CHAPTER 4: The Doctor's Signature

In a side room behind the ballroom, Clara sat across from two detectives while Lucas waited by the door. The chandeliers were muted here, the music only a faint pulse through the walls. Clara held the report so tightly the paper bent at the edges.
Detective Mora asked careful questions. Did Clara remember a second opinion? No. Had she been allowed to read her own medical files? No. Did she feel pain or sensation in her legs? Sometimes, she admitted. Tingling. Heat. A twitch at night. Dr. Voss had called them phantom signals.
Lucas placed a small flash drive on the table. "My mother recorded him. She knew no one would believe her otherwise." The detective connected it to a laptop. Dr. Voss's voice filled the room, low and bored. "The girl can recover, but recovery complicates the guardianship clause. Mr. Whitmore wants the public prognosis unchanged. Continue sedation and limit therapy." Clara stopped breathing. Not because of the doctor's cruelty. Because the next voice was her father's. "She is safer dependent," Richard said in the recording. "And the foundation needs a face."