The History of the Ear Men

Chapter 8: What to Do When a Family Just Disappeared

Back in the long‑term care home, the staff searched everywhere for the eighty‑six‑year‑old inventor, but he was nowhere to be found. They realized they had to start looking throughout the town. Now the Family was the only people that knew about  Silla‑Tierra . Everyone else only knew that an entire family had just vanished.

The home called the police, as required by law when a client goes missing. As soon as the police heard the last name of the missing man, they refused to act, claiming it would be a waste of resources. The last time it happened the family member reappeared out of nowhere in the middle of the search.

The long‑term home feared being sued for letting a client disappear, so they searched everywhere a person in a wheelchair could reach alone. Of course, they didn’t find him.

At a staff meeting, one said, “At least the family isn’t around. Maybe he’ll show up before they come back.”

Another replied, “But if Zuphixy comes back first, he’ll close this home and we’ll all lose our jobs!”

Even though the hospital administrator kept the hospital open this time, the doctor they got was someone who faked being a doctor and gave bad care.

The townspeople began protesting, saying that this doctor shouldn’t even be allowed to work. But the hospital administrator insisted it was either that or close the hospital until  Zuphixy returned. The hospital administrator believed Zuphixy would never return, since he didn’t believe in magic.

No one in the small town liked the fake Doctor. Now half the town believed in magic, and the other half didn’t. Which made it hard to agree on how to find Zuphixy. Even at that everyone looked for him in their own way.

Everyone in the town was so busy searching for Zuphixy. Even the businesses were not open. Without the businesses the town had problems, so the police had to get involved. The police had to force the store to open. They said, “the owners would be arrested otherwise.”

A patient from outside the town sued the doctor, only to discover he wasn’t even a doctor. The judicial system found out that he was just the intake worker at the hospital’s front desk. The hospital administrator had promised him double pay if he acted like a doctor until Zuphixy returned.

To save himself, the fake doctor exposed the administrator’s plan. The administrator tried to play innocent, but after much back‑and‑forth, the paperwork proved beyond doubt that he was responsible. He was fired, and the front‑desk worker was promoted to hospital administrator.

The only problem now was that the front desk couldn’t be staffed. To fix it, the new administrator hired a young adult in a wheelchair to handle the job temporarily.

Because the new front‑desk worker was inexperienced, he kept sending people to the wrong departments. One day he directed someone to the X‑ray room instead of the blood lab. Some laughed it off, but others were angry because they missed their appointments, having to travel from one end of the hospital to the other.

Eventually, the hospital got a new doctor. This one was a good one, who knew what he was doing. The only drawback was that he threw up whenever he saw blood. Still, he made accurate diagnoses and did his job well.

One hot summer day, the new front‑desk worker hadn’t been drinking enough water. Suddenly, his nose started to bleed. It scared him, so he raced to the emergency room.

Because the doctor had an upset stomach and couldn’t stand the sight of blood, just smelling it made him gag. One time he vomited all over the patient.

After that, it became a running joke: Don’t go to the local hospital if you’re bleeding. As you’ll leave with dirty clothes and maybe a virus!

All the locals knew it was just humor, a way to make the new doctor laugh about the situation. In fact. The story brought more people to the hospital. They came just to see what would happen.