My Doctor Mother Wouldn’t Pull Strings for Me—Until I Died Chapter 01

My Doctor Mother Wouldn’t Pull Strings for Me—Until I Died Chapter 01

On the way to get my marriage license, we got into a car accident.

Brynn Sutter, my adoptive sister who’d ridden along, and I were rushed to the same hospital together.

My mother—Ashford Falls Memorial’s top trauma surgeon—glanced at me, covered head to toe in blood.

Then she immediately called every available hand to consult on the five-centimeter gash on Brynn’s arm.

“Brynn’s cut is right out in the open. If we don’t treat it fast, it’ll scar for sure!”

“We’re mother and daughter—if I treat you first, people will say I played favorites!”

“Once I’ve got Brynn taken care of, I’ll come deal with you!”

I could only grab the sleeve of my fiancé, who’d just changed into a fresh white coat.

“Weston. Help me…”

Before I finished, he shook my hand off, cold as ice.

“You were in the backseat. The safest spot. Brynn was up front. How could you possibly be hurt worse than her?”

“Adeline, can you go one single day without competing with Brynn?”

He didn’t even look back. He rushed straight into the emergency room.

He’d forgotten—when the crash happened, he’d wrenched the wheel to protect Brynn in the passenger seat, and that same motion had sent the full force of the impact straight into me, in the back.

My mother had forgotten too—the red wristband on my arm signifies “Critical Condition”.

My consciousness began to fade.

I knew the shard of glass buried in my organs was about to take my life.

…

Weston had shoved me off with so much force.

Already injured, I lost my balance completely and slammed down onto the tile floor of the hallway.

In that instant, I felt the skin on my back tear open.

I heard myself let out a short, strangled groan.

The glass that shattered on my back was completely embedded in it.

I curled up on the floor. The lights overhead were blinding. The room seemed to spin.

“Nurse…”

Someone at the nurses’ station glanced up at me, then sat back down.

“Please— help me up. Get me a doctor…”

No one answered.

They were busy with charts, or turned away, scrolling on their phones.

“Nurse…”

“Miss Marsh, you should get up on your own and wait in the lobby.”

Finally someone spoke, voice thick with irritation.

“Dr. Marsh has told us over and over—anyone who tries to curry favor with you and get a shortcut gets punished, no exceptions.”

“Last week, Dr. Voss let you skip the line for your premarital screening. She’s on housekeeping duty now, sterilizing bed linens.”

I froze.

The “skipping the line” had only been Dr. Voss handing me my paperwork directly while she was already sorting through it.

But my mother—who prided herself on never showing favoritism—had sent her to sterilize bed linens for it.

I opened my mouth to explain, but the motion pulled at the wound on my back, and a wave of dizziness and cold sweat hit me.

The nurses kept talking among themselves.

“Dr. Marsh can be strict, but you can’t say she’s not fair.”

“Right, so don’t even try anything with her. She’ll write up her own colleagues—you think she’ll go easy on us?”

The cold of the floor and the damp heat spreading across my back blurred into one strange sensation.

My breathing grew heavier, but my mind stayed sharp.

I knew this was adrenaline.

Once it wore off, I’d be facing the worst.

My nails dug into the grout between the tiles as I tried, again and again, to push myself up—only to collapse back down, more pathetically each time.

“Oh my God!”

A middle-aged woman in the waiting area covered her mouth, pointing at the floor around me.

“There’s blood on the floor…”

The staff at the desk finally reacted, hesitating, shoving each other toward me.

Eventually a young nursing intern ran over.

The moment her hand touched my back to help me up, her face went white.

“What… what is this…”

Her fingers pressed down gently, and I immediately gasped in a sharp breath of cold air.

“There’s something hard under the skin…”

Her voice shook.

“This isn’t a normal scrape. It’s like there’s something foreign lodged in there… deep in the tissue… internal bleeding?!”

She immediately stood up and stumbled toward the emergency room.

The frantic sound of knocking echoed through the ER.

“Dr. Marsh! Please come out and see Miss Marsh right away!”