The Fallen Son-in-law: Rise To Power

chapter 13

Chapter 13

Mikhail returned to his small apartment that night, exhausted. The city lights had largely faded, and the noise of the streets was slowly dying down. As he opened the door and entered, his shoulders were slightly slouched, as if the burden of the day was still weighing on his back.

He closed the door, took off his coat and hung it on the hanger. He placed the stethoscope on the table, and took off the ID card hanging from his neck and threw it aside. He took off his shoes and put them aside and stood silently for a while, as if his mind was still in the hospital.

The face of the old woman in a coma kept appearing in his mind. That calm face, that small chest rising and falling, the steady sound of the machine—everything seemed to still ring in his ears.

He slowly entered the bedroom. There was only one bed in the small room, a table next to it, and some files, notebooks, and prescriptions scattered on the table. As soon as he turned on the lamp next to the bed, a soft yellow light spread throughout the room.

Mikhail was unbuttoning his shirt, mentally counting all the patients of the day. He could never keep the thought of who was in good condition, who would have to see him again tomorrow out of bed. His professional responsibilities seemed to have swallowed up his personal life as well.

He stopped short when he remembered the old woman. When he left the room in the evening, her breathing was quite steady.

He changed into an old T-shirt. He went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. The cold water hit his cheeks, and for a moment, his head felt a little foggy. Looking in the mirror, he took a good look at his eyes—red, tired, and heavy with deep thought.

He looked very strange to himself.

Coming out of the bathroom, he picked up his phone from the table next to the bed. There were a few messages, but he didn't have the energy to read them. He put the phone on the table and sat down on one side of the bed.

He rolled his shoulders to relieve the pain in his shoulders, and pulled his neck back a little. It felt like he could sleep a little better today!

He slowly leaned back on the bed, his eyes growing heavy with fatigue. He noticed that it was late at night by the clock.

He pulled the sheet to his chest. The room looked quiet in the dim light. The sound of a car driving away somewhere in the distance, someone's light footsteps in the apartment next door—all of it created a kind of silent night melody.

Before he could close his eyes, at that very moment, the phone started vibrating.

The phone on the table vibrated slightly, along with the vibration-sound of the silent mode inside.

Mikhail didn't pay much attention at first. His tired body didn't want to pick up the phone. He thought, maybe it was a simple message, maybe a call that no one really needed.

But before the vibration could stop, it started again. For the second time in a row.

Now he opened his eyes. He sat up straight. Reaching for the phone and looking at the screen, he saw that the call was coming from the hospital number.

Suddenly, a slight heaviness began in his chest. He knew very well that calls from the hospital at night usually did not mean good news.

He quickly received the call.

“Hello, this is Doctor Mikhail.”

There was a few seconds of silence on the other side, then a female voice came through, a voice mixed with a little hurry and discomfort,

“Doctor, I’m from the City Hospital—from the ICU.”

Mikhail’s throat went dry a little.

“Yes, tell me. What happened?”

The voice on the other side seemed to gather its words for a few moments. Then it said very simply, directly,

“Your patient… the one who was in a coma… is no more, Doctor. She passed away a while ago.”

The words spoken in one breath felt like a heavy blow to Mikhail’s head.

He couldn't say anything for a few seconds. Even though the words reached his ears, his brain seemed to refuse to accept them.

He's gone?

"What are you saying?"—A strangled question finally escaped his lips.

"Are you sure? His vitals were completely stable in the evening."

The voice on the other end became a little formal, as if repeating the same thing out of habit,

"Yes, doctor. We're sure. She expired a while ago. The duty doctor declared it."

Mikhail stood up from the bed.

"How?"—his voice sounded hoarse.

"How did she die? Was there any sign? Why didn't anyone tell me before?"

The answer came from the other end,

Rapid decline, Doctor. We're documenting it now. You can come and find out more if you want."

Whether Mikhail heard anything else, he didn't know. He simply said,

"I'll be right back."

The call ended.

He stood still for a few seconds with the phone in his hand. A sharp pain was building in his chest. How was this possible?

