Emma Young's childhood friend, Samuel Wright, is currently interning in my hospital. Even though he has misdiagnosed a patient, he remains arrogant and haughty.

I personally drag him over to apologize to the patient and his family. On top of that, I request that Samuel reflect on his behavior at the hospital assembly.

Samuel vents everything to Emma, only to get berated by her in return.

"You're the one screwing up, and yet you still have the gall to complain about Michael? If you make this sort of mistake one more time, you're out!"

Emma's reaction delights me. I'm relieved to see that she's a very logical person who doesn't show favoritism to Samuel just because of their old bond.

I maintain my strictness around Samuel at work so that I can help him become an outstanding doctor.

But one day, the police seek me out as soon as I'm done with an extremely difficult surgery.

"Someone has reported you for medical malpractice. Please cooperate with our investigation."

The enraged family members have me surrounded soon enough. "So, you're the quack who's responsible for my son's death!"

Meanwhile, Emma has an arm wrapped around Samuel. Her gaze is icy the whole time.

"It seems that we'll be having a new hospital director soon."

The moment I stepped out of the operating room, a group of people rushed up to me like rabid dogs, cornering me at the locker room entrance. A sharp, ringing slap sent my glasses flying, and my vision blurred in an instant.

Clutching my stinging cheek, I barely had time to steady myself before someone grabbed me by the collar with a death grip.

"You heartless quack!" The leader of the agitators, Benjamin Wilson, glared at me as if he wanted to tear me apart.

His spit sprayed across my face as he shouted, "My son had a simple hernia surgery yesterday, and you cut his sperm duct? Are you trying to end our family line?"

Curious patients and their family members gathered around us, pointing and whispering about me. I mentally reviewed yesterday's surgery; there hadn't been a single mistake throughout the entire procedure.

Suppressing the anger in my chest, I explained solemnly, "It was a routine hernia repair, and it would never, under any circumstances, involve the sperm duct. The excised tissue was also sent to pathology. If you don't believe me, you can go verify the results yourself."

"Verify my ass!" Benjamin kicked over the trash can beside him.

Just then, the crowd parted. My wife, Emma Young, walked over with a stoic expression, flanked by a team of hospital security guards. She was holding a few thin sheets of paper, yet it felt as though she were holding my death warrant.

"That won't be necessary. This is the expedited report from an independent lab. Her voice was as cold as a stone in an ice cellar.

The very next moment, she flung the papers at my face. The sharp edges grazed the corner of my eye, sending a stinging pain through me.

"Sign it, admit to medical malpractice, and get the hell out of Heartwell Hospital!" Emma looked down at me. There wasn't a shred of affection in her eyes, only disgust. "Don't drag my family's reputation down with you!"

My junior colleague, Samuel Wright, who had always coveted the hospital director's position, stood beside her. Dressed in a brand-new suit, he sighed, as if he pitied me.

"Oh, Michael," he said. "I told you a long time ago. If your hands are shaking, don't force yourself onto the operating table. Now, look what you've done. You've ruined someone's life. That's a sin you can never make up for!"

I bent down to pick up the report from the floor. After just a glance, I was so exasperated I chuckled. The signature on it was crooked. It wasn't even my handwriting.

Samuel and Emma hadn't even bothered to forge it properly. This was a blatant attempt to destroy me.

"I didn't sign this." I held up the report and pointed at the signature.

My voice pierced through the commotion in the corridor. "The date is also wrong. At this exact moment, I was still on the operating table, saving a patient's life!"

A mocking smile tugged at the corner of Samuel's lips. He leisurely pulled out his phone, tapped on a video, and shoved it right in front of my face. "Stop denying it, Michael. The surveillance footage caught everything!"

On the screen, a man in a white coat and a surgical mask staggered drunkenly into the operating room. His build certainly looked like mine, but his gait was completely wrong.

"This is fake!" I hissed, staring straight into Samuel's eyes as rage exploded in my chest. "My white coat went missing yesterday. Did you steal it and wear it?

"Check the fingerprints! Check the retinal scans! Everyone has to use facial recognition to enter the operating room!"

Emma impatiently interrupted my defense. "That's enough! The evidence is right here. How much longer are you going to keep coming up with excuses?"

After scanning the surroundings, she announced loudly, "In light of this severe medical malpractice, the board has decided to remove him from his position as director. Dr. Wright will take over as the new director, effective immediately!"

At her command, several security guards rushed forward, reaching out to strip the white lab coat right off my back.

I took a huge step back until my back hit the cold metal door of the operating room. Gripping the doorframe with both hands, my knuckles turned white from the strain.

"I'm a licensed chief physician!" I shouted. "Without an official notice from the state medical board and a formal license revocation, I'd like to see any of you try and fire me!"

The security guards froze, startled by my roar. Clutching their batons, not a single one of them dared to take a step forward.

The corridor fell deathly still as neither side dared to move.

