Chapter 186: ... hiding?
Lawrence.
The doctor who had just stepped out of the operating suite and brushed past us struck me as entirely suspicious.
There was something about the way he carried himself that immediately unsettled me. His hurried demeanour, coupled with the guarded way he held himself, caused alarm bells to begin ringing in my chest almost instantly. Every instinct I possessed urged me not to dismiss what I had just witnessed.
How could he possibly claim that the senior doctor would be the one to give us the news?
The question echoed through my mind, refusing to fade.
If he truly wasn’t the senior surgeon leading the procedure, then why on earth had he walked out of the operating room before everything inside was even finished?
It simply didn’t make sense.
The more I thought about it, the less convincing his explanation became. Every word he had spoken replayed itself in my head, sounding increasingly vague and increasingly suspicious.
Nothing about his behaviour added up.
Neither his abrupt departure nor his casual brush-off fit the situation unfolding behind those doors. The uneasiness inside me continued to grow, feeding the countless questions that refused to leave my mind.
For one brief moment, those dark thoughts threatened to consume all of my attention but then everything changed.
The very instant the heavy double doors swung open once again, every lingering question was immediately shoved aside. My entire focus shifted without hesitation, locking onto the doctor who had just stepped out.
Without thinking twice, I rushed frantically towards him, my feet carrying me forward almost of their own accord. Closing the distance between us in only a few hurried strides, I stepped directly into his path before he could continue walking.
I lifted my head and looked straight into his eyes, my gaze fixed firmly on him as I waited for whatever he was about to say.
"How is she doing?" I asked just before he could speak, my voice tight with desperate anticipation.
The doctor kept quiet for a while, standing completely still as though he were lost in his own thoughts. He stared blankly ahead, looking visibly bewildered, as if he were struggling to put the pieces of some missing puzzles together in his mind. The eerie silence stretched on, feeding the growing knot of anxiety in my stomach.
"Answer us!" Lurgard barked at the top of his voice, the thunderous command exploding through the quiet corridor with startling force. His booming tone shattered the heavy silence, echoing off the sterile walls and demanding an immediate response.
The sudden, violent outburst instantly snapped the doctor back to reality.
He blinked rapidly several times, as though shaking himself free from whatever thoughts had momentarily consumed him. Slowly lifting his head, his gaze moved across the three of us before settling properly on our anxious faces. Then, after a brief hesitation, he forced a sudden smile onto his face.
"The operation is successful," he announced, his voice calm yet strangely flat, and he paused for the briefest fraction of a second before continuing. "Both the mother and child are safe!"
The odd, robotic way he said those words sounded as though the sentence had been meticulously rehearsed and planted in his head. I really couldn’t help but feel that something was deeply off about his entire demeanor.
The weight of his words echoed in my mind once more, repeating the impossible outcome he had just delivered, and then my eyes widened in pure, unadulterated shock.
"Wait, what?" I asked, my voice laced with absolute astonishment and disbelief.
I really couldn’t believe that he had actually managed to save both of them in the end.
A profound sense of relief washed over me; I was genuinely happy that I hadn’t been forced to break my implicit promise to Theresa, and above all else, she was finally safe.
"How is that even possible?" Leonard asked, his voice laced with complete bewilderment as he stared at the doctor in total shock.
Lurgard stepped forward, his tall frame towering over the physician as his brows knit together into a stern furrow. "I was also wondering... if you were capable of saving the both of them in the first place..." He paused, closing the distance until he stood directly in front of the doctor, his piercing gaze locking onto the man’s pale face. "...why on earth did you force us to sign a document consenting to sacrifice the child?"
"I—" The doctor opened his mouth to offer an explanation, but the words seemed to catch in his throat, leaving him unable to complete his sentence.
He stood there blinking, looking just as confused by his own words as we were.
"What if something terrible had happened during the procedure because of your misjudgment?" Lurgard pressed further, his tone hardening into a cold, dangerous edge. "Could you have paid for the fatal consequences of your reckless actions?"
Watching the confrontation, I could easily tell that my brothers weren’t entirely thrilled that the child had ultimately survived, given the complicated mess it bound us to. Still, I felt they needed to give the poor doctor some breathing space.
In my mind, it was likely just a surgeon’s pure, deep-seated instinct to attempt saving every life possible the second a faint glimmer of possibility presented itself. I could really understand why a medical professional would make that split-second call in the heat of the moment, so I didn’t think it was fair for them to relentlessly lash out at him when both lives were intact.
"Relax, both of you!" I said calmly, stepping between them to defuse the rising hostility. "He saw a genuine possibility to save them both, so he took the risk."
"No!" both Leonard and Lurgard chorused in sharp unison, entirely rejecting my defense.
"There has to be something critical he isn’t telling us!" Lurgard added, his dark eyes narrowing with intense suspicion as he kept his glare locked onto the silent surgeon.
I raised my brows high in utter confusion, looking back and forth between my brothers and the strangely vacant expression on the doctor’s face.
What exactly could he possibly be keeping from us?