Part 2No Mercy on My Operating Table

I narrowed my eyes.

It was Katherine.

Her voice was just as arrogant and razor-sharp as I remembered, dripping with an unearned superiority. It was the exact cadence of her mother’s voice from twenty years ago.

I heard a rustle of clothing, and then Katherine’s voice came through clearly, as if she had snatched the phone from her husband’s hand.

"I am ordering you to schedule my daughter's surgery immediately! We are paying you to do a job. Don't flatter yourself by thinking you have a choice!"

I smiled. Leave it to the ultra-rich to demand a favor with a knife to your throat.

When my parents had begged for my life, how had they acted? They had stripped away every shred of dignity they possessed. They had pressed their faces to the cold floor, begging for mercy.

I still remembered the day my parents found out my donor heart had been given away. They ran through the hospital corridors, begging doctors, department heads, the previous chief—anyone who would listen. Finally, a sympathetic resident admitted that a VIP patient had pulled strings to redirect the organ. The hospital couldn't fight them.

My parents had blocked the operating room doors, weeping.

"Please, Mrs. Kingsley... your daughter is stable. But if our girl doesn't get this surgery, she won't survive the week! We will work for your family for the rest of our lives. Just please, let her have the heart..."

They begged until their foreheads bled against the floor.

Katherine's mother had simply pulled her designer skirt away from my mother's grasping hands, looking at her with pure disgust.

"Is a piece of gutter trash really comparable to my precious princess? If she dies, she dies. Stop making a scene."

Mr. Kingsley had stepped forward then, tossing a check onto my mother's bleeding head.

"You only have yourselves to blame," he had said, his voice flat. "Your child was born to inherit your poverty and insignificance. Here is fifty thousand dollars. Take it, shut up, and accept your daughter’s fate."

My parents had torn the check to pieces.

But I refused to accept that fate. I refused to let them have the satisfaction of my death. I fought the reaper every single day.

A month later, after another massive heart failure, I lay in the ICU, surrounded by tubes, unable to even whisper.

And then, I saw her.

Katherine, looking healthy and radiant in a pink princess dress, stood outside the glass doors of my room. Her parents had taken her on a stroll around the ward before her discharge, specifically pausing to let her look at me.

"Katherine, look closely," her father had said, pointing at my gasping form. "This is what happens to the lower classes. You were born to be a princess. You never have to care about people like this. They don't matter."

Katherine had tilted her head, her eyes wide and curious. "Daddy, why isn't she dead yet?"

I had carved that memory into my soul. It was the burning hatred for the Kingsley family that had kept me breathing when my lungs wanted to collapse.

"Hello?! Are you listening to me?!" Katherine’s screeching voice pulled me back to the present. "Talking to people like you is such a chore. Zero manners."

I let out a soft, cold chuckle.

"Mrs. Mercer. Is this how you ask someone to save your child's life?"

She laughed, a dry, mocking sound. "Ask? You think highly of yourself, Dr. West. You're just a girl with a scalpel. The Mercers and the Kingsleys chose you because you're supposed to be the best. You should be honored. We don't actually need you."

"Is that so?" I replied, my voice dripping with honeyed malice. "If you're so confident, Mrs. Mercer, I suggest you find someone else."

I hung up.

I handed the phone back to Baldwin and gestured for him to leave my office.

The truth was, they did need me. The specific redo-transplant their daughter required was a highly specialized procedure that only a handful of surgeons in the world could perform, and none of them were in the state. Furthermore, the girl's cardiovascular system was too unstable to survive a long-distance flight, and flying an international specialist in would take months of bureaucratic approvals.

They were out of time.

For twenty years, I had dreamed of getting even with the family that had nearly killed me. I just never expected them to hand me the knife.