Just as I held the incubator in my arms, the laboratory door was violently kicked open.
Liam barged in with Vanessa, both of them wearing expressions of undisguised urgency.
“Leave the item behind!” Liam stepped forward and reached out to snatch the incubator. “All research outcomes in the lab belong to the hospital. You have no right to take anything with you now!”
I sidestepped him and shielded the incubator behind me. “This is three years of my work. The formula is handwritten by me, the coagulant was exclusively developed by me, and it has nothing to do with the hospital!”
“What yours and mine?” Vanessa squeezed to the front, her gaze glued tightly to the incubator, her tone sharp. “You’ve already been stripped of your medical license. What’s the point of keeping these? Why not give them to me? I can make them useful— better than letting you waste them!”
As she spoke, she suddenly reached out to grab it, her fingertips nearly touching the case.
I jerked back, watching her warily. “Vanessa, don’t push your luck!”
“I think you just don’t know what’s good for you!”
Enraged, Vanessa suddenly lunged forward, gripping the handle of the incubator with both hands. We began pulling against each other instantly. My strength was steady, and Vanessa failed to grab it for the moment. Pretending her foot slipped, she let her body fall backward while deliberately swinging her arm hard across the nearby lab table.
Crash—
The incubator slipped from our hands and crashed onto the floor. Glass vials shattered instantly, pale blue coagulant splashing out and spreading across the ground. Vanessa, still unsatisfied, deliberately crushed the scattered formula papers under her high heels as she fell, the liquid and shoe prints staining them into filthy fragments, the essential ratios completely blurred.
“Ah!”
Vanessa fell to the ground, her skirt soaked with the spilled reagent. She immediately clutched her knee and cried out, “Liam! Look! Clara pushed me! She destroyed the coagulant and the formula on purpose!”
Liam hadn’t seen anything clearly. He only saw Vanessa on the floor and me standing beside her. He burst with fury instantly.
“Clara! You’re vicious! Vanessa tried to reason with you kindly, and you resorted to violence and sabotaged critical research!”
“I didn’t push her! She fell on purpose!”
My voice was both anxious and furious as I bent down, trying to salvage any remaining legible fragments of the formula. “That was the newest coagulant we developed! Without it, an aortic dissection surgery can’t stop the bleeding at all! You’re going to kill a patient!”
“You still dare argue!”
Liam grabbed my wrist, squeezing so hard it felt like he might crush my bones. “You’re not welcome here. Get out!”
“Liam, wake up!” I struggled, my gaze sharp as a blade. “Can’t you see what Vanessa wants? She wants my formula! If you throw me out now, what you’re destroying is the only chance for countless future patients!”
“Enough!”
Liam refused to listen, dragging me toward the door. “I don’t want to hear another word of your nonsense! You’re just unwilling to accept your transfer and came here to cause trouble!”
He shoved me out of the door.
My back slammed hard against the wall, pain shooting through me as I sucked in a breath. I looked at the disgust and finality in Liam’s eyes, and coldness spread through my chest.
“Liam, you will regret this! What you are destroying with your own hands is your bottom line as a doctor!”
“Regret? The only thing I regret is meeting you!”
Liam slammed the door shut, cutting me off completely. Then he immediately crouched beside Vanessa, lifting her anxiously.
“Vanessa, are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?”
Leaning in his arms, Vanessa secretly lifted her eyes, looking toward me through the crack in the door, a flash of triumphant cruelty flickering in them.
Just then, the hospital broadcast suddenly sounded, a hurried female voice breaking the silence of the corridor:
“Emergency notice! The ER has received a patient with a ruptured aortic dissection. Massive blood loss, condition critical. A top-tier surgeon is urgently needed for immediate consultation! Repeating, a top-tier surgeon is urgently needed!”
The lab door was instantly pulled open.
Liam supported Vanessa as they rushed out, neither of them sparing me even a glance before sprinting toward the emergency department.
I watched their hurried silhouettes, then lowered my head to look at my fingertips, still stained with the spilled reagent.
The corner of my mouth curled into a cold smile.
They didn’t know that what they had just destroyed was the patient’s only hope for survival.
And the opportunity I had been waiting for— the catalyst for my revenge— had quietly arrived at this very moment.
