The Ex-Wife's Burning Elegance novel Chapter 1376

To make matters worse, the patient started screaming, loudly announcing their entire escape plan to the whole ward. Unsurprisingly, Karl was discovered. This time, the doctors not only concluded his persecution complex had worsened but also diagnosed him with dissociative identity disorder. Where he had once only received electroshock therapy, they now added new treatments to his regimen.

They strapped him into a specially designed chair and spun him at high speeds until he vomited and passed out. They claimed he had an unknown fluid buildup in his brain and that the rotation would help expel the disease-causing substance. Tormented beyond endurance, Karl tried to rally the other patients to expose the hospital's true nature, believing they were all innocent, sane people like himself. To his dismay, he discovered that, aside from him, everyone else in the hospital appeared to be genuinely mentally ill.

His attempts were discovered again, and he was subjected to hydrotherapy. This wasn't a spa treatment. When the doctors wanted to "calm him down," they would submerge him in ice water for long periods, wrapping his body tightly in cold, wet sheets with only his head above water. In short, their methods of torment were limited only by their imagination.

Under this immense pressure, Karl's will began to crumble. Just as he was sinking into despair, the doctors began feeding him the Burton family's darkest secrets. He learned that the family was not without its illegitimate children and that he once had an uncle who ran away for love and never returned. The revelations shattered his already fragile mental state, and the doctors repeated these stories to him daily, like a form of brainwashing.

It was years before the Burtons finally found Karl. By then, he had become a true psychiatric patient. The moment they brought him home, before any new treatment could be arranged, Karl had a complete breakdown, pointing at family members and shouting every secret he had been told. Even worse, he escaped the estate and started broadcasting the family's skeletons to the public. The Burtons were terrified. Without waiting for specialists, they threw him back into the asylum, this time posting their own guards to ensure he never got out again.

No one in the Burton family dared to speak Karl's name again. His shares and assets were transferred to his legal guardian due to his mental state. Within a few years, it was as if Karl had never existed.

Of course, all of this came much later.

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