She Asked Him To Cancel Their Daughter’s Surgery For A Game Chapter 08

She Asked Him To Cancel Their Daughter’s Surgery For A Game Chapter 08

My parents took Willa home when she was discharged.

Everett fought the custody transfer in Family Court.

But on his first visit, Willa saw the insulated travel mug in his hand and buried herself in my mother’s arms.

“Don’t drink it! I don’t want to fall asleep.”

“If I fall asleep, Mommy goes away. Tell Mr. Caldwell to go away!”

The child psychologist’s evaluation confirmed it: Willa had a severe PTSD response to Everett.

Every time she saw him, her heart raced, she threw up, and she suffered from night terrors.

Before the hearing, Everett signed the papers and gave up full custody.

He kept the right to see her once a month, with a therapist present for supervised visitation.

The lawyer closed the folder.

“Mr. Caldwell, are you sure you don’t want to fight this?”

Through the two-way observation glass, Everett watched Willa sitting beside my mother, drawing.

Two people on the paper. Willa and a woman in a long white dress with wings.

No father.

“She’s terrified of me.”

Everett dropped his head into his hands.

“I can’t keep putting her through it.”

They played my video on Willa’s sixth birthday.

By then, the transplanted kidney was working perfectly. Stable.

Willa could run a few steps at a time without losing her breath.

My mother set the tablet on the table.

The screen lit up. I was smiling.

“Willa.”

She froze. Then she threw herself at the screen and held on tightly.

“Mommy!”

The video kept playing

“If you’re watching this, you must be a little bigger now.”

“Getting sick was never your fault. Needing me was never your fault.”

“I didn’t die because of you.”

“All I did was make sure you had a beautiful future.”

Willa was crying so hard she couldn’t catch her breath.

“I don’t want a future! I want Mommy!”

On the screen, I was still smiling.

“Whatever anyone says to you, don’t hate your dad.”

Outside the door, Everett couldn’t stop shaking.

“I don’t want what he did to become a burden you carry for the rest of your life.”

“You don’t have to see him. You don’t have to love him. You never have to call him Dad again.”

“But don’t waste the precious life I gave you on hating anyone.”

Willa pressed her little fingers to my face on the screen, again and again.

At the very end of the video, I smiled one more time.

“I love you.”

The screen went dark. Willa hit play.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Everett slid down the corridor wall until he hit the floor.

Even in my last words, I’d tried to protect Willa from the poison of our daughter’s anger toward him.

But I hadn’t left a single word for him.

The moment I decided to give up my kidney, he’d already become completely dead to me.