Sign the Papers Mr. Langford novel Chapter 233

When Wren arrived at Stellaris, Maya Merritt was casting the Langford Medical teaser video onto the conference room's large screen.

In the video, Willow stood inside a warmly decorated rehab room, with blurred patients and families in the background. She wore a pastel knit sweater, her voice soft, smiling as though she had personally endured the pain of every family.

"Our hope is that on the road to recovery, every family can be embraced with tenderness."

In the final frame, the Langford Medical Group logo slowly faded into view.

The conference room fell into a heavy silence.

The video automatically looped for a second time.

Phoebe Price leaned against the edge of the table, twirling a pen in her hand, the cap bearing faint indentations from her teeth. Maya sat cross-legged on her chair, her hair disheveled, her gaze even wilder than her hair.

"I have a half-baked idea right now," Maya said, pointing at the large screen. "Should we shoot a video too? I already have the title: 'Let every overpromise be precisely slapped down by the Ethics Board.'"

Phoebe pulled the pen from her mouth. "Keep your voice down, I'm afraid the security cameras are picking up evidence of that big mouth of yours."

Maya rolled her eyes. "Let them collect evidence. I'm ready to lose my mind publicly."

Wren didn't laugh.

She set her bag down and stood before the large screen, watching the video loop for a third time.

It was a cunningly produced piece.

It never explicitly criticized Stellaris, nor did it mention Wren's name. It simply co-opted words like 'family,' 'companionship,' and 'recovery,' positioning Langford Medical as the more compassionate, patient-centric entity.

This was far more troublesome than a direct attack.

A direct attack could be refuted.

With this kind of saccharine rhetoric, pushing back too hard would make her look cold-blooded, while pushing back too gently would look like a silent admission of defeat.

Seeing Wren's prolonged silence, Maya finally dialed back the jokes. "Wren, don't let it get to you. It's just conceptual marketing. The moment they have to implement actual procedures, they'll be full of holes."

Phoebe frowned. "The problem is that the review boards and the media won't look at the procedures first. They'll look at who seems to care more about the patients."

Wren pulled out a chair and sat down, forwarding Julian's feedback from the previous night into the group chat.

"We won't retaliate just yet," she said. "We're going to revise our own materials."

Wren finally offered a faint smile.

It was brief, quickly suppressed back into a composed mask.

She opened her laptop. Alongside the Stellaris documents, her screen displayed the observation log template Mr. Lawson had sent. She still hadn't fully organized the chaotic events at the Langford Estate.

The child's homework.

Lawrence failing to pick him up.

Eleanor disguising a broken promise as a lesson in resilience.

And that little house made of building blocks.

Leo had placed The Tiny Figure representing Lawrence far away, only allowing it to inch the slightest bit closer.

Those images wrapped around her heart like fine, suffocating threads. Sitting in the conference room, listening to her colleagues debate patient authorization, her thoughts drifted relentlessly to her son.

A six-and-a-half-year-old boy, desperately trying to authorize the adults to enter his fragile world.