The old woman's face flashed before him—that calm evening face, steady breathing, controlled blood pressure. He had checked everything himself and then left. There was no indication anywhere that everything could be over in a few hours.

Without a moment's delay, he quickly changed his T-shirt and put it back on. He slipped his feet into his shoes, picked up his stethoscope and wallet. He didn't even have time to comb his hair.

As he opened the door and left, it felt as if the whole world had suddenly started spinning at a rapid pace, and he was standing in the middle of that spinning, losing control.

As he climbed down the stairs, one thing kept running through his mind—

This isn't normal. This can't be normal at all.

He reached the bottom of the street and raised his hand towards the first taxi he saw.

The driver rolled down the window and looked at him with a stern look on his face. Looked.

“Where are you going?”

“City Hospital, as soon as possible,” Mikhail said.

The city lights stretched out in front of him as the taxi started moving. Even though the silent streets of the night were empty, an invisible noise began to buzz inside his head.

He looked out the window, but he couldn’t see anything clearly. He just wondered, if he really was gone, had I done something wrong? Had I missed something?

As a doctor, he had asked himself this question many times, but his confidence in this patient was strangely strong. He knew that there was no major risk tonight at least.

But reality was mocking his calculations.

The taxi stopped in front of the City Hospital a short distance away. Mikhail hurriedly paid the fare and got inside. He didn’t really notice any of the duty staff who would have nodded and greeted him at normal times.

He headed straight for the ICU ward.

The familiar smell of the corridor—a mixture of antiseptic, medicine, human sweat, and fatigue—was a constant presence in his mind.

He stopped in front of the ICU. The light and movement inside could be seen through the glass. One nurse was writing something in a notebook, another was entering a cabin inside.

Mikhail called a duty nurse standing next to the reception desk and said,

“I'm Dr. Mikhail. I got a call a while ago. A patient has died, show me.”

The nurse recognized him and said with a slightly uneasy expression,

“Yes, doctor… the patient in that last cabin. The one you used to see regularly.”

The words were in his ears, but he felt as if someone was holding him from the inside.

He slowly pushed the ICU door open and entered. A cold breeze blew in—a chilly feeling, a combination of the cold air from the air conditioner and the excessive noise of the machines.

As he moved toward the last cabin, the sound of his footsteps became a little heavier. Each step seemed like an obligation to push himself forward.

He stopped in front of the cabin. The door was half open. His chest went dry as he looked inside.

The same old woman was lying on the bed, but now there was a completely different silence on her face. No oxygen mask on her nose, her mouth gently closed, her eyes closed forever. The monitor was inactive, no green waves moving, just a screen that was dark with no lights.

There was no sound of shuddering breaths by the bedside, no rhythmic beeping of any machine—just a cold, desolate silence.

Mikhail slowly entered, and He stood by the bed.

He no longer saw her as a patient, but as a human being—someone he had seen for so long, trying to hold on to a torn life with his limited abilities.

No words came out of his throat. His throat was dry and wooden.

He slowly reached out and placed his hand on the old woman's hand. The skin had gone cold, but not yet hardened. A strange, unfamiliar stillness settled on the skin.

He remembered that a few hours ago, there had been warmth in this hand, a small stream of life.

In a low voice, he whispered, though very few words,

"I thought you were a little better today..."

The voice sounded unfamiliar to his own ears.

After standing without speaking for a while, he turned around.

The duty doctor was standing at a desk next to the ward with some papers. He was relatively young, but his expression was that familiar professional impassiveness.

Mikhail walked straight towards him.

“What happened?”—he asked directly.

“How did my patient die? All her parameters were stable when I left.”

The duty doctor cleared his throat lightly.

“Doctor, her condition had been critical for a long time. He suddenly declined tonight. We tried, but… in the end, she didn’t respond anymore.”

The anger and surprise that had been building up inside Mikhail mixed.

“What kind of decline?”—he asked.

“Heart rate? Pressure? Oxygen saturation? How did everything suddenly collapse?”

