The Healer's Fortune

“Coming through!” a paramedic shouted as the doors burst open. A gurney shot across the floor, security in suits surrounding it, faces pale under the fluorescent glare.

Dr. Adrian Kane looked up from the chart he’d been pretending to read. His shift was supposed to be quiet. Then he saw the face on the stretcher. Senator Holt. The man who had ruined him.

For half a second, the room blurred. Then training took over. Adrian stepped forward. “Vitals?” he asked, voice clipped. “BP crashing, seventy over forty!”

“Massive abdominal trauma, probable toxin exposure.”

“ETA from incident, twelve minutes.”

“Prep Trauma One. Move!”

Nurse Brooks glanced at him. “You sure, Kane? They said to wait for Dr. Lang”

“I said move.”

The calm in his tone left no room for debate. The senator’s skin was grey, veins blackening under the surface. His guards barked orders into earpieces. Cameras hovered in the corridor, press already here.

A hospital executive appeared, sweating through his tie. “Dr. Kane, step back. The board assigned Lang. You’re”

“On shift,” Adrian cut in. “And he’s dying now.”

He ripped open the kit, hands moving faster than thought. Scalpel, suction, clamp. The team hesitated, then obeyed.

Inside, he saw it, fibrous tissue around the liver pulsing wrong, almost vibrating. Something synthetic. “Get me tox screen, full panel.”

Brooks frowned. “You think it’s poison?”

“I think,” Adrian muttered, “it’s murder.”

Outside the glass, hospital administrators argued about liability. The suits whispered about politics, lawsuits, headlines. Inside, Adrian’s world shrank to heartbeat and breath.

The monitor flat-lined. “Starting compressions!” Brooks shouted.

“No.” Adrian pressed two fingers to the senator’s neck. “He’s not gone yet.”

He felt the faintest flicker beneath the skin, an irregular rhythm, electric, wrong. His pulse sight tingled behind his eyes, a phantom echo of the power he’d sworn never to use.

He blinked it away. “Adrenaline, one milligram.”

“Lang’s on his way down!” someone yelled.

“Then he can watch,” Adrian said.

Lang stormed in, designer scrubs, arrogance in human form. “What the hell are you doing, Kane? You’re not cleared for high-profile trauma.”

Adrian didn’t look up. “Trying to keep him alive.”

Lang smirked. “You’re still chasing redemption? Newsflash, you lost your license for a reason.”

Adrian’s hands never slowed. “Get out of my light.”

Lang laughed. “You think you can save him? That man’s already dead.”

Adrian’s eyes liftedcalm, surgical cold. “So were you, five seconds ago. Step back.”

Lang hesitated, caught off guard by the certainty in his voice. The toxin’s pattern finally clicked. Not ingested, implanted.

Something releasing into the bloodstream through micro-valves near the spleen. Adrian reached for the scalpel. Brooks whispered, “That’s too close to the artery”

“I know.”

He made one clean incision. The guard nearest the door swore under his breath. Adrian’s gloved fingers closed around a metallic sliver no larger than a grain of rice. “What is that?” Lang demanded.

Adrian dropped it in a tray. “Proof.”

“Of what?”

He looked up, eyes hard. “That someone wanted him silenced before midnight.”

The heart monitor spiked once, twice, then steadied. Gasps filled the room. “He’s stabilizing,” Brooks whispered.

Lang stared. “That’s impossible. What did you”

Adrian peeled off his gloves. “Basic medicine,” he said, turning away. “Something you should try sometime.”

Outside, the reporters shouted questions. The guards murmured about witnesses. And through the glass, Adrian saw Holt’s eyes flutter open, just enough to focus on him. Recognition. Fear.

Holt’s lips formed a single word: You.

Before Adrian could respond, the senator’s body convulsed. The monitors screamed again, flatline. Lang shoved him aside. “He’s coding! Get”

But Adrian wasn’t moving. He stared at the tray. The tiny implant was gone. Security burst in. “Nobody leaves this room!”

The administrator pointed straight at Adrian. “You! You were alone with him when he flat-lined.”

Brooks stepped forward. “That’s not”

“Save it,” Lang snapped. “We all saw him cut something out.”

Adrian’s gaze swept the room, guards, doctors, cameras pressing against the glass. He stripped off his mask, voice low, steady. “Check the footage. You’ll see what I saw.”

Lang sneered. “And what’s that?”

Adrian’s expression barely changed. “A man dying twice. Once from poison, once from politics.”

He started toward the door. Two security officers moved to block him. Lang’s voice echoed behind him. “Where do you think you’re going, Kane?”

Adrian paused, the storm rumbling outside like distant artillery. He looked over his shoulder, eyes glinting with something that didn’t belong to an ordinary ER doctor.

“To find whoever’s writing his death certificate,” he said softly. “Because it won’t be me.”

He pushed through the doors as thunder rolled, leaving the others frozen. Behind him, the flatline tone carried on, long, unbroken, accusing.

Outside, in the corridor, Adrian’s phone buzzed with a hidden number. He answered. A distorted voice whispered, “Welcome back, Doctor. The next patient is you.”

The line went dead.