Starting from scratch, Batman crushed my dream of getting rich

Chapter 182 A sane madman is still a madman
In Gotham City, outside the door of a single room in a hospital ward, doctors and nurses were coming and going. The night was long and there were many patients in the hospital, all of whom had their own things to do.

Inside the single room, a little boy of eight or nine years old was lying on the bed, and there was a man beside the bed.

The little boy's name was Charlie, and the man's name was Chuck. Big Chuck was little Charlie's father.

Chakra held his son's hand and felt heartbroken when he saw him lying on the hospital bed, looking extremely weak.

"Dad, I did something bad."

"No, no, Charlie, you're a good boy, you'll be fine."

Chuck tried his best to comfort his son, and at the same time, it seemed like he was comforting himself, but the little boy's head was confused and he continued to talk to himself.

"I said that word, the word you said I shouldn't have said, and I said it again."

Hearing his son's voice, Chuck lowered his head in pain, tears streaming down his face. He said to his son in a hoarse voice, "Don't worry about these things, Charlie. You will be fine. Everything will be fine."

But he knew that nothing would be alright, as Charlie's vital signs were getting weaker and weaker - how could an ordinary little boy resist the poison carefully chosen by the Riddler?

He is going to die.

"Dad," he said, "does this mean I'm going to die? Am I going to go to that horrible place?"

"no no."

Chuck lay over his son's body, crying sadly.

"No, my son, please don't."

A long time ago, before Chuck got divorced, he took his son to fly a kite.

Both he and Little Charlie remembered that day well because it was Little Charlie's first time flying a kite and he seemed to have a lot of fun, which made Big Chuck happy too.

Looking at the kite flying high in the sky, he asked his son, "Charlie, do you like this?"

"Damn it, of course."

Chuck looked at the kite and shook his head. "Just say 'of course,' my friend. You shouldn't say that word. It's not a good word. It's unlucky."

Little Charlie tugged at the kite string, feeling the wind and pulling the kite along: "Why is that an unlucky word?"

"My mother, your grandmother, used to say that, she said, if you say that word, that's where you might end up - the mouth is the root of all trouble."

"Oh"

Chuck lowered his head and looked at his son's face, which seemed a little unhappy. He felt a little guilty and said, "Uh, Charlie, I'm sorry, but I may not be able to go to your party on Saturday - I'm really sorry. I talked to your mother and we will take you out next weekend."

"You know, if I could come, I would, but I have a meeting."

Charlie was still pulling at the kite string, and it took him a long time to come up with an answer.

"Oh"

Chuck recalled the past scenes and looked at little Charlie's face. His voice was so weak that it sounded like a dream muttering.

"Dad, I feel a little pain."

Chuck's tears flowed more and more, and he couldn't stop crying. He took out two candies from his pocket while crying, one was milk candy and the other was strawberry candy. These were the candies he had planned to bring to little Charlie when they met next time.

"Charlie, have some candy." He cried and coaxed his son: "Sugar is sweet. Eat it and the pain will go away." With trembling hands, he peeled off the candy wrapper and put the strawberry candy into the boy's mouth. It was sweeter than milk candy.

"drop--"

At this moment, little Charlie's heart rate on the monitor finally returned to zero, forming a long straight line.

Batman stood silently in the shadow behind the curtain, clenched his fists, and closed his eyes silently. This was another life he failed to save. At this moment, he felt deeply powerless and self-blame.

“Drip, drip, drip—”

Um? what sound?
Chuck turned his head suddenly and looked at the monitor beside him. The electrocardiogram, which had been flattened, began to fluctuate again. The moment little Charlie took the strawberry candy, his heartbeat resumed.

"Ok?"

Batman looked at the hospital bed and saw that little Charlie's pale face gradually regained its rosy color, his tightly closed eyes opened again, his hands and feet seemed to have regained strength, and he suddenly sat up.

Chuck's face was covered with tears as he looked at his son in astonishment. He had clearly been in complete despair just now. The sudden change from sadness to joy made him at a loss, and even his brain stopped working for several seconds.

"Dad, I... I seem to be getting better?"

Charlie was finally awakened by his son's voice. He reached out and hugged his son tightly, bursting into tears.

"Dad, what's wrong? You're hugging me so tightly that I can't breathe."

Chuck hurriedly let go of his son, took out the remaining candy from his pocket, peeled it and stuffed it into Charlie's mouth.

Although he didn't know whether the candy saved Charlie's life, he decided to feed it to him first - that was Chuck's thought at the moment.

Batman looked at the candy in Chuck's hand, and memories immediately surged in his mind - at this moment, he thought of the conversation in the botanical garden.

"I have a kind of milk candy that can treat toxins." Ma Zhaodi shrugged. "It's that simple."

At this moment, Batman finally understood that what Ma Zhaodi said was the truth - but the first candy was obviously strawberry candy. Does this mean that Ma Zhaodi actually has multiple candies with different effects?
Batman secretly decided that he would ask Ma Zhaodi some more questions when they met next time.

"Chuck," he said to the ecstatic Chuck, "I'm so glad Charlie's okay. I almost didn't keep my promise to you. I'm so sorry."

"But now, the boy has been targeted by both the Joker and the Riddler, so he can't be 'alive' for the time being - do you understand?"

The next day, Chuck sat alone at home, modifying his drawings while listening to the hosts' argument on TV.

"The situation has gotten even worse! Hundreds of people have been hospitalized! Dozens more have been left hanging naked on the street by those perverted vigilantes who appeared out of nowhere!"

"Don't get so excited, Frank. No one's been killed yet—"

"I want to ask, where is your Batman!"

"He's helping. You can see him fighting those criminals on the street!"

"He helped, but things still got worse—what I'm seeing now is a war, and it needs to end now! We have to choose a side, Gotham has to choose a side."

"What!? Frank, what can we do? Send munitions to the Riddler?!"

"We need a leader. We need to make a choice. If we want to be safe, someone has to win. We have to choose a winner—if we want the Joker to die, we have to help the Riddler; if we want the Riddler to die, we have to help the Joker!"

“This is absolutely ridiculous.”

(End of this chapter)