You Used My Dad as Surgery Practice? Now Watch Your Father Die Without Me

Chapter 4

At nine in the morning, the ethics committee conference room was packed.

Representatives from the State Medical Board and hospital executives sat along both sides of the long table. My professional file lay in the center. To its right rested an old, yellowed folder.

Zett cleared his throat and spoke first.

"Everyone, this emergency meeting has been convened to discuss the recusal request submitted by Dr. Vance concerning patient Richard Sterling."

Moran, the deputy director of the state board, turned two pages of the file and looked up at me.

"Dr. Vance, we pulled your surgical records from the last three years. Forty-two high-risk cardiothoracic cases. Forty-two successful outcomes. Now you're telling us you can't guarantee your own performance in an OR." He set the file down. "This committee is going to need a reason."

I leaned back in my chair. "Conflict of interest."

Chloe, sitting across from me, straightened in her seat.

"Dr. Vance, this building is surrounded by reporters right now. The scandal of you abandoning a patient to extort an astronomical surgical fee has already spread everywhere!"

She knocked hard on the table with her knuckles. "Do you want to be finished? Because that's what this is."

Zett leaned on it too. "Dr. Vance, if you withdraw the request right now and walk into that OR, the group's people will handle the press for you. Don't throw away a career this good because you got your feelings hurt."

I didn't answer him.

I pushed the folder at my elbow into the middle of the table and opened it to the first page.

A death certificate, the paper gone yellow.

"That's my reason for recusal. The man in your ICU right now, Richard Sterling, was the lead surgeon on my father's operation ten years ago. My father was dead three days later."

Moran's pen came out of his hand, hit the table, and rolled off onto the carpet. Zett had been halfway out of his chair. He stopped there, looking at my face, then the certificate, then my face again. He sat back down.

"Your father?" Moran didn't go after the pen. He just looked at me.

I pointed at the certificate. "March 2014, Sterling Private Hospital, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery. The medical records show the lead surgeon's signature was Richard."

"That was a medical accident!" Chloe jabbed a finger at the paper on the table. "The records from that year are perfectly clear. The patient had severe cardiovascular complications and suffered sudden intraoperative hemorrhaging. Dr. Richard did everything he could to save him!"

I cut her off.

"Those records were issued by your own hospital."

Chloe shot to her feet. The legs of her chair scraped against the carpet with a dull, grinding sound.

"You're going to watch a critically ill patient die because of an accident ten years ago? You're a doctor!"

I ignored Chloe's words and looked directly at Liam, who was sitting across the table. From the moment that death certificate had been revealed, his eyes had been glued to it.

I slowly rolled up the left sleeve of my blouse.

On the inside of my wrist, a two-inch-long, aged scar was exposed.

"Ten years ago, when I received the death notification, the glass in my hand shattered." I laid my wrist flat on the table and looked at Liam. "Fourteen stitches."

Liam looked up and met my face.

"You're... Elena?" He spoke the name out loud.

Chloe whipped her head around to glare at him. "You know her?"

I planted both hands on the edge of the conference table and rose to my feet.

"Good memory."

I leaned forward, closing the distance between Liam and myself.

"Too bad. The person who really killed my father during that surgery ten years ago wasn't your father at all. It was—"