공유

Chapter 4

작가: Shadow Maze
"Can't you walk? Can't you run? Weren't you able to take my money and keep some other woman on the side? Get up!"

I stared Renee down, hatred boiling through my blood. I loved her with everything I had for seven years, and not only did she destroy me, but she nearly killed my sister too. If a look alone could kill, I would have torn her apart a hundred times over by now.

"Are you deaf or just slow?" Renee's voice shot up sharply.

The other patients in the ward craned their necks to watch, watching with the same detached curiosity people bring to a show.

Renee ripped the blanket off me and clamped both hands around my left arm, wrenching my upper body up off the bed. The muscles in my neck had long since gone dead, and my head fell back at a sickening angle with nothing left to hold it up.

"Renee, don't do this. There are people watching." Julian's protest was hollow, and even as he spoke, he was stepping backward.

"I want to see how long he can keep this up!" Renee's fury only burned hotter. Her other hand grabbed my shoulder and dragged me roughly toward the edge of the bed.

"Stand up straight!" She let go the moment I reached the edge.

With nothing left holding me up, my body dropped like a slab of lead, completely out of my control. My knees slammed into the hard tile, and my chin cracked against the rusted metal frame of the bed.

The sharp edge of the plastic tubing tore straight through the already fragile opening in my throat. Warm blood surged out instantly, soaking through my hospital gown and blooming across the pale floor in a stark, violent red.

The lack of oxygen swallowed my vision into black, and my consciousness began to slip.

In that last second before I went under, a wave of noise erupted just outside the door. Several people in police uniforms and an elderly doctor in a white coat pushed through the crowd and rushed into the room.

"Stop!" The doctor's eyes blazed with fury as she flung her briefcase aside and threw herself down beside me. Like a lioness protecting her cub, she shoved Renee back hard enough to send her stumbling.

Her hands trembled, but they found the wound at my throat with perfect precision and pressed down.

Renee stumbled into another bed and snapped her head up. "Who are you? Who let you in here?"

"I'm Dr. Helen Marsh, the director of the Medical Research Center." Dr. Marsh's eyes had gone red, and she checked my pupils while her voice shook with fury.

"He's in the final stage of his illness. His heart and lungs could fail at any moment. What exactly have you done to him?"

Renee's expression froze on her face. She stared at the spreading pool of blood on the floor, unable to look away.

"That's not possible." She pointed at me, her voice carrying a tremor she didn't seem to notice. "The evaluation center already gave a report. He's not sick. Are you another one of his hired liars too?"

Two police officers stepped forward from behind Dr. Marsh, their expressions grim, and held up an official document bearing the department's letterhead directly in front of Renee's face.

"Ms. Sutton, we're with the Financial Crimes Unit." The officer's voice cracked through the dead silence of the room like thunder.

"Your assistant, Julian Cross, has been placed under arrest as of ten minutes ago on suspicion of falsifying medical records and commercial fraud."

The officer flipped to the second page of the document and looked coldly at Renee, whose face had already begun to twist.

"As for the three million dollars you claimed Mr. Bennett moved without authorization, that money was a full donation he made to a national ALS research fund. He was spending his own life to buy clinical data for this disease."

이 작품을 무료로 읽으실 수 있습니다
QR 코드를 스캔하여 앱을 다운로드하세요

최신 챕터

  • On My Deathbed, She Wants a Confession   Chapter 10

    Six months later, in winter, inside the ICU of City General Hospital, the numbers on the heart monitor began to fall off a cliff. Oxygen saturation dropped below 60%, and the ventilator let out one high, piercing alarm after another.Dr. Marsh stood at the bedside, watching every reading lose all meaning for resuscitation. She checked the time."Call it," she said.A nurse stepped forward and switched off the ventilator and the monitor. The alarms stopped, and the only sound left in the room was the faint hum of the equipment's cooling fans.Amelia stood at the bedside in a sterile gown. She picked up a damp cloth and slowly wiped my face, smoothed down my hair, and then drew the white sheet up over my head.Outside the room, Renee stood in front of the glass window. Over the past six months, she'd stepped down as CEO of Sutton Group, sold off all three of her properties and every share of her private stock, and put the money into the national ALS research foundation.Julian's se

  • On My Deathbed, She Wants a Confession   Chapter 9

    Renee reached for the tablet on the desk. Her fingers brushed the metal casing with a sharp clink, but her grip failed, and it slid across the surface.She stood without picking the foreign medical papers back up and walked out of the office. She headed for the stairwell, skipping the elevator, and climbed the fire stairs one floor at a time until she reached the ninth floor. She stopped outside the ICU, in front of the glass window.Inside, I lay on the bed. A thick tube ran from the opening at my throat to a ventilator standing half my height beside the bed.A feeding tube ran through my nose, and an IV pump pushed yellow nutrient fluid in a steady rhythm. Months of lying still had wasted my limbs down to almost nothing, the bones visible beneath the skin. My hospital gown hung loose over deep hollows where muscle used to be. An eye-tracking screen was mounted directly above the bed.The ICU door opened, and Renee stepped in wearing a blue sterile gown, a mask, and shoe covers.

