Chapter 4 - The Titan Awakens
Northwestern Memorial Hospital sat like a glass and steel fortress against the dark Chicago sky.
In the private intensive care suite on the tenth floor, the only sound was the quiet, rhythmic beep of a heart monitor and the soft hum of an oxygen machine.
Maxwell Sterling lay beneath crisp white linens. His dark skin looked pale against the pillows, but the gray, deathly cast was gone, replaced by a faint, healthy flush returned by modern medicine and immediate intervention.
Sitting in a leather armchair near the window was Richard Vance. Vance was forty-four years old, wore a three-thousand-dollar suit that didn't have a single wrinkle, and served as Chief Legal Counsel for Sterling Enterprises. He was currently scrolling through an iPad with an expression of intense, calculated irritation.
A quiet groan came from the bed.
Vance snapped the iPad shut instantly, his face rearranging itself into a mask of deep, familial concern as he stood up and walked to the bedside.
"Maxwell?" Vance said softly. "Can you hear me?"
Maxwell’s eyelids fluttered open. For a long, confusing ten seconds, he stared at the acoustic tiles of the ceiling, his mind trying to piece together the dark gap in his memory. He remembered the sharp, crushing pain in his sternum while driving down Oak Street. He remembered his vision narrowing into a pinprick of blackness. He remembered the feeling of falling forward into infinity.
"Richard," Maxwell rasped, his throat dry and raw from the breathing tube that had been removed two hours earlier.
"Take it easy, Max," Vance said smoothly, reaching for a pitcher of water on the nightstand. "You had a severe cardiac event. The doctors performed an emergency angioplasty. You've been out for nearly eighteen hours."
Maxwell took a small sip of water through a straw, his sharp, dark eyes fixing on Vance’s face. Even in a hospital gown, Maxwell Sterling possessed an aura of absolute command that made younger executives flinch.
"The car," Maxwell grunted. "Where is the car?"
"Towed to the secure garage downtown," Vance assured him. "No media coverage. We’ve kept the story entirely quiet. The board has been told you are taking a brief rest for exhaustion."
Maxwell’s brows drew together. "I went down on Oak Street. The gear was in drive, Vance. I was moving."
Vance hesitated, shifting his weight slightly. "Yes. Well, fortune was on your side. The vehicle stopped."
"It didn't just stop," a new voice spoke up from the doorway.
Dr. Aris Thorne, Chief of Cardiology, stepped into the room holding a metal chart. He looked past Vance directly at Maxwell.
"Mr. Sterling, it's good to see those eyes open," Dr. Thorne said warmly. "If you're looking for the reason you're alive today, it wasn't just my surgical team. It was the five minutes before the ambulance arrived."
Maxwell looked from the doctor to his attorney. "What are you talking about?"
"When the paramedics reached your vehicle," Thorne explained, checking the monitors, "your car was in park with the emergency brake engaged. Your upper body had been shifted off the steering column, clearing your trachea. If you had stayed slumped forward, you would have asphyxiated long before the defibrillator touched your chest."
Maxwell’s jaw set hard. "Who did it?"
Vance cleared his throat nervously. "Max, it's really not important right now. Some local bystander—"
"Who did it, Vance?" Maxwell repeated, his deep voice carrying a dark edge that made the room temperature drop.
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Dr. Thorne pulled an official Chicago Police Department incident report from his file and handed it across the bed to Maxwell.
"The person who put your two-ton vehicle in park, called nine-one-one, and held your airway open," Dr. Thorne said gently, "was a seven-year-old girl named Emma Hayes."
