Chapter 5
Wyatt froze. The room fell into a silence so suffocating that the rhythmic click of the ventilator sounded like thunder.
"What is Maisie's file doing down here, Wyatt?" I took two menacing steps toward the nightstand, my maternal instincts overriding every ounce of paralyzing fear.
"Nora, don't touch that," Clara warned, moving swiftly to block me.
I didn't hesitate. I shoved Clara with all the force built from eleven years of loyalty turned into betrayal. She stumbled backward against an IV pole, sending a saline bag swinging wildly. I snatched the manila folder off the metal tray and ripped it open.
Tucked inside Maisie’s primary care records were three lab reports from a private diagnostic facility in Chicago, dated just three weeks ago.
Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) Typing.Donor: Maisie Miller (Age 8).Recipient: Evelyn Vance.Compatibility Match: 99.4%.
My breath seized in my lungs. Attached to the lab results was a signed parental consent form for an invasive bone marrow and autologous stem cell extraction.
The signature at the bottom read: Nora Miller.
A forgery. A clean, precise forgery of my handwriting.
"You forged my name?" The paper shook violently in my hands. I rounded on Wyatt, whose face had gone completely gray. "You tested our eight-year-old daughter without my knowledge? What were you going to do to her?!"
"Nothing that would hurt her!" Wyatt scrambled to his feet, lunging forward to grab my hands, but I slapped his arms away. "Nora, listen to me! Evelyn's cellular regeneration plateaued. The peptide alone isn't rebuilding the motor cortex. We need compatible neuro-progenitor cells. Maisie has a rare genetic mutation—the same rare HLA sequence Evelyn has. It’s a one-in-a-million match!"
"She's a child!" I screamed, the tears finally bursting from my eyes in hot, searing rivers. "She is your daughter! You were going to harvest bone marrow from our eight-year-old girl in an illegal basement to cover up a botched surgery?!"
"Wyatt didn't know about the consent form, Mrs. Miller," Clara's voice cut through the air, disturbingly calm.
I turned to her. Clara had straightened her lab coat, adjusting her cuffs with terrifying precision.
"What did you say?" I whispered.
"Wyatt was losing his nerve," Clara said, stepping closer, her eyes glittering with cold malice. "He spent the last two months crying in his car, talking about confessing to the police, talking about returning home to you and taking the prison sentence like a martyr. But I have six million dollars of private equity tied up in the patent for this synthetic peptide. If Evelyn wakes up fully functional, this compound becomes the greatest neuro-restorative breakthrough of the century. I become a billionaire."
Clara glanced down at Wyatt with utter disdain.
"Wyatt was just the hands. A brilliant surgeon who was too weak to carry out what was necessary. So I had the pediatric samples drawn during Maisie's routine school vaccination clinic last month. The extraction procedure is scheduled for tomorrow morning."
The world seemed to drop out from beneath my feet.
May you like
"Tomorrow morning?" I gasped.
"Maisie thinks she's going on a special field trip with her school counselor," Clara smiled faintly, pulling a sleek black smartphone from her coat pocket. "And unless you want Wyatt to be arrested by the federal marshals waiting on my speed dial, you are going to let this happen."
