The night my daughter’s hand was severe burned, my husband didn’t answer my calls. Instead, I received a one-thousand-dollar Venmo transfer from his ex-wife. The memo read: “Renting your husband for a day.” Followed by a text: “Someone set me up on a blind date, but Derek was too worried to let me go alone. He insisted on chaperoning.” I dialed Derek’s number again. Through the receiver, an automated female voice chimed in with cheerful precision: “Daughter burned? That sounds terrible. Don’t panic, I’m here to give you a straightforward solution—” “He isn’t Superman. He can’t be everywhere at once. Try being more independent.” Ever since Derek delegated his personal texts to an AI assistant—claiming he needed to dedicate every ounce of his energy to his ER shifts—the bot had been answering his messages. Every text got an instant response, yet not a single problem was ever solved. In her sleep, Mag whimpered, shivering from the pain. Clutched in her small, trembling hand was a crumpled school worksheet titled “My Dad Is a Superhero”. At the top was a glaring red zero. Below it, in her shaky kindergarten handwriting, she had written: “My dad isn’t a superhero, but he knows how to turn invisible. Mommy and I can never find him.” “My classmate says people who disappear get turned to ashes in a fire. I checked our stove, but he wasn’t there either. Turns out, Dad is just the world champion of hide-and-seek!” Looking at Mag’s pale, sweat-streaked face, a hollow exhaustion settled deep in my chest. “Mag,” I whispered softly, stroking her damp hair. “How about we be the ones to hide this time?” … Mag knew nothing of the weight behind my words. She just nodded eagerly, her tiny, clumsy fingers reaching up to brush a tear from the corner of my eye. “Hide-and-seek…” she murmured through her sleepiness. “It doesn’t hurt…” A second later, my phone vibrated. It was Derek. “Mara,” he snapped the second I picked up, his tone clipped. “Delete that reply you just sent to Valerie.” I froze, instinctively glancing down at my screen. Earlier, when Mag shifted in her pain, her elbow had accidentally tapped the screen, prompting the AI assistant to auto-reply to Valerie’s message. “No problem! An ex-husband is family—and a superhero. Always on call.” Pressing down the bitter surge in my throat, I kept my voice low. “It wasn’t me. It was the AI. But was it wrong?” There was a brief pause on the line. When Derek spoke again, he adopted that soft, patronizing tone he always used when he wanted me to back down. “Mara, look. I know Mag got hurt, and I’m worried too. But you’re at home with her. You can handle it.” “Valerie moved across the country to this city for me back then,” he continued seamlessly. “She has no family here. I spoiled her when we were married, made her soft and dependent. Finding her a reliable guy to settle down with is my responsibility. You understand that, right?” “Responsibility.” Always that word. A ragged laugh escaped my lips, the movement pulling painfully at the tight muscles in my face. When Mag had her school open house, he was absent because he was fixing a light fixture at Valerie’s apartment. On Mag’s fourth birthday, he abandoned us at the dinner table to pick up a package for Valerie. And tonight, with his daughter in the urgent care clinic with third-degree burns, he hadn’t shown his face once. Where was his responsibility as a father? Through the speaker, Mag caught the faint sound of his voice. Her eyelashes fluttered, her tiny lips parting in a drowsy murmur. “Dad… hide-and-seek…” Derek heard her, and his tone instantly hardened. “Mag, let me ask you something. Valerie said you got a zero on your essay, on top of playing with fire tonight. Do you have any idea what you did wrong?” Mag’s mouth snapped shut. The slight smile vanished, and her eyes welled with tears. A violent tight pain gripped my chest, making my whole body shake. “Did you even read what she wrote? What did she do wrong? Her only crime in your eyes is that she isn’t Valerie’s child!” Silence fell over the line for a beat. “Don’t drag Valerie into this,” Derek said, his voice dropping several degrees. “She hates kids—that’s the whole reason we got divorced in the first place.” He exhaled a cold, exasperated breath. “I don’t know how you’ve raised Mag to be so needy. Thank God I gave you those abortion pills for the first three pregnancies—” A deafening crack seemed to echo in my brain. The words struck like a physical force, splitting me open from the top of my head down to my chest. Three years into our marriage, after my third miscarriage, I had stood on the edge of our apartment rooftop, ready to jump. Derek had wrapped his arms around me, sobbing into my neck, his voice trembling: “Please, Mara, don’t leave me. Stay for me. The next baby will be safe. I promise we’ll build a real family.” It was all a lie. My voice was so raspy it barely sounded like my own. “Why?” He coughed slightly, his tone suddenly shifting back to a defensive softness. “Valerie made