Victor remained outside Adrian’s room until a security officer asked him to move away from the door. He complied with a stiff nod, but his eyes stayed on Claire through the narrow window. She could not hear what he said to Daniel Price in the corridor. She could see the lawyer’s expression change when Victor mentioned the paper she had shown the doctor.
Inside, Adrian’s fingers rested motionless on the sheet. The effort of opening his eyes had exhausted him, and the medical team had warned Claire that his progress would not be a straight line. Still, when she leaned toward him, his gaze returned to her face.
“I saw him,” she whispered. “You don't have to explain anything yet.”
His eyelids lowered and lifted once.
Claire had learned not to interpret every movement as an answer. This time, however, she believed he was trying to reassure her rather than ask for something. She remained beside him until a nurse arrived to prepare him for another examination.
Dr. Chen reviewed the incident with Claire afterward. Adrian’s reaction to Victor might reflect fear, confusion, or memories associated with the accident. It was too early to determine the cause. The team would document his responses and avoid leading questions that might influence his attempts to communicate.
“We have to separate what he is telling us from what we hope he is telling us,” Chen explained.
“I understand,” Claire said. “But I also don't want everyone to dismiss him because he can't speak properly.”
“Neither do I. That's why we need a reliable communication method.”
By late afternoon, Adrian could follow several simple commands with his eyes. He struggled with more complicated instructions and drifted into sleep after a few minutes of concentration. Chen arranged for a speech and language specialist to assess him the following morning, hoping to establish a basic yes-or-no system before asking about anything connected to his past.
Meanwhile, the hospital's legal department secured the handwritten note found inside the architecture book. The numbers on it appeared to correspond to an internal filing reference, though the old company records had not yet been located. The phrase about the north office and second drawer suggested a physical archive rather than an electronic file.
Reed asked Vale whether he recognized the notation.
The retired physician studied a photograph of the slip. “The Blackwood Foundation had an office in the company's old administrative building. The north office was where Adrian kept documents that required independent review. I remember because he insisted that no one else should have access without his permission.”
“Would the files still be there?” Reed asked.
“If they weren't destroyed or transferred, possibly.”
The information was passed to the hospital's legal counsel, who advised against sending anyone to search the building without proper authorization. The note was a clue, not a warrant, and Adrian's capacity to give instructions was still being assessed.
Victor learned about the proposed search before the hospital could arrange it. By the next morning, Price had submitted a letter asserting that the company had already consolidated its archives and that any remaining private papers belonged to the family estate.
The letter did not mention the north office.
That omission troubled Reed more than an outright denial would have.
At ten o'clock, the speech specialist began working with Adrian. She introduced a simple signal: one deliberate blink for yes, two for no. They tested it first with questions whose answers were obvious from the room. Was he in a hospital? Yes. Was he at home? No. Could he hear the specialist speaking? Yes.
The answers were not always consistent. Fatigue caused his eyelids to droop, and several responses required repetition. But when the specialist returned after a short rest, Adrian completed the same test with greater accuracy.
Claire waited in the corridor, watching a patch of sunlight creep across the polished floor. She had imagined Adrian waking in a hundred different ways over the years, usually in the middle of the night when regret was loudest. In those imaginings, he had always sat up, spoken her name, and asked why she had abandoned him.
Reality had given her a man who could barely keep his eyes open.
When the specialist invited her back into the room, Adrian looked at her for several seconds before blinking once.
“Do you know who I am?” Claire asked.
The specialist raised a hand. “Let's keep the questions neutral and consistent.”
Claire nodded, embarrassed by her impatience.
They began again. Adrian was asked to identify familiar voices, indicate whether he recognized certain objects, and respond to short statements. He recognized Claire's voice with reasonable consistency. He also appeared to recognize the architecture book, though the response weakened when he became tired.
The specialist ended the session before he was completely exhausted.
“It's encouraging,” she told Claire, “but this is only the beginning. We'll build a communication system around what he can reliably do.”
Claire thanked her and returned to the bedside. Adrian's eyes were half closed. She sat quietly rather than filling the room with words, letting him rest while she held the book on her lap.
A few minutes later, his gaze moved toward the door.
“Are you worried about Victor?” she asked before she could stop herself.
The specialist's caution returned to her mind. She should not have framed the question that way. She looked down, prepared to withdraw it.
Adrian blinked once.
Claire waited. She asked the same question again, this time using the agreed signal and a neutral tone. The answer was still yes.
She did not ask why. Not yet.
When Reed reviewed the results, he agreed that the response deserved documentation but warned that it could not establish what Victor had done, if anything. Adrian might associate his brother with the confrontation before the crash, the long hospitalization, or a more recent source of distress. They needed facts before conclusions.
