My Doctor Mother Wouldn’t Pull Strings for Me—Until I Died Chapter 10

My Doctor Mother Wouldn’t Pull Strings for Me—Until I Died Chapter 10

Everyone froze, including me, hovering above it all.

I hadn’t been unaware of Weston’s favoritism toward Brynn.

I’d just kept stubbornly convincing myself it was only “an older brother looking out for his little sister.”

My mother’s face burned red with fury, her outstretched finger trembling violently.

“I treated you like my own daughter! Everything Adeline had, you would’ve gotten half of!”

“I never shorted you on anything! If you had a problem with me, you should’ve come at me! Why did you have to kill my daughter?!”

Brynn’s expression twisted into something grotesque, manic.

“Never shorted me? That was charity!”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be dumped in a restroom the day you’re born? Growing up like a

beggar, hated by everyone, living off scraps!”

“And her–Adeline–abandoned by her own father just the same, and somehow she still got to have a

mother’s love. Got to have everything she ever wanted!”

She pointed at me, still lying motionless on the floor.

“Do you remember the first time we met? In the university dorm, she coquettishly asked you for two sets of

high–end cosmetics, then turned around and gave one set to me.”

“She even smiled at me! She was clearly looking down on me for being rustic and showing off–she was

patronizing me!”

“That’s the day I swore I’d take everything from her. Her mother. Her fiancé. Everything she was ever proud

of!”

She laughed hysterically, tears streaming down with the laughter.

Everyone in the emergency room stared at Brynn, spiraling into madness, like she was some kind of

monster.

The reporter’s camera captured every second of it.

I sat, hollow, suspended in midair, struck by how absurd it all was.

A single act of kindness, sharing something small, had brought down this much hatred, enough to destroy

my entire life.

“I’ll kill you!”

My mother wrenched free from the nurses holding her back, grabbed a pair of scissors, and lunged–but

someone else beat her to it.

Weston, eyes bloodshot, clamped both hands around Brynn’s throat, pinning her to the bed.

“You did this to me! You got me drunk and… the only person I ever loved was Adeline! What are you? You

don’t deserve-”

Brynn’s face went purple under the pressure, her eyes bulging, and yet she still managed a wheezing, broken laugh through it all.

“I didn’t do anything… you’re the ones who didn’t trust him, you’re the ones who let her die untreated, you’re the ones who held her down and drained the last drop of blood out of her…”

“You’re the murderers! All of you!”

“Splutter-!”

My mother, in the middle of that soul–shredding tirade, suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood and collapsed, eyes rolling back.

The room scrambled–half of them working to resuscitate my mother, the other half trying to pull Weston off

Brynn.

But his hands were locked around her throat like a vice.

Even the baton strikes landing on his back didn’t register.

Not until a young nurse screamed in terror.

“She’s bleeding! Brynn’s bleeding!”

Only then did he seem to wake from a trance, releasing his grip all at once.

The officer wrenched his arms behind his back and pinned him to the floor.

He’d committed assault in front of dozens of witnesses, with ironclad evidence.

Whatever bright future he’d once had was over.

Brynn was rushed onto a gurney and taken to surgery, clutching her stomach in agony, the sheet beneath her already soaked through with dark red blood.

Because she recklessly received my blood, what was originally just a threatened miscarriage ultimately

escalated into irreversible massive bleeding.

She lost the baby she’d worked so hard to conceive, along with any chance of ever carrying another.

My mother spent three days unconscious in the ICU.

Tears kept streaming from the corners of her eyes as she unconsciously muttered three words over and

over:

“I’m sorry.”

When she finally woke, the hospital was in ruins.

Reporters had run the story of the bizarre crash and the mishandled emergency everywhere.

The hospital, and my mother, faced a full investigation for regulatory violations and dereliction of duty.

Broken and disillusioned, she announced the hospital’s closure in front of the press.

Then she vanished from everyone’s lives.

No one knew where she’d gone. No one but me.

My soul followed her the whole way, watching her arrange my funeral, sell off everything she owned, and walk into a remote, impoverished stretch of the Appalachian foothills.

She became a traveling rural health worker.

Every day, she carried a medical bag over the ridgelines, treating poor children in the hollows for free.

Late at night, when everything was still, she’d lie in her drafty little cabin, clutching my photograph, crying

night after night.

“Adeline… Mom is trying to make it right… please, can you forgive me…”

Day after day. Year after year.

I stayed with her, watching, until her hair turned entirely white and her back bent with age.

The day the burning knot of resentment in my chest finally dissolved, I entered her dream at last.

I looked at her calmly, and said goodbye.

No hatred left. No love, either.

As she cried out for me, heartbroken, I let the mountain wind carry me away, drifting toward some unknown

distance.

I thought–I have somewhere of my own to go now, too.

THE END