Chapter 3
The medication bottle felt like salvation in my trembling hands as I burst through the hospital doors. My chest burned from running six blocks from Rose's house, but I didn't care. Every second counted now.
Dr. Mitchell met me at the entrance to the cardiac unit, her eyes lighting up with relief when she saw what I carried. "Thank God," she breathed, taking the bottle from my shaking fingers. "We can start the IV immediately."
Through the glass window of room 314, I watched the medical team work with practiced urgency. Mom lay so still on that narrow bed, her face pale as winter snow, monitors beeping frantically around her. The nurse inserted the IV line while Dr. Mitchell prepared the medication—my medication, the one I'd fought for at three different auctions, the one Cameron had so casually given away.
My legs gave out, and I slumped into the plastic chair outside her room. The confrontation at Rose's house replayed in my mind like a nightmare I couldn't wake from. Rose's mother, sitting comfortably in her floral armchair, watching some daytime soap opera with a bowl of popcorn in her lap. Not gasping for breath. Not clutching her chest. Not dying.
"She's not even sick," I had whispered, staring at the woman who was supposed to be at death's door.
Rose had the decency to look ashamed for exactly three seconds before her chin lifted in defiance. "She could have been sick. The medication was a precaution."
"A precaution that's killing my mother."
The memory made my hands clench into fists. Rose had tried to claim her mother already took the medication, but when I threatened to call the police—to have her charged with theft of life-saving medical supplies—she'd reluctantly produced the unopened bottle from her kitchen cabinet. Unopened. Unused. While my mother lay dying.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway, and I looked up to see Cameron approaching. His face wore that familiar expression of mild irritation, as if my mother's cardiac crisis was nothing more than an inconvenience to his day. He stopped a few feet away, hands shoved deep in his pockets.
"You're being dramatic," he said without preamble. "The doctors have it under control now."
I stared at him, this man I'd loved for six years, searching for any trace of remorse or concern. There was none. "Dramatic?"
"Your mother's health problems aren't my fault, Lily. Maybe if she'd taken better care of herself over the years, she wouldn't be in this situation." His voice carried that casual cruelty I'd grown to recognize, the tone he used when he wanted to hurt me most efficiently.
Dr. Mitchell emerged from Mom's room at that exact moment, her face flushed with exertion. She froze when she heard Cameron's words, her professional composure cracking for just an instant.
"Excuse me?" Dr. Mitchell's voice was ice. "Are you seriously suggesting that a woman with a genetic heart condition brought this on herself?"
Cameron shrugged, unbothered by her obvious disgust. "I'm just saying that some people handle their health better than others. This whole crisis could have been avoided if—"
"If you had kept your promise," I whispered, my voice barely audible but somehow cutting through his excuses like a blade. "If you had done the one thing I asked you to do."
He turned to me, his eyes cold. "I made a judgment call, Lily. Rose's mother needed that medication more than yours did. I'm not going to apologize for saving a life."
"You didn't save a life." I stood slowly, my legs steadier now, fueled by a rage so pure it burned away my exhaustion. "Rose's mother was never in danger. She was sitting in her living room eating popcorn while my mother was dying because of your 'judgment call.'"
For the first time, uncertainty flickered across Cameron's face. "That's not... Rose said..."
"Rose lied. And you chose to believe her lie over your wife's desperate plea." I stepped closer, close enough to see the way his jaw tightened. "You chose her over my mother's life. Over me. Again."
The monitors in Mom's room began beeping more steadily, and Dr. Mitchell glanced between us with barely concealed contempt before disappearing back inside. Through the window, I could see Mom's color improving slightly, her breathing less labored.
Cameron followed my gaze, then looked back at me with something that might have been guilt if I didn't know him better. "Look, maybe I misunderstood the situation, but—"
"There's no misunderstanding," I said quietly. "There's only the choice you made. And now I have to make mine."
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