The Natural Healing Influencer

Chapter 4 A Brief Illusion

For two weeks, every news cycle called me a greedy pharma ghoul and praised Chloe’s holistic approach.

Sterling Medical’s stock rose with every interview. Her face appeared on magazine covers under the words QUEEN OF WELLNESS.

I watched from my new lab while the climate system hummed over the equipment. Their numbers were rising. So were the corticosteroid concentrations in their patients.

A secure message pinged on my tablet. Ben, my former head of diagnostics at Sterling, had sent it. He trusted data over corporate agendas.

*Harper. Something’s wrong. The long-term ICU patients on Chloe’s protocol have biometrics going haywire. Kidney function markers are all over the place.*

*The staff doctors call it “stabilization fluctuations.” I call it bullshit. They’re suppressing the real data.*

I typed back a single word. *Continue.*

The corticosteroids were forcing the patients’ bodies into overdrive. Their improved energy hid the damage to their organs, and Ben’s data showed the decline.

Publicly, Julian played the CEO who had saved his company. Ben heard a different story in procurement.

Julian was trying to buy my patented compounds on the black market. Every supplier had failed him. No substitute existed because I had never licensed one.

One evening, a society program showed him visiting his mother. Mrs. Sterling’s skin shone under the camera lights. Julian squeezed her hand and smiled for the lens.

“She’ll come back, Mother, you’ll see. Harper is being dramatic.”

He kept smiling for the camera. “She sees how successful we are and how much everyone loves Chloe. Her ego can’t stand it. She built her life around me. She’ll crawl back before the month is out.”

He spoke about me as another missing item from procurement. I closed the program.

For five years, I had handled each medical crisis before it reached his desk. He had taken my return for granted for the same reason.

Alexander joined me on the lab’s observation deck one afternoon. The toxicology results and Ben’s reports covered the table between us.

“We could end this now. One call to the New York Times and Sterling Medical is a crater by morning.”

I watched Ben’s encrypted data feed. A red light flashed beside Senator Davis’s name: acute renal stress.

“No. They fired me and publicly blamed me so they could promote a fraud. I won’t give them a quiet ending.” I tapped Senator Davis’s file. “Let them keep celebrating.”

Alexander looked at the red warning and said nothing.

We worked late into the fifteenth night after my departure. The servers hummed. The city lights remained on beyond the windows.

Ben’s feed kept updating beside the toxicology report. Senator Davis’s warning remained red while the other patients’ biometrics worsened.

The desk phone rang.

The direct line connected to the city’s Critical Care Network. It activated only for a catastrophic event with multiple casualties.

I picked up the receiver.

“This is Dr. Vance.”