The doctor on duty felt a little uncomfortable, but he controlled himself and said,

“You know, in such patients, sudden collapse can happen at any time. Age, coma, long-term dependence—all of it… it could be a natural outcome.”

The word “natural outcome” stung Mikhail like a thorn in his ear.

He leaned forward a little and said in a serious voice,

“Normal? You call it normal?”

Before the doctor on duty could say anything, Mikhail continued, his voice sharper now,

“I checked her vitals this evening, before he left. Oxygen levels, heart rate, pressure—everything was under control. Even though her condition was chronic, there were no clinical signs in the past few hours that would justify such a sudden death.”

The doctor now took a somewhat defensive stance.

“Doctor, I’m just reporting what I saw. The patient was in a coma, old, his system was weak. Sudden cardiac arrest—”

Mikhail stopped him, his voice sharp and very clear,

“Coma doesn’t kill. Coma is a state in itself, not an end. His vitals were stable all night, you see the record. Coma doesn’t kill by itself. Something else must have happened here—something that happened very quickly. Some hidden hemorrhage… or a clot. Something that no one could understand, or wanted to look for.”

A kind of accumulated anger and question burned in his eyes.

The doctor on duty said with a weak smile,

“Doctor, I understand your concern. But practically speaking, we did everything we could. It wasn’t possible to bring him back. We’ll document it as a natural death.”

Those words again—natural death.

Mikhail’s body shook with annoyance.

“Have you updated the vitals?” he asked curtly.

“Yes, everything is documented,” the doctor said. “You can look at it if you want.”

“I want to look,” Mikhail said coldly.

He walked over to the corner of the ward, where the nurse’s station was. There was a computer terminal and a rack of paper files arranged next to it.

The nurse was a little startled at first, then she calmed down when she saw him.

“Doctor, do you need anything?”

Mikhail said very briefly,

“Show me the vitals and breathing rate records for the last few hours.”

The nurse paused for a moment, but didn’t ask any questions. She flipped through the files, pulled out a printout, and opened the monitoring software on the screen to show the graphs.

Mikhail sat down in a chair and took the files in his hands. The papers trembled slightly between his fingers, but his eyes were extremely attentive, cold.

First he looked at the oxygen saturation—it matched what he had seen in the evening. Stable, no major drops. There had been no unusual fluctuations in the heart rate until a few hours ago. The fluctuations in pressure were also within his expectations.

But when he looked at the breathing rate, the anger that had been building up inside his chest slowly sparked.

“

It started to burn like a fire.

The graph had suddenly drawn a strange curve towards the end. Where before the breathing rate had been within a certain range, there was a very sharp change towards the end—a sudden unusual fluctuation, then a sharp drop.

In the last few minutes, the breathing rate had changed as if a shock had suddenly come.

He narrowed his eyes and glanced at each section of the graph. He was calculating rapidly in his head—why could there be such an abrupt change?

Running his finger over the paper, he read the last readings again. The numbers flashed before him—

30… 34… then suddenly dropped to 18… 10… and then almost to zero.

No one naturally dies “normally” like this—at least that’s what his medical experience told him.

His jaw tightened. He closed the file very slowly. As he squeezed the edge of the paper, white marks appeared on his knuckles.

For a moment in between He sat completely silent. The sounds around him seemed to have receded a little. He could only hear the rustling of paper and the ringing in his own ears.

He felt as if someone had done something very carelessly, or intentionally. Maybe with the oxygen supply, maybe somewhere else. But such a sudden change in the breathing rate did not make the story of a “natural death” credible.

He slowly stood up.

The doctor on duty looked at him again, as if waiting for him to say something. But Mikhail did not want to hear any more arguments at this moment. His gaze had become so sharp that even the nurses around him did not dare to look at him.

His anger was building up inside, but he still controlled himself. He did not raise his voice, did not scream dramatically—this was perhaps the most dangerous form of anger he could show.

The old woman’s frozen face, the last reading on the monitor, and that sudden change in the breathing rate—three images were playing simultaneously in his head.

His feelings were Clearly—

Something was very wrong here.