Chapter 276 Sin and Evil

Chapter 276 Sin and Evil

"Lost?" Lily kept her voice low, but there was a pressure in it that was impossible to ignore. "When did it go missing? How?"

Tobias sat across from her, his expression a perfectly calibrated mix of apology and helplessness.

"Lily, we're confused too. Hospital policy requires us to keep security footage from outside the operating rooms for three months, but when the tech team went to pull it today, they found the data from that exact time period had some kind of anomaly. They can't recover it."

"Anomaly?" Lily's voice went up several notches. "What kind of anomaly? Was it overwritten? Deleted? A system failure? Tobias, you work in the medical system. You know what it means when key evidence just disappears."

Tobias let out a sigh and glanced to the side.

Zola was curled up in one of the lounge chairs, her whole body folded in on itself, her eyes so swollen they looked like two peaches.

Her husband Gabriel stood behind her, one hand resting on her shoulder, his face dark but saying nothing.

"Lily, I understand your anger — you're Zola's friend," Tobias said, lowering his voice. "But Cordelia's passing is something none of us wanted. That child was born with a severe heart defect. Conrad is one of the top cardiothoracic surgeons in the country. When we recommended surgery, we were doing everything we possibly could —"

"Everything you could?" Zola suddenly lifted her head. Her voice was so hoarse it barely sounded human. "What does that even mean? You told me my baby had a heart problem, that she wouldn't survive three months without surgery. Fine. We believed you. We signed the papers. We put her on that table. And then what? Then my baby never woke up!"

Her voice kept rising until she was almost screaming.

A few nurses passing in the hallway quickly dropped their heads and picked up their pace. Nobody dared to look over.

Gabriel's hand tightened on her shoulder. His lips moved like he was about to say something, but nothing came out.

Lily turned and walked over to Zola, crouching down in front of her and taking her ice-cold hands.

Zola's hands were trembling — that deep, bone-level shaking that comes from somewhere inside. Lily had seen that kind of trembling before. She'd felt it herself, when she lost her own child.

"Zola, listen to me," Lily said, looking straight into her eyes. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this. The fact that the footage is just gone — that's suspicious on its own. I'm not letting this go."

Fresh tears spilled down Zola's face. She gripped Lily's hands back, her nails digging almost into Lily's skin. "Lily, this wasn't a medical accident. This was murder. Do you understand? Maybe they deleted the footage themselves. They know something's wrong. They know my daughter didn't just die."

That last sentence landed like a knife, cutting straight into everyone in the room.

Tobias's expression finally shifted — the professional warmth was gone, replaced by something tight and guarded.

"Zola, I assure you, every step of the surgery followed strict medical protocols. There were no violations. Conrad is one of the leading experts in this field. He —"

"Then where is Conrad?" Lily stood up and turned to Tobias, her gaze sharp as a scalpel. "Something this serious happened, and I haven't seen him once since we got here. Where is he?"

The room went quiet for a few seconds.

Tobias reached up and touched his tie knot. The small gesture didn't escape Lily's notice. He was nervous — or at least, he was choosing his words very carefully.

"Conrad is... not doing well right now," Tobias said slowly. "Lily, you're a parent. You can understand what it does to a doctor when they can't save a child. Especially a newborn — a tiny life that had just come into the world. Conrad isn't in a state where he can face Cordelia's parents right now. He needs time."

"He needs time?" Zola shot to her feet. The chair behind her toppled over with a loud crash. "He needs time? What about me? What about my daughter? My daughter is dead. She doesn't need anything anymore, does she? She didn't even live one full day! She came out of my body and I hadn't even gotten a good look at her face before they took her away. And they never brought her back!"

Right in the middle of all of it, Gabriel's phone rang.

The sharp ringtone cut through the room. Everyone looked at him. He froze for a second, then pulled the phone from his pocket and glanced at the screen.

The ringing stopped abruptly. Gabriel flipped the phone face-down on the table, fast — like he'd touched something hot.

Zola's cries were still filling the room.

"Zola, sit down." Lily went over and put her hands on Zola's shoulders, but her eyes moved past her and landed on Gabriel's face for just a moment. He had the phone pressed face-down on the table, his fingers flat on top of it, like he was holding down something about to explode.

Tobias took the opening to say more soothing things — the hospital would take full responsibility, a special investigation team would be formed, the family would get answers. All of it.

Lily had heard this kind of talk so many times it barely registered anymore. Every line sounded like it had been copied straight from a medical dispute response template. Empty words that made her chest go cold.

Zola wasn't listening anyway. She had completely fallen apart, leaning against Lily, crying so hard she could barely breathe.

Lily had no choice but to guide her out of the conference room and down to the rest area at the end of the hallway.

Gabriel followed behind them, his steps a little hesitant, phone still in his hand.

"Gabriel," Lily said quietly, still rubbing Zola's back. "Did something happen?"

Gabriel instinctively pushed the phone deeper into his pocket and forced out a smile that looked worse than crying. "It got out."

Lily stepped to the side and pulled out her own phone. She opened the trending topics — and her fingers stopped.

There it was, sitting at number five: #SunriseHospitalNewbornDeath.

And the number was still climbing.

She tapped on it. The top post was a piece from some independent media account, with a headline designed to shock: Born and Dead Within a Day — Sunrise Hospital Accused of "Treating Lives as Worthless."

The article laid out Cordelia's entire case in detail — from the prenatal scans that flagged the heart problem, to being rushed into surgery right after birth, to the baby never waking up.

It was full of specifics. It even quoted things Tobias had said in the conference room — about Conrad being "in a bad state," about him not being able to "face the family" — every line pulled out and paired with commentary designed to inflame.