Chapter 153: Chapter 153: Critical Window
*Bael’s POV*
"Mr. Wuchen, we have finished the initial scans," the doctor said. His voice was flat, carrying the heavy weight of a man who spent his entire life delivering bad news. "The fetal heartbeat is still there. It is steady for now. However, the force of the side impact caused some internal bleeding around the placenta. The pregnancy is extremely unstable right now, and the next seventy-two hours are absolutely critical."
Bael did not move, he did not breathe, he just stared at the doctor’s mouth, his chest tightening until it physically ached.
"And Runze?" Bael asked, his voice cracking, a raw whisper scraping past his throat. "How is my wife?"
The doctor took a short, heavy breath, looking straight into Bael’s eyes. "Your wife is alive, but the head injury is very serious. The CT scan shows significant swelling in his brain. Because of the trauma, he has slipped into a coma. Right now, he is unresponsive."
The hallway seemed to grow even louder, the sound of squeaking rubber shoes and distant typing pressing into Bael’s ears.
"We cannot tell you when he will wake up," the doctor continued carefully. "It could be a few hours, it could be days, or it could be weeks. His brain needs time to rest and heal. Any sudden shift in his condition, any infection, or any drop in his blood pressure could change everything in a second."
Seventy-two hours. Three days. Bael felt the floor beneath his shoes turn completely hollow. He was a man who owned entire blocks of the city, a man who could change the market with a single signature, but he could not force the swelling in Runze’s brain to go down.
"I need to see him," Bael said. It was not a request.
The doctor looked at him, noticing the tight line of Bael’s jaw and the whitened knuckles of his clenched hands. The older man hesitated for a second, then nodded slowly. "Only for a few minutes. He has just been moved to an ICU room. Please, do not touch any of the equipment, and do not try to shake or wake him. Any stress to his body right now is a risk."
"I understand," Bael muttered.
The doctor pointed down the narrow hallway toward a set of heavy gray doors. Bael turned immediately, his legs moving on pure instinct. Behind him, the steady, quiet footsteps of Grandmother Wuchen followed. She did not speak, but her presence was a solid weight in the corridor.
The room was freezing cold. The air smelled strongly of sharp alcohol and clean bleach.
Runze was lying in the middle of a large, high bed, looking smaller than Bael had ever seen him. He was completely motionless beneath the stiff white hospital sheets. A thick white bandage was wrapped tightly around his forehead, hiding the wound on his head. A breathing tube was secured in place with white tape across his mouth, connected to the ventilator standing quietly beside the bed. The machine released slow, measured breaths, making his chest rise and fall with mechanical precision.
IV lines ran into the backs of both of his pale hands, the clear plastic tubes stretching up to metal poles where bags of fluid hung in the shadow.
To the left of the bed, a large monitor glowed with green and blue lines, displaying his heartbeat, blood pressure, and oxygen levels in an endless stream of numbers and waves.
Beep. Hiss. Beep. Hiss.
The steady rhythm filled the small square room. It was terrifying because every sound reminded Bael how fragile everything had become, but it was also the only thing keeping him grounded. As long as the monitor kept beeping and the ventilator kept breathing for Runze, it meant he was still here.
Runze’s face was completely pale, almost transparent under the bright fluorescent light above the bed. His long eyelashes were perfectly still against his cheeks.
Bael walked over to the right side of the bed. His knees felt loose, like they might give out at any moment. He dropped heavily into the chair resting against the mattress. Slowly, with his fingers trembling violently, he reached out and took hold of Runze’s right hand.
It was freezing cold.
Bael carefully slid his fingers around Runze’s cold hand, taking care not to disturb the IV taped across the back of it, trying to rub his own warmth into the pale skin. He leaned his forehead against the edge of the mattress, his shoulders shaking under his suit jacket.
"I am sorry," Bael whispered into the white sheets. His voice was broken, completely ruined by the terror in his chest. "I am so sorry, Runze. I came late, I broke my promise."
He squeezed the cold fingers, but there was no response. Runze’s hand lay completely limp in his grasp.
