Chapter 11 THE FIRST TRANCE
ELIAS HELD THE FILE BOOK as he walked toward Doctor Marcus's office.
"You can just transcribe it and send it as an email to the head surgeon, sir," Lilly had told him, but Elias had shaken his head. He wanted to see the look on Marcus's face for himself.
He knocked once on the door and, without waiting for a response, pushed it open.
Doctor Marcus was lounging on his couch, doing nothing. He straightened up when he saw Elias and tried to command an air of dignity by clearing his throat.
"Doctor Barton," he said bitterly.
Elias dropped the filebook on the table without a word.
"What's that?" Doctor Marcus asked, eyeing the file suspiciously.
"You handed an ER case to me," Elias said. "That's the report."
"The... the patient survived?" Doctor Marcus asked. His eyes widened like saucers. Then he quickly cleared his throat and regained his composure. "I mean, yes, yes. The patient survived..." But his voice still carried disbelief as he picked up the file and opened it.
His mouth fell open at the intricate drawings inside, showing the injury and how the operation had been performed.
Thanks to Lilly, of course.
"You... did this?" Doctor Marcus asked, looking from the book to Elias and then back to the pages as he continued reading.
Lilly had not known what Elias had actually done to the patient earlier, so Elias had simply told her to write a medically feasible procedure that could have been performed based on the type of injury.
"Are you satisfied, or is there anything more you would like?" Elias asked.
Doctor Marcus's mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, but no words came out. Finally, he shook his head.
"The patient is stable," Elias continued. "He will live. For my next operation, I do not want to be partnered with incompetent doctors like the ones in the ward this morning."
With that, he turned and stalked out of the office victoriously, leaving Marcus seated there in shock, holding the filebook in slack hands.
After Elias left, Marcus reached for his phone and immediately called the emergency room to ask about the patient.
Just as Elias had gloated minutes earlier, the patient was doing even better than expected.
Marcus slumped back onto his couch, dejected. His first plan had failed. But he was not going to stop.
Not until Elias Barton fell out of the chairman's favor.
Marcus felt threatened by Elias Barton, and he had good reason to be.
ELIAS LAUGHED TO HIMSELF again as he remembered the look on Doctor Marcus's face when he submitted the surgery report.
The longer Marcus read it, the more dumbfounded he had looked, as though he could not believe Elias had written it himself.
Which, of course, he hadn't, but no one needed to know that.
As Elias walked out of the hospital after signing out for the day, he was reminded of Harper's words.
There were still so many things he did not have.
A phone.
A house.
He was still sleeping in a motel.
But he had a gold-plated bank card, and that gave him opportunities he had never had in his life before.
He decided to buy a house first.
When he got back to his motel and had rested for a while, he went through a phone book until he found a real estate agent and set up an appointment for the following day.
Before he slept, he took one of Chen Wei's needles and examined it meticulously, spinning it absentmindedly between his fingers.
Suddenly, there was a sharp zap of energy from his fingers into the needle.
Elias jerked back in shock as a flash of pain shot through his head and he was transported to another time...
I see something. I am in an unfamiliar room, the lights are blazing and blinding.
My hands are not my hands, they are slimmer, and whiter. Someone screaming in Chinese beside me, so I turn and see a door with an emblem matching the needles... Then it's gone.
The needle fell from his fingers as he clutched his head, trying to stop it from splitting into two.
He stared at it on the floor.
Who was Chen Wei before prison?
And how had he acquired the needles?
Had they been handed down to him, just as he had handed them down to Elias in prison?
Or had Chen Wei been something else?
Was he the original owner of the needles?
The questions bounced around in Elias's mind.
If Chen Wei had been such a renowned doctor with these extraordinary needles, why had he allowed himself to die?
Why hadn't he used them to cure whatever ailment had eventually killed him?
Or maybe the needles could not do everything.
Maybe there was a limitation to their power.
Elias slowly picked the needle up from the floor.
It didn't feel as though these things had any limitation.
The energy...
It was like static electricity flowing between Elias and the needles.
Chen Wei had died of complications brought on by old age, but with this sort of power, surely he could have extended his life.
Elias sighed, becoming more confused as the pain receeded. He lay on the uncomfortable motel bed, deep in thoughts.
These needles and Chen Wei held more mysteries than he had signed up for.
But now the mystery was his to discover.
And he would get to the root of it.
