Chapter 3
Like hauling a bag of garbage, thick, muscular arms dragged me forcefully from the duty room into the brightly lit, bustling emergency room lobby, then viciously hurled me to the ground.
Thud!
My knees smashed heavily against the hard tiles, the bone-deep pain piercing straight to my core.
I curled up in agony, my vision darkening in waves.
"Come look, everybody! Look at this shameless doctor who takes dirty money and sells fake medicine!" Margaret roared at the top of her lungs, drawing the entire lobby's attention.
The crowd instantly gathered around.
"Isn't that Dr. Elena?" someone recognized me and murmured in surprise. "There must be some misunderstanding... She just saved my husband's life last month..."
"Yeah, her medical skills are incredible. How did she get beaten up like this?" A few faint voices of defense rippled through the crowd.
"Misunderstanding? Open your eyes and see this quack for what she really is!"
Victoria sneered as she stepped forward, holding her phone high with the volume turned all the way up.
My forced "confession" immediately blasted from the speaker.
With her other hand, she forcefully waved the written "evidence" bearing my signature.
"She has already signed and confessed! This is a crooked doctor who plays with human lives just to get prescription kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies!"
In the video, with my face red and swollen, I admitted to everything, and the black-and-white signature on the paper was glaringly obvious.
The few people who had just spoken up for me instantly went dead silent.
Faced with this so-called "hard evidence," the mood in the lobby flipped in a heartbeat. Astonishment rapidly warped into overwhelming, furious outrage. The flashing lights of phone cameras bombarded me from every angle.
"Absolutely shameless! She looks so respectable, how could she do something so demonic!"
"I was just defending her, I must be completely fcking blind! People like her should rot in hell!"
Margaret immediately stepped up, pointing her finger at my nose and screaming shrilly, "Kneel straight! Confess your sins to everyone and all the patients you’ve harmed! Say you’re a greedy, homicidal fraud! Say you’re sorry!"
A bodyguard kicked me straight in the calf, forcing me to straighten my spine and kneel before the furious mob.
The blinding fluorescent lights of the lobby glared down on my bloodied face. Every bone in my body was screaming in agony.
But I bit down hard on the tip of my tongue, my bloodshot eyes fixed dead on the digital clock on the wall.
15 minutes left until the surgery!
"Let me go save my mother..." my lips trembled violently, my voice weak but stubbornly repeating the words. "Please move... my mother is on the operating table... if I don't go now, there won't be enough time..."
"Still spewing these lies to deceive people? You’re not just corrupt, you’re psychopathic!" A spark of manic excitement flashed in Victoria’s eyes.
She unzipped her expensive Hermès bag and pulled out a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills.
"We don't need to show mercy to a parasite like this!"
Victoria held the cash high and shrieked to the crowd, "Whoever serves justice today and slaps this crooked doctor gets a hundred bucks! No limit!"
The crowd fell dead silent for a split second.
Then, the temptation of money, entirely masked under the guise of "justice," ignited uncontrolled malice.
A burly man was the first to rush forward.
Victoria didn’t hesitate to slap a hundred-dollar bill into his palm.
The man wound his arm back and delivered a heavy, whip-like slap straight across my face.
Smack!
The sheer force sent me tumbling sideways onto the floor. My left ear went completely deaf instantly. The uncoagulated clots of blood in my mouth tore open again, and warm crimson liquid poured from the corners of my lips.
"My turn! I've always hated these corrupt doctors!"
"Move out of the way, that hundred bucks is mine!"
Sanity completely collapsed.
Driven by money, the violence escalated into a mass frenzy. Someone grabbed my hair, yanking me back into a kneeling position.
Smack!
Smack!
Slaps, shoves, and unbridled, aggressive venting followed one after another.
My face swelled up rapidly, my cheekbones bruised purple, and my eyes were squeezed so tight by the swelling that I could barely open them.
Every time I was beaten to the verge of collapsing, rough hands would immediately force me back upright, setting me up for the next attacker.
Drowning in this suffocating, relentless wave of pain, I was completely powerless to protect myself. I could only take the beatings like a punching bag.
"Hit her harder! Make sure she learns her lesson!" Victoria’s arrogant laughter echoed through the lobby.
Countdown: 5 minutes.
Even my vision began to blur. Blood loss and agony were frantically stripping the oxygen from my brain.
Would the confession I signed completely ruin me?
I didn't know.
All I knew was that I couldn't fall here. My mother-in-law was still waiting for me.
Just as I was about to lose the strength to even remain kneeling, the ear-piercing wail of police sirens echoed from outside the lobby.
The automatic glass doors slid rapidly open, and a blast of cold wind, wrapped in the blinding red and blue halos of police lights, rushed in.
The mob around me instantly froze. Like rats spotting a cat, they immediately dispersed.
My battered body could not hold up a second longer. In a wave of dizziness, I collapsed forward onto the blood-stained tiles.