"I should have been there," Bael muttered, his forehead digging harder into the cloth. "If I had been there, you wouldn’t be lying here. I should have been in that backseat with you. I would have held you. I would have taken the hit."
The silence from the bed was absolute. Runze did not move an inch. He did not blink, he just kept breathing that thin, mechanical air.
Suddenly, Bael felt a firm, heavy pressure on his left shoulder.
Grandmother Wuchen had stepped up right behind his chair. She did not try to pull him away from the bed, and she did not tell him to stop talking. She just squeezed his shoulder with surprising strength, her fingers digging through the thick fabric of his suit. The solid grip forced Bael to take a slow breath. She was grounding him, keeping him from spinning entirely out of control in the room.
A soft click at the door broke the heavy silence.
Bael did not turn his head, but his ears picked up the sound of a familiar voice whispering outside the threshold. It was Shen Rui. He had arrived from the office.
Grandmother Wuchen let go of Bael’s shoulder and walked quietly toward the doorway. She stepped slightly out into the hall, pulling the heavy door almost closed behind her, leaving only a tiny crack open.
"What is the situation outside?" Grandmother asked. Her voice was low, but in the quiet of the ICU corridor, the words traveled through the gap in the door.
"It is very serious, elder Madam," Shen Rui whispered back, his voice tight with stress. "The news of the young master’s accident has already leaked to the press, and someone recognized Mr. Wuchen’s car parked right outside the emergency entrance, so they now know the hospital he is admitted in."
There was a short pause, Bael could hear the rapid typing of Shen Rui’s fingers on a phone screen.
"Reporters are already gathering at the main gates," Shen Rui continued softly. "They have cameras. Security is trying to set up barricades, but the crowd is growing fast. Everyone wants to know the condition of Young Master Runze and his unborn child."
"Tell the hospital administration to clear the private garage entrance," Grandmother ordered, her voice had lost every trace of the fear she had shown earlier. She was entirely back in control, her tone sharp and unyielding. "Move Bael’s car immediately. No one enters this floor without my personal permission. If a single reporter gets a photo of my grandson or Runze, I will fire the entire security firm by morning."
"Yes, Madam. I am already handling the hospital staff," Shen Rui said. "...What about the police?"
"What did they find at the scene?"
"The traffic police have secured the accident scene," Shen Rui whispered, his voice dropping even lower. Bael had to strain his ears to catch the words over the steady beep of the heart monitor. "The truck that hit them... it was a heavy commercial vehicle. The driver claims his brakes failed coming down the ramp, but the impact was direct. It hit the rear left side where Young master was sitting. The police are testing the driver for alcohol, but something feels wrong about the timing."
Grandmother Wuchen let out a cold, hard breath. "Stay at the district station, do not let them release that driver until our own lawyers look at the maintenance logs of that truck. If Ming had anything to do with this—"
She cut herself off, but the implication was clear.
"Understood," Shen Rui said. Through the small crack in the door, he looked into the room for a split second. The moment his eyes landed on Bael’s back—hunched over, head pressed against the mattress, gripping an unresponsive hand—Shen Rui froze for a second.
He had worked for Bael for years, through brutal boardroom battles and massive corporate takeovers, but he had never seen the CEO look this utterly broken. A look of deep worry crossed the assistant’s face before he recovered, nodding quickly to Grandmother Wuchen. "I will handle the police matter."
"Go," Grandmother said.
The door clicked shut completely, cutting off the rest of the whispers.
Bael did not look up when his grandmother walked back into the room. He did not care about the reporters outside, he did not care about the cameras, or the stock price, or the truck driver at the police station. If Uncle Ming had caused this, Bael would tear him apart later. But right now, none of that mattered. The only thing that existed in the universe was the small, cold hand resting inside his own.
He looked at Runze’s pale face, studying the quiet line of his mouth and the slow, steady rise of his chest under the white sheet.
*Wake up,* Bael thought, his fingers tightening gently around Runze’s palm. *Please, just wake up. Open your eyes and tell me anything. Tell me you’re angry that I came late...anything. Just don’t leave me here alone.*
The green line on the monitor kept bouncing up and down, filling the cold room with its mechanical rhythm, counting down the long hours of the seventy-two-hour window.
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