Chapter 50
Standing outside the door wasn’t just anyone. It was none other than Annie’s attending physician, Dexter Whitaker. He was dressed in a white lab coat, and his face lit up with a warm smile. His gentle expression fit the image of a young doctor with exceptional skills that everyone imagined.
He reached out and gently ruffled Annie’s hair, speaking softly. “The weather’s great today. It’s the perfect day to be discharged.”
Annie lit up with excitement and asked repeatedly, “Dexter, can I really be discharged? Am I really allowed to go home?”
The Whitaker family was known for their heritage in alternative medicine. After Daxon brought Annie back, he hadn’t bothered going to any other. hospitals and headed straight to Whitaker Medical Center.
Dexter and Daxon were close friends, so Dexter canceled his other appointments and focused solely on treating Annie.
“Of course,” Dexter smiled warmly. “I’ve already asked the nurse to handle your discharge paperwork. You can just sit back and watch some TV for
now.”
Daxon, sitting nearby, looked a little hesitant. He glanced at Dexter, signaling for him to step outside for a private conversation. The two of them then left the room one after the other and headed to Dexter’s office.
“Dexter, didn’t you say Annie’s back injury was really serious? Isn’t it a bit early for her to be discharged?” Daxon’s voice carried a hint of concern. He had seen Annie’s back–bruises covered almost her entire back, with her lower back being the worst. The bruises there were dark and sunken, leaving a dent that didn’t bounce back for a long time after pressing on it.
Leaning against the desk, Dexter casually picked up the X–ray film from the table and pointed to a section of the lower back. “Her back injury was caused by years of physical violence. It’s become a chronic condition now, and she’ll need proper care going forward.”
Upon hearing that, Daxon pressed his lips tightly together, and a dark mood seemed to settle around him. He couldn’t help but think that just taking Annie away from the couple was letting them off too lightly.
Most people might have been intimidated by his silent, brooding presence, but Dexter, having grown up with him as a member of one of the four prominent families, was unfazed.
“Alright, alright.” Dexter gave Daxon a playful punch on the shoulder. “Just finding her and bringing her back is already a huge blessing. Everything else can be dealt with over time. Well, it’s still better than what happened to our family…” At the mention of this, Dexter sighed, and the warm smile that had been on his face disappeared.
Daxon’s heart stirred as he asked in confusion, “Still no news about your aunt?”
Unlike the Harrison family, Annie had gone missing when she was a child, taken away by traffickers and sold off. But when the Whitaker family’s heiress, Victoria, disappeared, she had already been an adult, and she had even had several bodyguards with her. Despite that, she had vanished
without a trace.
It was said that Victoria had been in a car accident at the time. All the bodyguards had died, and when they investigated the scene afterward, they couldn’t find her body. She had simply vanished into thin air. The most critical part was that she had been pregnant at the time.
“Didn’t you go to Mereida this time? You seriously didn’t hear anything at all?” Dexter asked, sounding a bit anxious.
The Whitaker family had spent over a decade searching, and finally, they had heard that Victoria might have shown up in Mereida.
The Whitaker family was known for their background in alternative medicine, and nearly everyone in the family had trained as a doctor. At that time, they were either busy with surgeries, giving lectures, or attending academic exchanges abroad, so nobody could leave.
When Dexter heard that Daxon was going to Mereida to audit a company, he asked Daxon to check if there was any news about Victoria while he was there.
Dexter had wanted to ask the day Daxon returned, but seeing that Annie’s condition wasn’t good, Dexter held back. She had been in the hospital for a while now, and this was already the sixth time Dexter had asked.
Daxon shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t find out anything.”
Dexter slumped back into his chair, radiating disappointment, and mumbled, “I wonder how that little girl’s doing…”
Before Annie was found, Dexter had found some solace in the fact that the Harrison family had also lost a little girl. But now that the Harrison family’s heiress had returned, while the Whitaker family’s heiress was still missing, every time he saw Annie, he felt a little more hopeless.
After a brief pause, Daxon finally couldn’t help but ask the question that had been bothering him all along, “I heard that when the Whitaker family’s heiress disappeared all those years ago, she was pregnant. How is it that all of you are so sure the baby was a girl?”
He wondered if it was because the Whitaker family was full of boys in this generation, and they were just desperate for a girl.
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Chapter 50
Dexter gave him a blank look and questioned, “Did you forget what we Whitakers do for a living?”
He thought, ‘We run hospitals, for heaven’s sake. Besides, pregnant women have checkups every month. Once the fetus is formed, we doctors can tell the gender with just a glance at the ultrasound. Plus, my aunt’s medical skills are top–notch. She could tell as well. He then realized how dumb the question was and that it didn’t seem like something Daxon would ask.
Daxon, however, just asked, “Feeling any better now?” To his surprise, Dexter’s mood actually did lift a bit after the distraction.
Dexter stood up and gave Daxon a playful punch. “So you were just trying to cheer me up, huh?”
Daxon didn’t respond, silently acknowledging it. The two of them then fell into a quiet silence for a while.
རྦ་རྗ་ཚོཚོ་༤
Right then, a warm breeze slipped in through the slightly open window, lifting the curtains gently. It carried the faint heat of the outside air, dispelling the cold that usually came from the hospital’s ever–present central air conditioning.
Daxon glanced out the window and thought that Dexter was right. Today’s weather was perfect for being discharged from the hospital.
While Daxon was in a relaxed mood, Dexter was far from it. With Victoria and the baby missing, they were constantly on his mind, making it impossible for him to smile.
Then, a newly arrived email on Dexter’s computer made his heart sink even further. He asked, “Daxon, you’re heading to Mereida to audit Sunrise Pharmaceuticals, right?”
Dexter’s voice snapped Daxon out of his thoughts. Upon noticing Dexter’s uneasy expression, Daxon walked over, leaned in to look at the computer, and saw a failed product test report from the Whitaker Medical Center’s pharmaceutical warehouse. His brow furrowed slightly.
“The production department manager of Sunrise Pharmaceuticals embezzled funds and passed off substandard products. The general manager has already handled it. Maybe the issue is with logistics. You can just leave the meds there, and I’ll have someone destroy them later,” Daxon said.
The Whitaker family was well–known in the alternative medicine field, owning numerous hospitals. However, not all the drugs in their facilities were produced in–house. Many were imported from abroad or supplied by other pharmaceutical groups to replenish their stock regularly.
This time, what prompted Daxon’s trip to Mereida was the fact that the drugs from Sunrise Pharmaceuticals didn’t meet their testing standards, raising suspicion that they were passing off inferior products.”
The Whitaker family and the Harrison family had been close for generations, and Dexter didn’t want this issue to damage their relationship. So, he gave Daxon a call, asking him to look into it while he would take care of destroying the faulty drugs that had arrived.
Though Daxon could have just assigned someone from his team to investigate, he wanted to show that he was taking the matter seriously. So, he personally led the audit team to Mereida, eventually discovering the problem traced back to a production department manager named Giles.
After the finance department allocated the funds for raw materials to the purchasing department, the materials were delivered to the production department’s workshop.