me promise when we signed the divorce papers. She wanted a guarantee that I wouldn’t have children for three years, and that I’d be available whenever she needed me. It was just the last bit of security she needed to let go.” The tears I had been fighting back finally spilled over, scalding my cheeks. It took everything in me to find my voice again. “Those were three living souls. Your own children! I hope karma catches up to both of you.” Derek let out a cold, bitter laugh. “Karma?” he mocked. “Your own parents threw you in an orphanage, and your daughter is crippled in her right leg because of you. If anyone’s paying for karma, Mara, what on earth did you do to deserve yours?” The blood in my veins turned to ice. In the small clinic room, Mag quietly shuffled toward the window. Thick gauze ran from her small fingertips all the way up her forearm. Watching her limp, every step awkward and uneven, my heart was crushed into fine dust. The day of her accident, I had been five minutes late picking her up from preschool because of an unexpected shift at work. Mag had seen me across the street, smiled, and waved, stepping onto the crosswalk. A driver running a red light hit her, leaving her right leg permanently impaired. In countless midnight nightmares, I blamed myself relentlessly. Driven by that crippling guilt, I had willingly resigned from my corporate job to stay home and manage the household. I swallowed every boundary Derek crossed with his ex-wife, enduring every humiliation, all because I had grown up without a family and wanted more than anything to give Mag a complete home. But looking at the quiet, crushed look in my four-year-old’s eyes tonight, I finally saw the truth. A negligent father hurt far more than having no father at all. My phone buzzed again. Another Venmo notification from Valerie. Two thousand dollars. “Derek just told me Mag is sick,” her text read. “Consider this a little help from me. Ever since our divorce, Derek sends me a thousand a month as my future wedding fund anyway. You guys are like my family, and I love Mag like my own. Don’t be shy!” After settling the initial emergency room fee, my bank account balance stood at $28.32. When we first got married, Derek had taken my hand and said: “Mara, you’ve never been married before, but I have. Let me manage our finances. We’ll pool our savings together and buy a big house with a yard for Mag.” A child raised in an orphanage craves a home more than anything. I had handed over control without a second thought. I never realized that in his heart, that home was only ever built for Valerie. Taking a slow, shuddering breath, I pulled out a contact I hadn’t messaged in years. “Draft a divorce agreement for me,” I typed. “I’m leaving.” After bringing Mag home and putting her to sleep, I began packing our bags. The front door clicked open. Derek walked in, holding his coat over his arm. When he realized I wasn’t waiting by the entryway to take his jacket like usual, he raised an eyebrow. A gentle, coaxing smile spread across his face as he walked into the bedroom. “Where’s Mag?” he asked smoothly. “I brought her a toy.” He held up a plastic bag, but my eyes locked onto his wrist. Woven around his watch was a delicate bracelet made of fresh white gardenia petals. Derek followed my gaze down. His smile faltered for a fraction of a second before he let out an easy, dismissive laugh. “Valerie’s blind date brought her a bouquet of gardenias. She hated them. The dinner was a total bore, so she wove this little strap and shoved it onto my wrist while we were waiting for her cab.” He didn’t remember. The day of Mag’s accident, she had been holding a small bunch of gardenias she picked from the school garden to give to me. They had ended up crushed on the asphalt, soaked in bright red. I reached out with trembling fingers and unclipped the flower strap from his wrist, letting it drop into the trash bin beside the nightstand. Derek clearly misinterpreted the gesture. He stepped closer, wrapping a warm, affectionate arm around my shoulders, his tone thick with gentle condescension. “Still jealous? Come on, Mara.” “Look, I know I misjudged you earlier,” he added, brushing a strand of hair behind my ear. “I checked the app. I know it was the AI that replied to Valerie’s text, not you.” I looked at him silently. He tapped his phone screen with a small chuckle. “When I saw that message about getting a divorce, I knew right away. How could my sensible wife ever say something like that?” I pulled away from his touch, stepping back until there was a cold expanse of air between us. “Every part of that exchange was the AI,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “Except that sentence. I typed that myself.” Derek’s forehead instantly creased. The warmth melted from his features, replaced by a dark, dangerous frost. “Haven’t you thrown enough of a tantrum tonight?” he snapped. “I work eighteen-hour rotations in emergency medicine. I am exhausted.” He was busy, alright. Busy