Chapter 298 Turned into a Vegetative State
Isabella was eating her dessert when she suddenly paused, her eyes narrowing slightly.
A rhythmic sound rang out, like someone tapping a fork against a plate, crisp and pleasant.
She abruptly looked up toward the source of the sound.
It was Rose!
She saw the faint smile playing at the corners of Rose's mouth, and the next second, dizziness overwhelmed her.
Isabella felt her head splitting with pain, as if someone was pulling her soul away.
Hypnosis again...
Isabella gripped the fork in her hand tightly.
One voice was telling her to use this fork and stab it into her own throat.
Another voice was telling her she couldn't do that.
Her soul was being torn in half.
Isabella felt like she'd been thrown into a pot of boiling water. She gritted her teeth in agony, the taste of blood filling her mouth. The veins on her hands bulged, the blood in her body rushed faster, her heartbeat reached its limit, and her eyes swung back and forth between unfocused and focused, unknowingly turning crimson red.
Suddenly, like a rubber band stretched to its breaking point.
Isabella jerked her hand up.
The fork in her hand flew toward Rose at incredible speed, stabbing straight toward Rose's heart.
At the same moment, Rose's eyes rolled back and she passed out.
"Watch out!"
Eugene saw Isabella throw the fork and quickly raised his hand to block it. The fork went straight through his entire palm, the sharp pain making his whole body curl up.
But the next second, when he looked at Rose, he found that she had actually passed out.
Eugene endured the pain and pulled Rose into his arms, not understanding how Rose could have fainted out of nowhere.
He nervously called Rose's name, "Rose, what's wrong? Don't scare me!"
Rose's entire face and lips were an abnormally pale white, as if she'd been completely drained.
Isabella had already stood up and come before them, looking at them with icy eyes. "You want me dead that badly?"
Eugene looked at Isabella and roared furiously, "What did you do to her?"
Isabella glanced at Rose and frowned. "What could I do to her? You wanted to kill me. This time, my fork only hurt your hand. Next time, it won't be so simple."
After dropping those words, Isabella left the café with a dark expression.
Eugene quickly picked up Rose and ran toward the hospital.
——
"Stefan, quick! Hurry and see what's wrong with my sister!"
Eugene took Rose straight to his friend's hospital.
Stefan Hensley quickly had the nurses carry Rose inside.
Eugene still had the fork stuck in his hand. He naturally didn't dare pull it out carelessly, so he kept it that way until he got to the hospital.
Stefan arranged for someone to treat his wound and asked him, "What happened?"
Eugene naturally couldn't say that Rose had tried to hypnotize and kill Isabella, so he could only say, "I don't know either. Rose suddenly fainted."
"I'm talking about your hand. What happened to it?"
"I was hurt by an evil person," Eugene said.
He would settle this score another day.
Stefan didn't ask more questions and proceeded to examine Rose, first considering things like low blood sugar.
After the examination, he found that all of Rose's vital signs were completely normal.
Coming out of the examination room, Stefan said to Eugene, "Your sister is fine. It should be exhaustion that caused her to faint."
Hypnotists' physical condition was generally worse than ordinary people's, so this kind of situation was common.
Eugene breathed a sigh of relief. "That's good then."
As long as Rose was okay.
But just then, a nurse rushed out of the examination room, calling out anxiously, "Something's wrong, Dr. Hensley! The patient's brain waves are abnormal!"
Stefan's expression changed when he heard this.
He hurried inside, and after seeing Rose's brain wave pattern, his face instantly became grave.
"How could this be..." Stefan was stunned, seeming confused. "Rose's brain waves are showing a vegetative state."
"What?!"
Eugene's face changed drastically.
"What do you mean? What do you mean by vegetative state?"
Stefan frowned and said, "Simply put, your sister may never wake up."
Those words were like a bolt from the blue.
Eugene couldn't understand. "What do you mean my sister won't wake up? Why would this happen? How could she be fine one moment and then not wake up?"
Stefan explained to him, "Her brain suffered some kind of severe shock, causing damage to the cerebral cortex. So she's now in a state of being awake but without consciousness—a vegetative state."
Eugene's mind went completely blank.
He simply couldn't believe it.
How could Rose suddenly become a vegetable?
"Stefan, did you make a mistake? My sister didn't do anything. How could she suddenly become like this?"
"Eugene, don't panic. Calm down first. Our hospital isn't the first to receive this kind of case. This situation is very common among hypnotists, and in my experience, most cases like this are caused by hypnotic backlash."
"Backlash?"
Eugene certainly knew what that meant.
When a hypnotist faced a more advanced hypnotist and tried to force hypnosis, the difference in power often caused backlash.
Some would become idiots, some would fall into a coma and never wake up again.
But how could Rose suffer backlash?
Could that Isabella also be a hypnotist?
——
Isabella returned to the Powell family castle with Gwyneth.
At the entrance, Gwyneth saw Knox and asked, "Have you found those patrol guards who went missing recently?"
Knox shook his head. "No."
"Then keep looking!"
"Yes." After Knox responded, he added, "Ms. Powell, two more guards went missing last night. So far, a total of eight guards have disappeared."
Gwyneth frowned. "I want to see them alive or see their bodies. If my Powell family guards' disappearance is someone's doing, then we must find whoever's behind this."
After hearing the conversation between Gwyneth and Knox, Isabella didn't rush inside but stayed to ask Knox, "What's this about guards disappearing?"
"Ms. Taylor, you were in the hospital for a while, so you might not know about this. Over the past few days, patrol guards have been disappearing one after another. This is really strange, so now all guards are required to patrol in pairs and not go alone. But even so, two guards on patrol still went missing last night."
"Which area were the missing guards patrolling? Have you searched that area thoroughly?"
Knox thought for a moment and said, "The ones who disappeared were mostly guards patrolling the back mountain. We've searched, but we didn't find anything."
Isabella looked up at the mountain before her.
The Powell family castle was built on a mountain, so the entire mountain needed to be patrolled to prevent anyone from using the mountain paths to sneak into the castle.