Chapter 2
"Elena, did you really think hiding in here would save you?"
Victoria stepped over the threshold into the duty room in her stilettos.
My head snapped up, my racing nerves paralyzing for a sheer second.
She knows my name is Elena?
If they knew my name and my identity, then how could they possibly have the wrong person?
But before I had time to dissect this contradiction, the bodyguards behind Victoria swarmed into the room.
A rough, massive hand clamped onto my hair like iron pincers, yanking me up and smashing me against the adjacent wall.
Bang!
"Shut the door. Teach this fleeing rat a lesson she won't forget," Victoria snapped her order.
With the heavy thud of the door closing behind them, the cramped duty room descended fully into a hell of violence.
Two bodyguards kicked me aggressively to the ground.
Heavy fists and leather boots rained down on my abdomen, back, and calves.
Without any room to fight back, I could only grit my teeth tightly and tuck my hands—the hands I desperately needed for surgery—deep against my chest and stomach, curling up on the frozen tiles like a fetal shrimp.
Thud!
A brutal kick smashed into my ribs.
The piercing agony instantly robbed me of my breath. I opened my mouth wide like a fish out of water, but could only cough up a mouthful of blood-flecked foam tasting of rust.
It wasn't until I was nearly convulsing from the pain that one bodyguard grabbed me by the collar, dragging my limp body off the floor.
Smack! Smack!
Two thunderous slaps struck my bloodied face. The ringing in my left ear grew so deafening it drowned out the buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead.
"That’s enough. Don’t beat her stupid, she still needs to write."
Margaret’s cold voice drifted from the side.
Following her words, several sheets of A4 paper were slapped heavily onto the rusted metal desk.
"Sign the confession." Margaret looked down on me as if she were looking at trash. "Admit you took kickbacks and excessively prescribed illegal medications. Sign this voluntary medical suspension declaration, and we’ll consider today’s beating a lesson learned."
I gasped for air, my bloodshot eyes fixing rigidly on those papers. "I didn’t do it... I won't sign..."
"Refusing?" Victoria sneered. She stepped her heel onto my wrist, slowly pressing down with the sharp spike, as if intending to grind my arm straight into two.
"If you don't sign, I will have them snap your fingers one by one right now! With one word from my mother, the Medical Board will blacklist you completely. You will never practice medicine in New York again!"
The crushing pressure on my fingers tore through my nerve endings.
They can't break... these hands absolutely cannot break.
Mom is still waiting for me in the ER!
The digital clock on the wall flashed in scarlet. Time was draining away at a maddening pace.
My tears mixed with the blood dripping onto the tiles.
In the face of the ticking countdown between life and death, my innocence and professional dignity seemed so insignificant.
I had to compromise. I had to get out of this room as fast as humanly possible.
"I’ll sign..." I croaked out, my entire body trembling. "But, if you plan to use this to have the Medical Board convict me, a one-sided confession won’t meet their requirements... You must sign as witnesses. Write down the exact time and location clearly and sign your names, otherwise, no one will legitimize it..."
Margaret scoffed dismissively, "A dying struggle. You think we're afraid of proper procedures? We are the victims here!"
Without a shred of hesitation, she yanked the pen and aggressively signed her name at the bottom of the page in sweeping strokes, then ordered Victoria to write down the current time and the location of this exact duty room.
When the pen was thrown back in front of me, I picked it up with shaking fingers. Clenching my jaw, stroke by stroke, I signed the most humiliating "Elena" of my life.
"I signed it..." I used every ounce of my remaining strength to grasp the edge of the desk and pull myself up, looking at them with tear-filled, pleading eyes. "Let me go. I have to go perform surgery... My mother is really dying..."
"Go?" Victoria looked at me in disbelief before bursting into a shrill, piercing cackle.
She snatched the confession paper away and smoothly raised her latest model smartphone with her other hand, aiming the camera directly at my bloodied, shocked, and ash-pale face.
"Who said you could go?" Her tone dripped with cruel mockery. "A signature isn't enough. I want you to look right into the camera and repeat every single crime you just admitted to! Tell everyone you’re a quack who treats human lives like garbage for money. Apologize to the camera!"
"You promised to let me go if I signed!" I broke down, lunging forward to grab the phone, only for a bodyguard behind me to kick the back of my knees, sending me crashing heavily to my knees.
"Do as I say! Or you’ll sit right here and watch your mother die!" Victoria viciously yanked my hair back, forcing my face toward the blinding camera flash.
Ultimate despair washed over my entire body.
Staring into that black, bottomless lens, my tears broke through the dam. Numb and degraded, I repeated those fabricated crimes.
With every word I spoke, I felt my faith as a doctor being trampled and ground into dust beneath their feet.
The recording ended.
Victoria immediately tapped the screen a few times. She even obligingly snapped a photo of the confession containing all three of our signatures and uploaded everything directly to the internet.
"Sent successfully." She waved her phone triumphantly. "Right now, on every medical forum and social media platform in New York, the entire internet is watching how this shameless quack broke down in tears and confessed. Elena, you are utterly, irreversibly ruined."
Beep—
Just then, the hospital’s PA system blared from the hallway, piercing straight through the thin door of the duty room.
”Code T. Calling Chief Surgeon Elena. Condition critical, please proceed to Emergency Room 1 immediately. Repeat, Code T...”
The broadcast sounded like a death knell.
Countdown: 20 minutes.
The window for rescue was rapidly shrinking.
"I am begging you..." I completely abandoned all my dignity. Disregarding the impending storm of public ruin online, my only thought was to throw myself at that door.
Bang!
A bodyguard raised his leg and delivered a heavy kick square in the center of my chest.
I flew backward, the back of my head cracking against the tiles. My vision instantly went black, and stomach acid surged up my throat.
Victoria looked down at me from above as I laid disheveled and unable to stand, the twisted smirk on her lips turning more venomous by the second.
"Haul her up," she ordered her guards coldly.
"We’re just getting started." Victoria made the men grab me by the collar and dragged me toward the door. "I am going to let all the patients waiting out there see exactly how this high-and-mighty prodigy doctor is being dragged through the lobby like a dog."
The door handle clicked open.
In a haze of despairing vertigo, the heavy fire door was violently shoved open. The chaotic footsteps from the lobby outside, along with countless pairs of curious eyes, rushed toward me like a bursting dam of black water.
