He didn’t answer, his eyelids fluttering as he drifted out of consciousness.

“I’ve got him,” Charles said.

He hooked his arms under my father’s shoulders, while one of his security officers lifted my father’s legs.

Together, they carried him quickly across the courtyard, toward the heavy glass doors of the facility.

I ran alongside them, holding my father’s limp, freezing hand.

We entered the building, leaving the freezing wind and the snow behind.

The hallway inside was bright, lined with clean white tiles and smelling strongly of antiseptic.

It looked like a state-of-the-art hospital, but there were no patients in sight.

The silence of the long corridor was deafening.

“This way,” the officer said, leading us toward a set of double doors marked *Ward B*.

We pushed through the doors into a private room.

A clean hospital bed stood in the center, surrounded by heart monitors and oxygen tanks.

They gently laid my father onto the white sheets.

Charles immediately began wrapping him in thick, heated blankets from a warming cabinet.

“He has been kept here for months, Emily,” Charles said softly, checking the monitor.