy's skin