Realizing that brute force wasn't working, Emma's expression darkened further. She fished out her phone and called the police. "Hello, emergency services? A doctor at Heartwell Hospital intentionally harmed a patient and caused serious injury. The situation is getting out of control as we speak!"

After hanging up, she looked at me and sneered. "You just had to do this the hard way."

In less than ten minutes, two police officers pushed through the crowd and walked in. Surveying the mess on the floor and Benjamin, who was still throwing a tantrum, they frowned.

"Who's the lead surgeon?" one officer asked.

I straightened up. "I am."

One of them pulled out a pair of handcuffs and explained, "We received a report accusing you of seriously injuring a patient through medical malpractice. We'll need you to come with us to the station to assist in the investigation."

But I didn't budge, nor did I show the slightest hint of guilt. "I'm not going anywhere."

I looked the officer in the eye. "My patient is still in the anesthesia recovery phase, and his vital signs haven't stabilized yet. According to hospital protocol and medical malpractice standards, the lead surgeon cannot leave his post until the patient is out of the danger zone.

"If I leave now and something happens to the patient, who will take responsibility? You? Or him?" I pointed at the officer and then at Samuel.

The officer froze for a moment, clearly having never encountered a doctor who stood his ground so firmly.

Samuel panicked and shot Benjamin, who was on the floor, a look.

Benjamin caught on and immediately wailed, grabbing onto the officer's leg. "Officer, don't listen to his nonsense! He's just stalling so he can make a run for it!"

The elderly man threw a fit on the floor, rolling around and smearing tears and snot all over the officer's pant leg. The situation spiraled out of control instantly as the onlookers' phones flashed nonstop.

I knew that the moment I walked out that door and left with the officers, I would never be able to clear my name. Consequently, I absolutely couldn't back down.

I thought it over for a moment and said, "Since you claim the man in the surveillance footage is me, pull up all the hospital's surveillance footage!"

I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth, my eyes burning with conviction. "Not just the entrance to the operating room, but the locker room, the corridors, and even the elevators!"

So long as the timelines were cross-referenced, the lie would collapse under its own weight.

The triumphant look on Samuel's face stiffened for a split second, and he instinctively glanced at Emma.

However, she didn't even lift her gaze. "The surveillance system has been undergoing maintenance since yesterday. Except for that backup camera at the operating room entrance, all the others were turned off," she explained coldly.

How convenient. To bring me down, they truly had spared no effort, even concocting a reason as absurd as that.

"Stop fighting it, Michael." Samuel sighed, wearing an expression that suggested as if he was doing this for my own good.

He then added, "I sucked it up when you suppressed me in the department and made my life miserable. But this is a matter of life and death!"

He whipped out his phone, tapped into a WhatsApp conversation, and held it up to the officers to see. "Look. This is the message he sent me in the middle of the surgery."

Michael: "I messed up and cut the wrong part. Find a way to cover for me, and you can name your price."

The crowd erupted.

"What a monster! He messed up, yet he wants his junior to take the fall. How can someone like him be the director?"

My mind went blank as I stared at the profile picture in disbelief. It was my WhatsApp profile photo. Even the username was an exact match.

"I've never sent a message like that! There isn't even any signal inside the operating room!" I lunged forward, attempting to snatch his phone to get a closer look, but the officers held me back.

"That's photoshopped! It's fake!" I bellowed.

"I can testify," Emma, who had been silent all this time, interjected. "I was right next to Samuel at the time, and I witnessed him receive this message. I was also the one who advised him not to reply and to call the police instead."

I was dumbstruck. I turned to look at the woman I had shared a bed with for seven years.

At that moment, my heart went cold. For the sake of her first love, she was willing to commit perjury in public and ruin me for good.

Benjamin raised the thermos in his hand and hurled it at me. The stainless steel container struck my forehead, and a warm liquid began to stream down my brow. Blood blurred my vision, staining the whole world red.

"Let's beat this quack to death!"

"We'll make him pay with his life!"

The patient's family members rushed me, their fists and kicks raining down like a storm. It took both officers a lot of effort to drag them away.

I leaned against the corner of the wall, gasping for air, battered and bruised. Yet, I let out a low, bitter chuckle. "Do you two really think this is enough to convict me?"

With a trembling hand, I reached into the chest pocket of my white coat and pulled out a miniature camera. "With doctor-patient relations being as tense as they are these days, how could I, as the hospital director, not have a backup plan?"

I clicked the pen cap, and a faint red light flickered at my fingertip. "This is a miniature body camera—high-definition, wide-angle, and equipped with audio recording. It has been recording since the moment I entered the locker room to change. Whether or not I was drunk, whether I made a mistake, whether I sent that message on WhatsApp…"

I stared long and hard at Samuel's ghastly pale face and continued, "It recorded everything!"

Benjamin, who had been egging the crowd to beat me to a pulp moments ago, instantly fell silent.

Samuel's legs were visibly shaking. Cold sweat poured down his forehead as he looked to Emma for help.