That evening, Price arrived with a proposed consent document. It authorized Victor to coordinate Adrian's care and permitted a transfer once the attending team deemed him medically stable. Price described it as an administrative measure intended to simplify decisions during rehabilitation.
Reed refused to present it to Adrian.
“He has only just begun to communicate,” the doctor said. “We need an independent assessment of his decision-making capacity before anyone asks him to sign anything.”
“He cannot manage his affairs in his current condition,” Price replied.
“That is not the same as being unable to express his wishes about his care.”
Price closed the folder. “I will report your refusal to the family.”
“You're welcome to report the medical facts as well.”
After Price left, Reed requested that the hospital preserve all correspondence relating to Adrian's transfer and the earlier restrictions on his treatment records. He also asked the director to contact an independent patient advocate who could protect Adrian's interests while his capacity was being assessed.
The request was approved.
The next morning, Claire returned to find a nurse changing the flowers someone had left in Adrian's room. There was no card. The arrangement was expensive, all white lilies and dark green leaves, and it carried the unmistakable look of a gift chosen to impress rather than comfort.
“Did Victor send those?” Claire asked.
“I don't know,” the nurse said. “They arrived before the morning shift.”
Claire did not remove them. She simply moved the vase farther from the bed, where its heavy scent would not bother Adrian.
During the day's communication session, Adrian managed to indicate that he wanted the architecture book brought closer. The specialist placed it within his field of vision and asked whether he wanted Claire to read from it.
One blink.
Claire opened the book to a page marked by Adrian's old pencil notes. The handwriting was firm and impatient, full of underlines and arrows. She read a passage about how public buildings could either welcome people or quietly tell them they did not belong.
When she finished, Adrian's eyes remained fixed on the page.
“Do you remember writing in this?” she asked.
The specialist intervened gently. “Let's keep it to questions we can assess.”
Claire apologized, but Adrian blinked once again.
They recorded the response and ended the session when his concentration began to fade. It was the clearest sign yet that familiar material might help him engage, though no one claimed it proved full understanding of the words.
Later that afternoon, the patient advocate met with Reed and the hospital director. They agreed that Adrian's care would remain at St. Catherine's while his condition was reassessed, and that no transfer or major change in treatment would proceed without an independent review of his wishes and medical needs.
Victor was informed in writing.
He responded by requesting an emergency meeting with the company's board and announcing that he would seek formal authority over Adrian's business interests.
That announcement reached Claire through a message from a former employee of the foundation, who had seen the notice circulated among senior staff. The employee added one other detail: Victor had ordered the old administrative building cleared two weeks earlier, supposedly in preparation for renovation.
Claire read the message to Reed.
“Two weeks before Adrian woke up,” she said.
“Two weeks before we knew he would wake up,” Reed corrected. “The timing is suspicious, but it doesn't tell us what was removed or why.”
“Can someone check the records before everything disappears?”
“The legal team is working on it.”
Claire glanced through the glass at Adrian. He had fallen asleep with his right hand resting near the architecture book. For ten years, decisions had been made around that bed by people who could speak fluently and sign their names. Now the first faint evidence of Adrian's own wishes had begun to emerge, and his brother was moving quickly to secure control before those wishes could be heard.
Before leaving for the evening, Claire leaned down and spoke close to Adrian's ear.
“They're looking into the records. Nobody is going to pretend the note doesn't exist.”
His eyelids lifted. He watched her with a concentration that made her stop.
Then, slowly, he raised his right hand a few centimeters from the sheet. His fingers trembled with the effort. He pointed toward the architecture book, then toward the door.
Claire followed the gesture.
“You want the book taken away?”
Two blinks.
“No.
She tried again, careful not to supply the answer. “You want someone to go somewhere?”
One blink.
“Do you mean the north office?”
Adrian's fingers tightened. His eyelids closed, then opened, and he gave one deliberate blink.
Claire pressed the call button. When Reed arrived, she explained the sequence exactly as it had occurred, without embellishment. The doctor asked the questions again using the established communication method. Adrian was exhausted, and the result could not be repeated reliably enough to settle the matter.
Still, the direction was clear enough to record for further testing.
The north office was not merely a line in an old note anymore. Adrian himself appeared to be trying to direct them toward it.
And if Victor had ordered that building emptied, the people investigating the past might already be running out of time.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: The Search for Adrian’s Missing Files Uncovered a Paper Trail That Connected His Medical Records to the Fight Over the Family Fortune
The Billionaire’s Heartbeat Changed at Midnight, Just as His Family Prepared to Decide Who Would Inherit His Empire
Part 5 of 8