  • On My Deathbed, She Wants a Confession   Chapter 8

    Renee walked out through the doors of the holding facility. Sunlight spread across the pavement outside. She made her way to a green trash bin at the curb and doubled over as her stomach seized violently. She leaned over the bin and was sick in the liner.She threw up three times until nothing was left in her stomach but yellow bile. She pulled a handkerchief from her jacket pocket, wiped the corner of her mouth, and dropped it into the bin.Then, she got into her car, started the engine, and drove toward the hospital.Renee returned to City General Hospital, but instead of going up to the ICU on the ninth floor, she went straight to the neurology office on the eighth. Dr. Marsh was reviewing an EEG report. Renee pulled out a chair and sat down across the desk from her."Dr. Marsh, there's an experimental ALS drug currently in Phase 3 trials overseas. I've already arranged a medical charter flight and a team of specialists from overseas. I'll cover every cost." Renee pulled out s

  • On My Deathbed, She Wants a Confession   Chapter 7

    Renee's fingers tightened around the papers, and they crumpled slightly with a soft, folding sound.The ICU's automatic doors slid open, and Dr. Marsh stepped out, pulling off her mask."His blood pressure's stabilized, barely," she said, looking at Amelia. "But the fall caused a second injury to his cervical spine, and it's irreversible."He's lost his ability to swallow and to breathe on his own completely. From here on, he'll need a feeding tube to eat and a ventilator just to keep his vitals going."Renee walked toward her. "Dr. Marsh, I want to transfer him overseas, somewhere with the best equipment available."She pulled out her phone.Dr. Marsh blocked the doorway. "Ms. Sutton, his condition right now can't survive any kind of transport. And according to the authorization document Mr. Bennett signed three days ago using an eye-tracking device, all medical decisions are now entirely in Ms. Bennett's hands. You don't have visitation rights."…At the city police departmen

  • On My Deathbed, She Wants a Confession   Chapter 6

    The officers didn't stop her. Renee followed the gurney down the hallway, and the patients' families lining the walls pressed back to clear a path. The gurney disappeared into the elevator, and the doors closed.Renee stood outside the elevator, watching the floor numbers climb one by one until they stopped on the ninth floor, the ICU.Renee sat down on a plastic bench outside the ICU doors. Dust clung to one side of her suit jacket from where the officers had pinned her against the bed earlier. The hallway light fell across her face.The elevator doors opened, and Amelia burst out. Gauze wrapped her forehead, a patch of yellow fluid seeping through at the center, and a brace was strapped around her right ribs, forcing her to lean to the left as she walked. She crossed straight to Renee.Renee looked up. Amelia's right hand swung and struck her across the left cheek. Renee's body pitched to the right and slammed into the armrest of the plastic chair.She didn't fight back. She sat

  • On My Deathbed, She Wants a Confession   Chapter 5

    Renee's eyes moved slowly from the document in the officer's hand down to me on the floor. I lay on my side against the cold tile, blood still pouring from my throat. My eyes stayed open, my gaze passing straight through her toward the pale gray window across the room.Dr. Marsh knelt on the ground, both hands pressed hard over the bleeding at my tracheotomy opening. Blood seeped through her fingers and dripped onto the white tile.The door burst open, and four ER nurses rushed in pushing a crash cart."Get the suction ready, clear the airway of blood. Open two IV lines and push a tiny ounce of epinephrine," Dr. Marsh ordered.A nurse pulled open a drawer on the cart and grabbed a portable suction device, feeding the tube into the opening at my throat. The machine switched on, pulling out a steady stream of dark red blood and fluid through the tubing.Another nurse cut open the sleeve of my hospital gown and set two IV lines into the veins of each arm, connecting them to saline an

더보기
좋은 소설을 무료로 찾아 읽어보세요
GoodNovel 앱에서 수많은 인기 소설을 무료로 즐기세요! 마음에 드는 작품을 다운로드하고, 언제 어디서나 편하게 읽을 수 있습니다
앱에서 작품을 무료로 읽어보세요
앱에서 읽으려면 QR 코드를 스캔하세요.
DMCA.com Protection Status