The Prisoner Son Returns as the Medical Saint

Chapter 8: Liars

"Tame Head requires a personal belonging," Edward replied, watching her carefully. "Something that belonged to Logan. Clothing, a piece of jewelry, anything with sustained physical contact." He let that sit for a moment. "Which means whoever did this is not a stranger. Someone very close to your grandfather placed this on him deliberately."

The color shifted in Vivien's face. Not dramatically. Just a subtle change, like a light moving behind a curtain.

"Save him," she said quietly. It was not a question and it was not a plea exactly. It was the voice of someone who had already decided how this would end and needed the world to cooperate.

"I will," Edward answered. "I need three things. Silver powder, white sage, and obsidian powder. Have them prepared and brought up."

Vivien nodded once and pulled out her phone, moving to the corner of the room to make the call. Within forty seconds three different people were scrambling to source what Edward had asked for.

Downstairs, in the main entrance lobby, a different kind of arrival was unfolding.

Jenna came through the glass doors like a storm that had been building pressure for the past two hours. 

Her hair was still slightly disheveled from the afternoon, one cheek carrying the faint shadow of what the bodyguards had done to it, and her eyes were raw and swollen at the edges. 

She was pushing a wheelchair with Mark in it, his broken leg wrapped in a crude temporary brace that someone had put together roadside.

Mark's face was pale and set in a fixed grimace, the kind that came from pain he was too proud to fully show but too human to completely hide.

Jenna marched to the reception desk and slapped her palm flat on the counter.

"My son needs treatment immediately," she snapped, her voice carrying across the lobby in a way that made three people near the waiting area look up. "Where are your doctors? Get someone out here right now."

The receptionist reached for the phone with practiced calm, and within a few minutes two doctors appeared from the corridor. They crouched beside Mark's wheelchair, examined the leg with quick professional hands, asked him a few questions, then straightened and spoke in careful, even tones.

"We will get him admitted right away," the senior doctor said, making notes. "The fracture is significant but clean. He will need imaging and then we can talk about next steps." He gestured toward the corridor. "We have a ward ready on the fourth floor."

Jenna's expression curdled immediately.

"A regular ward?" She looked at the doctor the way someone looks at a waiter who has brought the wrong dish. "Do you have any idea who we are? My daughter is Eliza Norton. Our family is the Norton family and our company is going public. We are practically a third-tier family." Her voice climbed steadily. "My son will not be placed in a regular ward like some common person who walked in off the street. I want the VIP floor. I want the best room in this entire building, with private nursing and every luxury available. Arrange it now."

The doctor's expression shifted into something carefully neutral, the face of a professional who had long practiced delivering inconvenient information to inconvenient people.

"Mrs. Norton," he began, his tone measured, "your son's injury, while painful, does not clinically require a VIP level of care. The fourth floor is fully equipped for exactly this kind of treatment." He paused slightly. "Additionally, our VIP wards have been completely reserved. Every room on the top floor has been secured by another party. There is no availability."

Jenna's eyes narrowed.

"Reserved," she repeated slowly.

"Yes."

"By whom?" Her voice took on a new edge, something between outrage and disbelief.

"I am afraid that information is confidential," the doctor replied, maintaining his careful tone. "But the reservation is total. The entire floor."

Jenna stared at him. Then she turned to look at Mark, whose face had gone tight again from a fresh wave of pain rolling up from his leg. She looked back at the doctor and the composure she had been barely holding cracked completely.

"The entire floor," she repeated, her voice rising with every word. "Someone has taken the entire VIP floor of the best hospital in this city, every single room, and you are standing there telling me my son has to sit in a regular ward?" Her hands curled at her sides, her voice going shrill enough that the lobby went genuinely quiet. "What kind of person thinks they can just take over an entire hospital floor? Who in this city actually dares to compete with us for a VIP ward?"

The doctor opened his mouth.