Months earlier, in a sprawling mansion at the quiet northern edge of the city,
Hannah Hale had been a lonely girl living behind closed curtains. She wasn’t forbidden from playing—
she was simply told she was “too delicate,”
“too fragile,”
“too sick to be outside.”
Her stepmother, Veronica, insisted Hannah needed rest. Her father, Richard, traveled constantly for work.
And so Hannah spent her days in bed, listening to the world from behind a window she rarely touched. One afternoon, an old ball bounced into the garden. A skinny boy climbed a tree, dropped over the wall, and ran to retrieve it.
Hannah saw him from her window. She didn’t scream. She waved.
Samuel froze. Then she smiled—softly, shyly—
and something in the boy brightened. From that day on, Samuel returned.
They talked through the open window, shared chalk drawings on the garden stones, played card games through the bars, and laughed in a way Hannah hadn’t in years. Samuel became her secret joy. Her real friend.
And the only person who noticed something strange about her “treatment.”
Hannah wasn’t getting better. She was getting weaker—
not from illness,
but from the way Veronica and a private physician, Dr. Lennox, kept insisting she needed more “rest,”
more “adjustments to her routine,”
and more medications that turned her dizzy and tired.
Samuel was the only person Hannah trusted enough to say:
“I feel worse every week.”
And Samuel did what no adult had done:
He paid attention. One night, after being shooed away for “disturbing the patient,”
Samuel climbed a tree that overlooked the study window. Inside, Veronica and Dr.
Lennox sat with wine glasses in hand. He heard enough. Not poison.
Not violence. But something deeply wrong:
Veronica complained Hannah was “too alert lately.”
Dr. Lennox assured her the new “treatment plan” would keep Hannah “calmer… quieter.”
He spoke of increased sedatives.
She spoke of inheritance. They both spoke as if Hannah were an obstacle—
not a child. Samuel felt his heart pound.
He didn’t understand every word,
but he understood enough:
They weren’t helping Hannah. They were keeping her weak. He had to tell someone.
The next morning, Hannah fainted. Veronica insisted it was “just her condition.”
Dr. Lennox administered another heavy dose of medication.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
TAP → NEXT PAGE → 👇
