Chapter 5 - Charity Ward 412
Boston General Hospital’s charity ward smelled of cheap disinfectant, old floor wax, and despair.
Unlike the private VIP suites on the upper floors where the city’s elite had their heart surgeries and cosmetic procedures, Ward 412 was a long room divided by thin, yellowed curtains that did nothing to stop the sounds of coughing, crying, and the rhythmic beeping of cheap heart monitors.
Edward Drummond walked down the corridor in his custom tailored Italian wool coat. Beside him, Dr. Harrison hurried to keep up, holding a briefcase of medical records.
"Room 412, Bed B," a tired nurse at the desk murmured without looking up from her computer. "Visiting hours ended at four, but... wait, aren't you Edward Drummond?"
Edward didn't answer. He pushed through the swinging double doors into Ward 412.
The room contained six narrow metal cots. In the far corner, beside a window covered in grime from the highway outside, lay an old woman. Her hair was stark white, thin and wispy around a face deeply lined by decades of hardship and sorrow. Oxygen tubes ran into her nose, and her skin had the gray, translucent look of someone near the end of life.
Edward stopped three feet from the bed. His chest felt constricted, as if an iron band were tightening around his ribs.
Thirty-five years.
The last time he had seen Margaret Drummond, she was nineteen, full of fire, her dark hair flying as she yelled at their father in the grand library. She had been so full of life, so vibrant, so utterly unyielding.
Now, she looked like a shadow carved from chalk.
As if sensing a presence, the old woman’s eyelids fluttered open. Her eyes—faded blue, milky with cataracts, but still unmistakably Drummond blue—focused slowly on the man standing beside her bed.
"Edward?" she rasped, her voice dry as dead leaves.
Edward fell to his knees beside the narrow hospital bed. The cold linoleum floor pressed into his shins, but he didn't care. He reached out with a trembling hand and gripped her thin, bony fingers.
"Margaret," he choked out. The word tore through his throat like broken glass. "It's me. It's Edward."
Tears trickled from the corners of Margaret’s milky eyes, sinking into the deep wrinkles of her cheeks. "You... you grew up," she whispered, her voice trembling. "You look like Father."
"I'm sorry," Edward wept, pressing his forehead against her frail hand. "I'm so sorry, Margaret. I thought you were dead. Father told us... he buried a coffin in Forest Hills..."
"He hated me," Margaret murmured, her breathing shallow. "Because I wouldn't let him break me. When he sent me to that clinic in Vermont... I escaped after two years. But I had nothing. No money. No name. I couldn't come back to Boston... he would have found me and locked me away again."
"Why didn't you reach out to me when he died?" Edward asked, lifting his head. "Ten years ago! When Father died, I took over the firm! Why didn't you come home?"
Margaret smiled a faint, tragic smile. "I saw you on the news, Edward. I saw you in the papers. You had become just like him. Cold. Steel. Money and power. I was afraid... afraid you would treat me the same way."
The words struck Edward harder than any physical blow could have. You had become just like him.
It was true. For twenty-five years, Edward had built a fortress around his heart. He had treated people like assets, relationships like mergers, and weakness like a crime. He had become the Don of Back Bay—a man feared, respected, but completely alone.
"Julian found me," Margaret continued softly, her pulse fluttering against Edward's thumb. "Seven years ago. Right before... before he died. He came to my little apartment in Southie. He was so happy, Edward. He had met Clara. They had a little girl... Sophia."
"I met her," Edward said, his voice cracking. "She’s at the mansion. She’s safe, Margaret. She’s safe, and so is Julian’s newborn son."
Margaret’s hand spasmed around Edward’s fingers. "The baby... Clara was so sick... she used the frozen embryos Julian left at the fertility bank before he died... she wanted to give Sophia a brother... but then Clara died... and the clinic..."
"Victoria tried to destroy them," Edward said, his tone turning dark with righteous anger. "She tried to hide them to protect her inheritance."
Margaret’s eyes widened with fear. "Victoria... she was always so sharp... even as a little girl..."
"She won't touch them again," Edward vowed, lifting his sister's hand to his lips. "I swear to you on our mother's memory, Margaret, Victoria will never harm a hair on their heads. Your grandchildren are coming home. You are coming home."
Dr. Harrison stepped forward, motioning to two medical orderlies who had entered behind them carrying a luxury transport gurney.
"Mr. Drummond," Dr. Harrison said gently. "The private ambulance is ready. We have a suite prepared for her at Mass General, with the top cardiologists in the state."
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Margaret looked up at the ceiling, then back at her brother. "I don't have much time, Edward. My heart..."
"You have all the time in the world," Edward said, standing up and taking her gurney by the frame. "Because I am not letting you die in this place. Not today. Not ever again."
