Inside, everything looked like a luxury magazine: marble floors, modern paintings, perfect silence.
Upstairs, in a large blue nursery filled with expensive toys and monitors, Isabella finally saw the baby.
And immediately everything else disappeared.
Oliver Carter lay in his crib staring quietly at the ceiling.
His skin looked pale, almost waxy. His arms were extremely thin, and the diaper hung loosely around his waist.
Isabella had seen malnourished babies before—but always in poverty.
Never surrounded by luxury.
Standing beside the crib were the parents.
Richard Carter, a sharply dressed businessman in his mid-forties, and his wife Natalie, elegant but visibly exhausted.
“You’re the doctor from a public hospital?” Richard asked skeptically. “I don’t see what you can do that top specialists haven’t.”
Natalie shot him a warning look and turned to Isabella.
“Doctor… please help. My baby is fading away.”
Isabella nodded gently.
“May I hold him?”
When she lifted Oliver, he felt far too light.
What worried her even more was his behavior.
He didn’t cry.
He didn’t protest.
He simply looked at her calmly with large dark eyes—as if he had already learned that crying didn’t help.