Chapter 2

The line went dead with a single click, and I sat there gripping my phone in disbelief, clutching it like it was the last lifeline holding my daughter up.

Praying for one more sound from the other end.

As long as my mother was still listening, I could walk her through an online transfer.

But there was nothing. Just silence, dead as a grave.

My parents were busy planning their son's wedding,

and they couldn't spare a single thought for the granddaughter dying in that hospital bed.

Not once since Alberta was admitted had either of them come to see her.

Alberta watched the grandmother in the next bed hold her little granddaughter every day,

telling her stories, warming her small hands,

covering her eyes and coaxing her gently through every needle.

There was a small ache of hurt in my daughter's voice. "Mommy, why doesn't Grandma come see me?"

She understood too much for her age. She knew her father and I were divorced, and she never once mentioned his side of the family,

and still I didn't know how to answer her.

Her next words wrung my heart like a fist closing on it.

"If Grandma came, you wouldn't have to work so hard, Mommy."

"Taking care of me all by yourself is too tiring. I'm too much trouble!"

I held her tighter. "Abby isn't trouble. Abby is my treasure!"

Because her grandmother didn't love me, my treasure got hated right along with me.

I'm the one who failed you.

Only the hospital in New York could do this surgery, so I'd carried my daughter onto an eight-hour high-speed train to get here.

I couldn't leave her bedside for a moment now, which was the only reason I'd begged my mother to sell the house back home and wire the money over.

It was the single thing my mother ever did for her own granddaughter,

and that one thing was exactly why Alberta was now left with nothing to do but wait to die.

"Will the guardian of Alberta Swanson please come to the third-floor resuscitation room immediately!"

"The patient's condition is critical. We have important medical matters to discuss with you!"

"Repeating one last time. Will the family of Alberta Swanson come to the resuscitation room at once!"

The moment I heard it, panic spread out through my arms and legs.

I stumbled toward the stairs, my legs too weak to run, half crawling by the time I reached the door of the resuscitation room.

The heavy door stood ajar, and inside the shrill alarms of the monitors kept bursting through the air.

"Push epinephrine! Keep up compressions, we still haven't got a rhythm back!"

Alberta's face was a waxen, ashen gray, her small thin body tangled in tubes,

her whole frame rising and falling with the doctor's movements like a broken rag doll.

"Are you Alberta Swanson's family? Sign this emergency resuscitation consent form!

The child went into sudden cardiac arrest. CPR carries a risk of broken ribs and internal organ injury..."

I didn't catch a single word the nurse said after that. I could only pick up the pen, murmuring it over and over.

"I consent, I consent. Just save my daughter, please, I'm begging you, save her!"

After several endless minutes, the flat line on the monitor finally began to move.

The doctor's voice grew heavier.

"We've brought her back for now, but without a new liver she could go into shock at any moment!"

"So... I need you to confirm right now. Are we doing this transplant or not!"

My eyes stayed fixed on my unconscious daughter, tears rolling down without stop.

"Do it, we're doing it! I'll call right now! Right now!"

Just then my phone rang in my hand, and I saw the caller ID and answered without a second's hesitation.