Chapter 2 - The Hospital Secrets
The ambulance tires screeched as we arrived at the emergency bay of the city hospital.
A team of nurses and doctors immediately surrounded Eli and rushed him into a trauma room.
I was pushed out into the cold, sterile waiting area, completely covered in my son's blood and my own sweat.
Mark's terrifying warning echoed in my mind on an endless loop.
If the responding police officer was on Ryan's payroll, my brother was basically untouchable.
I paced the waiting room floor, dialing my lawyer's number over and over again, but it went straight to voicemail.
After forty agonizing minutes, a tall doctor in green scrubs walked through the double doors.
I rushed up to him and demanded to know if my little boy was going to survive.
"Eli is stable for now, but he has three fractured ribs and a severe concussion," the doctor explained.
I let out a sob of relief, thanking every star in the sky that he was still alive.
"However, we found something deeply disturbing on his x-rays," the doctor continued, his tone turning icy.
He led me into a private consultation room and pulled up a digital scan of my son's chest.
"These ribs were broken tonight, but do you see these small white lines along his collarbone?" the doctor asked.
I squinted at the screen and nodded slowly.
"Those are calcified micro-fractures, which means they are at least six months old," the doctor revealed.
My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit of absolute horror.
"Someone has been systematically hurting your son for a very long time," he said.
I realized with sickening clarity that my mother had been offering to babysit Eli every weekend for the past year.
She had been willingly handing my innocent child over to Ryan for his twisted version of discipline.
Before I could even process this catastrophic betrayal, the door to the consultation room burst open.
Ryan walked in, wearing a fresh suit and holding a leather briefcase.
Standing right beside him was a man I recognized from local television commercials as the most expensive defense attorney in the state.
"I demand that you release my ward into my custody immediately," Ryan told the doctor.
"You have absolutely no right to be here!" I screamed, lunging toward my brother.
The defense attorney stepped between us and handed the doctor a thick stack of legal files.
"This is a court-certified custody order signed by a superior court judge exactly one hour ago," the lawyer announced.
I stared at the paperwork, completely paralyzed by the impossible speed of their corruption.
The doctor reviewed the paperwork and sighed heavily in defeat.
"This is a valid court order, ma'am, which means I have to surrender the child to him," the doctor whispered to me.
I looked at Ryan, whose lazy, arrogant smile had fully returned to his face.
"You are coming home with me, Hannah, and we are going to be a happy family again," Ryan sneered.
I backed away from him, my hand desperately searching for a weapon inside my broken clutch purse.
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Then, a sudden, blinding flash of light outside the hospital window caught my attention.
A massive black helicopter had just landed directly on the hospital roof, and armed men in tactical gear were leaping out of it.
