Chapter 227: Hospital

Chapter 227: Chapter 227: Hospital

The hospital was already in chaos when the old car pulled up to its doors.

Every window blazed with light. Ambulances and private carriages jammed the forecourt, and a crowd of frightened people pressed against the entrance, clutching their glowing devices and shouting over one another. Orderlies ran between them with stretchers. Somewhere inside, an alarm had been ringing for so long that it had faded into the background, like the hum of a hive.

Arthur had braced himself for a long fight through that crowd. He had one hand on the horn and a speech half-prepared for whoever stood in his way.

He did not need it.

A young man in a pressed white coat was already running toward the car, and a second figure in the robes of a senior cleric strode a few steps behind him. The young man’s eyes went straight past Arthur to the back seat, where a straw hat sat tilted over a familiar face.

"Rowan!" he called, breathless. "We’ve been expecting you. His Majesty’s office sent word an hour ago. Please, this way. Quickly."

Arthur blinked. Beside him, Rowan was already helping his mother out of the car, one arm around her shoulders and one hand still steadying her with a thin thread of mana. "An hour ago?" Rowan murmured.

"The Emperor does not forget the people who carried his daughter back to him," the cleric said, with a small, grave bow. "Nor their families."

The crowd at the entrance parted as if a hand had swept through it. A few faces turned, some resentful, most simply too frightened to care. A stretcher bearer pulled his cart aside without being asked. Rowan felt a flicker of discomfort at the special treatment, and let it go. Right now, his mother mattered more than his pride.

They did not go through the main lobby. The young doctor led them through a side corridor lined with polished stone, past a pair of silent guards, and into a private wing where the noise from outside dropped to a distant murmur. The air smelled of antiseptic, clean linen, and the faint green tang of healing herbs. Pale lamps burned with a steady, restful light.

Martha leaned on her son’s arm, and a wry smile tugged at her mouth. "Well," she said, a little breathlessly. "This is much grander than the midwife’s cottage."

"I’ll remind you that you said that," Arthur muttered, and she laughed, then gasped and gripped Rowan’s sleeve.

"Another one?" Rowan asked.

"Just a small one." She waved it away, though her knuckles had gone white. "Don’t fuss."

The private medical bay stood at the end of the corridor, a wide, bright chamber with a high ceiling and walls of pale, warm stone. At its center stood a bed with a soft white coverlet, and around it stood arrays of equipment Rowan had only ever seen in the palace archives: tall silver frames wrapped in glowing runework, crystal lenses mounted on articulated arms, and basins of clear water that shimmered faintly with stored mana.

A dozen people waited inside. They wore robes of different colors, the soft gold of senior clerics, the deep green of master healers, the white and silver of surgeons, but they stood with the same quiet readiness, and every one of them radiated a calm, disciplined presence that Rowan recognized at once. These were not ordinary physicians. These were the best the empire had to offer, and they had been pulled from their beds in the middle of the night.

The moment Martha crossed the threshold, the room moved.

Two attendants guided her gently onto the bed and propped her against a bank of pillows. A third slipped a warm blanket over her shoulders. Arthur hovered at her side, uncertain where to put his hands, until a nurse pressed a chair into them with a small, kind smile.

Then the great silver frames hummed to life.

Rings of pale light rose from the floor and swept slowly upward around the bed, scanning Martha from head to foot. A shimmering three-dimensional image bloomed in the air above her, a translucent figure drawn in threads of blue and gold, turning gently as the scanners worked.

Within it, Rowan could see everything: the steady beat of her heart, the branching glow of her mana channels, the rise and fall of her breath, and, curled small and bright at its center, the faint, fluttering outline of a child.

"The mother’s vitals are strong," murmured a healer in green, watching the shifting numbers. "Heart rate elevated but stable. Mana channels showing minor overload, but the damage is minimal. Someone has already stabilized her."

"Our son," Arthur said hoarsely.

The healer glanced at Rowan, and a flicker of respect crossed her face. "It was well done, Rowan. Without that, we might have been fighting a much harder battle." 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

"And the child?" Rowan asked.

"Heartbeat is strong. Position is good." The healer smiled faintly. "Small for the due date, but sound. A little early. Nothing we can’t manage."

Rowan let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

The crowd of specialists parted, and a woman stepped forward from the back of the room.

She was perhaps sixty, tall and spare, with silver-streaked hair pulled into a tight knot and a face lined by years of long vigils. She wore the white and gold robes of a Chief Physician, with a simple silver pin at her collar in the shape of a crescent moon. Her eyes were gray and calm, and when they rested on Martha, the entire room seemed to settle around her.

"Madam Vance," she said. Her voice was low, measured, and unhurried, with the quiet authority of someone who had delivered bad news and good news in equal measure for forty years, and had learned to carry both with the same steadiness. "I am Dr. Sapientia Orlan, Chief Physician of this hospital. You are in good hands. Rest assured, we will do our utmost to deliver your child, and we will keep both of you safe throughout."

Martha looked up at her, and some of the tension finally eased from her shoulders. "Thank you, Doctor," she said. "I’m afraid I’ve caused a fuss."

"You have caused nothing of the kind," Dr. Orlan said, with the ghost of a smile. "Tonight, half the city is in distress. Yours is the only emergency I’ve been glad to see walk through that door, because yours is the only one I’m certain we can help." She laid a cool, gentle hand on Martha’s wrist. "I want you to focus on one thing only: your breathing. Everything else belongs to us."

Arthur let out a shaky laugh and reached for his wife’s other hand. "Hear that, Martha? Just breathe."

"I am breathing," she said tartly. "I’ve done it every day for fifty-odd years."

"Then you’re ahead of the rest of us," said Dr. Orlan.

She turned to Rowan and Arthur and her tone shifted subtly, becoming brisk, courteous, and absolutely firm. "Gentlemen, I will need you to wait just outside during the procedure. The delivery chamber will be sealed while the clerics work. It will be hard to stay out, but you’ll serve her best by trusting us."

Arthur’s jaw tightened. "I’d rather stay."

"I understand," she said, and meant it. "But the healing arrays are sensitive to uncontrolled mana, and tonight the whole world is full of it. I can allow one of you at the head of the bed, once the worst has passed. Not before."

Rowan laid a hand on his father’s shoulder. "She’s right, Father. Let them work."

Arthur looked at his wife. Martha looked back, and her expression softened with all the warmth that had carried a family through thirty years of hard seasons.

"Go on," she said gently. "I’ll be fine. Our little one just wants to meet the world a bit sooner than planned."

Arthur bent and pressed his forehead to hers, and said something so quiet that only she could hear. Then he straightened and let Rowan lead him from the room.

The door slid closed behind them with a soft, final click.

In the corridor, the noise from the rest of the hospital seemed very far away. Arthur stood with his back against the wall, and his hands clenched, staring at the sealed door. Rowan stood beside him and said nothing, because there was nothing to say that would help.

Through the thick stone, faint and muffled, they heard the first low chant of the clerics begin, a steady, rising harmony, like a hymn sung in a language older than the city. Warm gold light seeped under the door and spilled across the polished floor.

Arthur let out a slow, unsteady breath. "She’ll be all right," he said, almost to himself.

"She will," said Rowan.

And outside the hospital’s tall windows, the Tower still burned against the sky, blue and cold and endless, while inside, in a quiet room, the highest healers in the realm bent their heads over his mother and the small, impatient life she carried.