She Asked Him To Cancel Their Daughter’s Surgery For A Game Chapter 06

She Asked Him To Cancel Their Daughter’s Surgery For A Game Chapter 06

Willa woke up three days after the surgery.

The second the anesthesia fog lifted, she asked for me.

Everett was sitting beside her bed. He hadn’t slept at all.

The second she spoke, he leaned in close.

“Willa, I’m right here.”

Willa looked at him. She looked right through him.

“Where’s Mommy?”

Everett swallowed hard, his throat tight.

“Mommy’s not feeling well. She’s resting in another room.”

Willa tried to sit up.

“I want to see her.”

Everett gently eased her back down against the pillows.

“When you’re better, I’ll take you to see her.”

Willa shook her head.

“Mommy promised she’d come when I got to a hundred.”

Everett couldn’t look her in the eye.

The nurse brought over her anti-rejection liquid medication.

Willa took one sip and gagged, throwing it all up. She shoved the cup away, sobbing hysterically.

“No milk! There’s medicine in the milk!”

Everett went completely rigid.

Willa was shaking, hyperventilating and crying so hard she could barely breathe.

“Mommy drank the milk and she didn’t wake up! Daddy’s a liar!”

“Daddy said he’d be there for my surgery, and he wasn’t!”

“I don’t want Daddy.”

The heart monitors started screaming.

The nurse rushed Everett out of the room into the hallway.

Through the glass, he watched his daughter curl into a tight ball under the blanket, calling for Mommy over

and over.

Each plea cut through him like a blade.

By the time my parents got to the hospital, my body was already at the funeral home.

My mother looked like she’d aged a decade overnight.

The second she saw Everett, she slapped him hard across the face.

‘Elise met you at twenty-two. Gave you a kidney at twenty-four.”

“Nearly died giving birth to Willa at twenty-six.”

“At thirty-two, she gave your daughter her last remaining kidney.”

She grabbed him by the collar, and her voice finally broke into a gut-wrenching sob.

“We raised our daughter for thirty-two years, and your family took her apart piece by piece!”

“And that still wasn’t enough; you took the very last drop of her too!”

Everett didn’t move. He let her hit him.

My father held my urn. His back was bent like something had finally broken inside him.

Before they left, Everett blocked the hallway door.

“Willa just had surgery. She can’t leave the hospital.”

My father looked up, his eyes completely dead.

“When she’s recovered, we’re filing for full custody.”

Everett’s face hardened.

“I’m her father.”

My father let out a raspy, humorless laugh.

“Where were you while she was fighting for her life, waiting for a kidney?”

“Where were you when her mother died to save her?”

Everett opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

My father tightened his grip on the urn.

“Willa being alive doesn’t mean you deserve to be her father.”

They held my memorial service a week later

Everett sat in the back, gripping the handles of Willa’s pediatric wheelchair. They watched my portrait from across the room.

Willa held a bouquet of white daisies in her arms. She looked up.

“Why is Mommy in the picture?”

Everett’s hands tightened on the wheelchair handles.

“Mommy went somewhere very far away.”

Willa tilted her head.

“How far? Farther than Mount Alder?”

His tears hit the back of his hand.

Then, the devastating truth finally seemed to click behind Willa’s eyes.

She launched herself out of the wheelchair and stumbled toward the chapel altar. Her surgical stitches tore. Fresh blood soaked through her little black dress.

“Mommy! Look at me! I can run now!”

No one answered.

My mother caught her and held on tight. Willa screamed until her voice gave out.

“I’ll give the kidney back to Mommy! I’ll give her my life too!”

Everett stood at the edge of the room.

And finally, finally, he understood.

What it looked like when a five-year-old realized her mother was never coming back.