Chapter 9 - Into the Fire
Alexander remained frozen on the cold linoleum, unable to formulate a single word of defense.
Julian pulled his scrub pant leg away from Alexander’s clutching fingers as if shaking off vermin.
"You think this is about you, Mr. Moretti," Julian said, his voice flat, professional, and devoid of warmth.
"You think the universe revolves around your guilt, your money, and your desperate tears."
"Let me make something exceptionally clear to you before I walk into that room," Julian continued.
"I am a surgeon. I save lives because I honor the sanctity of human breath, not because you write checks."
"Your son Liam is an innocent patient on my table, and I will fight for his life with everything I possess."
"Not because he is your heir, and certainly not because you claim he is my brother," Julian stated coldly.
"I will do it because unlike you, Alexander Moretti, I do not abandon dying children to protect my own comfort."
Julian turned his back on the billionaire, pushing through the heavy double doors into operating room four.
The doors hissed shut, locking Alexander out in the sterile hallway where the silence felt like an execution chamber.
Olivia ran up to Alexander, pulling at his lapels, her voice rising to a frantic, piercing shriek.
"Are you insane, Alexander? You're letting her son cut open our baby?" Olivia screamed hysterically.
"He will kill Liam! He hates us! He wants revenge for what happened twenty-five years ago!"
"Shut your mouth, Olivia!" Alexander roared, turning on his wife with a ferocity she had never seen before.
His face was red, his eyes bloodshot, his hands shaking with uncontrollable tremors of rage and guilt.
"That boy in there is the only reason Liam has a pulse right now!" Alexander shouted, shoving her hands away.
"And if Liam dies tonight, it won't be because Julian failed, it will be because God is punishing us for Sophie!"
Olivia gasped, stepping backward, her hand flying to her throat as if struck across the face.
"Don't speak that dead baby's name!" Olivia hissed. "We built a life! We survived that woman!"
"We destroyed her, Olivia," Alexander whispered, his voice cracking into a ragged sob.
"We left her to bleed in the dark, and look what God sent back to judge us."
Inside the operating room, Julian stood over Liam's opened chest cavity, completely detached from the drama outside.
The monitors were beeping with erratic, terrifying rhythms as Liam’s blood pressure plummeted toward zero.
"Rupture in the aortic arch, clamp the proximal branch now!" Julian commanded, his hands moving with supernatural speed.
Blood was filling the field faster than the suction devices could clear it, obscuring the shredded vessel wall.
"He's arresting, Doctor Bennett! Ventricular fibrillation!" the anesthesiologist called out in panic.
"Charge paddles to fifty joules, clear the table," Julian ordered without a single tremble in his fingers.
The shock delivered, Liam's body convulsed on the table, but the monitor remained a flat, agonizing tone.
"Again, one hundred joules, clear!" Julian demanded, pressing the internal paddles directly against the young heart.
The electric current pulsed through the boy's chest, and the monitor beeped once, paused, and resumed a faint rhythm.
"Start the bypass pump, I have six minutes to replace this segment before his brain dies," Julian said calmly.
His fingers danced among the microscopic sutures, stitching synthetic graft to fragile, torn tissue under the hot lights.
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Every stitch was a defiant statement against the father who had abandoned him before he was even born.
Julian wasn't saving Liam to earn Alexander’s approval; he was saving Liam to prove that Claire Bennett’s blood was holy.
