Choose the correct verb phrase to complete the food critic's warning.

A less resilient food critic ______ directly to the hospital after taking a single bite of that mysterious stew.

The correct answer is would have been sent.

The subject itself ("A less resilient food critic") acts as an implied conditional, meaning "If the food critic had been less resilient..." Because the action (eating the stew) happened in the past, we need the third conditional (past unreal) form to describe what would have happened: "would have been sent."