Victor, still sitting in the snow, watched the scene with his heart in his throat. His fingers were white, his lips numb, but a single thought kept him warm: he’s alive. The boy was loaded into the ambulance, tubes and wires trailing behind him. The medics sprinted to the front of the vehicle.
— Alert the trauma center. We have a severe pediatric hypothermia case incoming.
The doors slammed shut, and the siren screamed as the ambulance disappeared into the night. Victor remained in the snow, staring at the fading red lights. It was in the hands of the doctors now. As he sat there, he couldn’t help but wonder: what kind of monster leaves a child to die in a frozen lake?
Arthur Sterling looked out over the city from the 40th floor of his office building. His silhouette was sharp against the backdrop of the snow-covered skyline. In the glass reflection, he saw a successful man—tailored suit, perfect hair, the look of a man who had won at the game of business.
But the reflection also showed the toll. Dark circles under his eyes, a tension in his jaw—the price of his ambition. He held a quarterly report in his hand, but his mind was elsewhere. He had canceled dinner with his son again last night. He wondered if his wife, Evelyn, was handling the boy okay.
The sharp ring of his desk phone shattered the silence. Arthur frowned; his assistant knew he wasn’t to be disturbed during his end-of-month review.
— Sterling, — he answered, his voice clipped.
But the voice on the other end was grave. It was the administrator from Memorial Hospital. The words “accident” and “frozen lake” hit him like a physical strike. Arthur felt the floor tilt beneath his feet.
The drive to the hospital was a blur of red lights and snowy streets. He drove on autopilot, his mind racing through his last moments with his son: a rushed dinner three days ago, a distracted “goodnight,” empty promises to take him to a ball game.
At the hospital entrance, emergency lights flickered. Arthur abandoned his car at the curb. Inside, the nurses looked at him with a mix of pity and hesitation.
— Where is my son? — his voice was raw, cracking with a fear he hadn’t felt in years.
A doctor met him, a woman with a serious expression that offered little comfort:
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