"What does the footage show?" Lin Yueling demanded, her voice rising to a pitch that bordered on hysteria. Her hands gripped the bedsheets so hard her knuckles turned white, nails actually tearing through the fabric as her entire body tensed with desperate need for answers. "What happened to my son? Tell right now! What did you see?"
The nurses looked at each other with expressions that carried not just uncertainty but genuine dread. How did you tell a mother that her infant had appeared to turn to stone, then jade, then simply vanished as if he’d never existed? How did you explain the impossible without sounding insane? How did you watch a woman’s entire world shatter and know there was nothing you could say that would make it better?
"The police are investigating," the senior nurse said, her voice wavering despite her professional training. She was avoiding the question and everyone in the room knew it. "They’ve been searching for him since the mont the disappearance was discovered. Your family mbers were notified imdiately, your father and mother ca to the hospital, though they’re not currently here...."
"They’re not here?" Lin Yueling’s voice cracked completely, the words coming out as a wounded animal sound that made both nurses flinch. "My baby is missing and they’re not even here? Where are they?" Her volu was climbing now, approaching a scream. "Why would they leave? How could they leave when my son is gone? What kind of people abandon their daughter when her child has disappeared?"
The nurses exchanged another helpless glance. They didn’t know how to explain that Lin Feng and Madam Chen had been arrested after assaulting hospital staff during their frantic search for the missing infant. That they were currently being transferred to Black Water Ridge maximum security detention. That the entire family structure Lin Yueling had counted on for support had collapsed into criminal chaos while she’d been unconscious from surgery.
The senior nurse opened her mouth to attempt so kind of explanation, but Lin Yueling wasn’t listening anymore. The reality was crashing over her in waves too powerful to withstand.
"I want my baby," she whispered, and the words carried more devastation than any scream could have conveyed. Then louder, "I want my son." And then the whisper dissolved into sobs that shook her entire body despite the agony it caused, her fresh surgical incision protesting every heaving breath. "Please. Please just bring my baby. This can’t be real. This can’t be happening. I just gave birth. He was alive. I heard him cry. I heard him. Where is my baby? WHERE IS MY BABY?"
The last words ca out as a full-throated scream that echoed down the hospital corridor like a siren of grief, so raw and primal that it made every person within earshot stop what they were doing. Other patients stirred in neighboring rooms. Staff mbers froze mid-step. The sound of a mother’s heart breaking had a quality that transcended language or context, everyone who heard it understood exactly what it ant.
Lin Yueling’s desperation escalated from grief to violence in seconds. She began thrashing against the nurses who rushed forward to try to calm her, her movents wild and uncontrolled. She clawed at her IV line, managing to yank it partially free so blood began trickling from the insertion site. Her hands scrabbled at the bed rails, trying to lower them so she could get out of bed despite the fresh surgical incision that threatened to tear with every violent movent.
"My baby! I need to find my baby!" she scread, her voice going hoarse from the force of it. "Let go! Let look for him! He’s out there sowhere! He’s scared! He needs his mother!"
The senior nurse tried to grab her shoulders to hold her still. "Miss Lin, please, you’re going to hurt yourself...."
But Lin Yueling was beyond rational thought. She fought with the desperate strength of soone whose mind had broken under impossible grief. She struck out at the hands trying to restrain her, her nails raking across the senior nurse’s forearm and drawing blood. When the junior nurse tried to secure her legs to prevent her from getting out of bed, Lin Yueling kicked viciously, her heel connecting with the younger woman’s ribs hard enough to make her gasp and stumble backward.
"Don’t touch ! Don’t you dare touch !" Lin Yueling’s screams had taken on a quality of pure anguish now, words dissolving into incoherent wails. "My son! Soone took my son! Why isn’t anyone looking for him? Why are you holding here when he’s out there alone?"
She managed to get one leg over the bed rail, her hospital gown riding up, completely beyond caring about modesty or dignity or anything except the overwhelming need to find her missing child. The movent pulled at her surgical incision and fresh blood blood through the bandaging, a dark red stain spreading across her abdon that made both nurses cry out in alarm.
"She’s tearing her stitches!" the junior nurse shouted, pressing the call button frantically. "We need help in here now!"
Two more nurses burst through the door, followed quickly by a doctor who took one look at the scene and imdiately began issuing orders. "Restrain her before she causes permanent damage. Get the sedative ready. We don’t have ti for gentleness, she’s actively hemorrhaging."
It took all four dical staff mbers to hold Lin Yueling down. She fought them with everything she had, bucking and twisting and screaming until her voice cracked and broke. Her hair had co loose from its braid and whipped around her face. Sweat and tears stread down her cheeks. The blood from her torn incision was spreading faster now, soaking through the bandaging and staining the sheets beneath her.
"No! No! You don’t understand!" she sobbed, her voice now barely recognizable as human through the grief and pain. "He needs ! My baby needs his mother! I can feel it! Please let go! Please!"
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