running trauma codes, and busy rescuing his ex-wife from awkward blind dates. He was busy for everyone in the world except for me and his daughter. Seeing my red, swollen eyes, he let out a heavy, long-suffering sigh. Before I could move, he scooped me up in his arms and carried me back toward the bed, tossing me gently onto the mattress. “Just rest,” he said, his voice dropping into that fake, soothing tone again. “I’ll go check on Mag.” I didn’t argue. I simply handed him Mag’s discharge paper from the urgent care clinic. While he stepped down the hall, I went back to folding clothes into the suitcase. A few minutes later, a sharp, terrified scream echoed from the kitchen. It was Mag. I dropped the sweater in my hand and bolted down the hallway. In the kitchen, a ceramic mug lay shattered on the hardwood floor, water pooling around the shards. Mag was cowering by the counter, clutching her bandaged arm against her chest, her face pale with terror. “I’m sorry, Mommy,” she sobbed, her small body shaking violently. “I just… I just wanted a drink of water…” I rushed over and lifted her into my arms. Derek finally looked up from the kitchen table, a sudden flash of panic crossing his face as he reached out to take her from me. As he moved, the stack of papers he had been working on slid off the table, scattering across the floor. I looked down. They were printed profile sheets. Dozens of them, filled with dense, meticulously typed notes. “Candidate #12: Good family background (3/5), Appearance (5/5). Rejected: Too passive.” “Candidate #19: Overbearing parents, germaphobe. Rejected.” “Candidate #24: Decent income, severe halitosis. Disqualified.” There were thirty-seven profiles in total. Every single one was annotated with times, locations, compatibility scores, and personal remarks. And beneath that massive stack of matchmaking notes, buried at the very bottom of his medical clipboard, lay Mag’s emergency room chart. The seal hadn’t even been broken. He hadn’t turned a single page. A cold, hollow numbness washed over me, draining every ounce of strength from my limbs. Without thinking, my hand flew across the air, landing with a sharp, echoing “crack” across his face. Derek’s head snapped to the side. He didn’t explode. He simply wiped the corner of his lip, pulled the evaluation sheets out of my hand, and opened his mouth to speak— His phone blared violently on the counter. He glanced at the caller ID, and his entire posture stiffened. “Valerie’s blind date followed her home. She’s terrified. I have to go to the police station.” The front door slammed shut behind him before I could even process his words. Mag reached out from behind me, her small hand tugging gently at the hem of my shirt. She tilted her head up, her tear-stained face filled with quiet confusion. “Is Dad playing hide-and-seek with us again?” she asked softly. She stood on her tiptoes, her clumsy, bandaged fingers brushing against my cheek, trying to wipe away the tear that had slipped down. My phone vibrated in my pocket. A notification flashed on the screen: “Flight Confirmation: Two tickets to Seattle.” I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked into my daughter’s soft, innocent eyes. “We’re changing the rules, baby,” I whispered, lifting her into my arms. “This time, you and Mommy are going to hide. Okay?” I grabbed our bags, wrapped Mag in a thick coat, and headed for the door. But as soon as I pulled it open, Derek was standing on the porch. He looked at the suitcase in my hand, raised an eyebrow, and let out a light, amused laugh as he reached over to take the handle from me. Behind him, a head popped out from the shadow of the porch light. It was Valerie. “I knew it!” Valerie giggled, clapping her hands together. “I told you she was trying to run away! I win the bet!” She stepped into the entryway, patting my shoulder with breezy familiarity. “You’re still so young, Mara. Being married for the first time makes you so dramatic. I used the whole ‘packing my bags’ trick years ago.” Derek’s eyes were locked onto her, his voice low and stern, though there was an undeniable edge of warmth underneath. “I’m your emergency contact! If the police hadn’t called me, were you planning on keeping me in the dark?” Valerie slipped off her designer coat and kicked off her heels, curling herself naturally into the corner of our living room sofa. “I was just worried Mara would get upset. I didn’t want to disrupt your family life.” I kept my hand firmly on the brass door handle, my knuckles white. Derek turned back to me, his voice dropping into a heavy, disappointed register. “Valerie was just stalked. It’s not safe for her to stay at her place alone tonight. She’s going to stay in the guest room for a few days.” Valerie bit her lip, looking up at me with wide, innocent eyes. “Maybe I should just go to a hotel. I don’t want Mara to feel uncomfortable.” “Nonsense,” Derek interrupted softly, his tone softening instantly. “Mag hasn’t eaten dinner yet, right? I’ll cook tonight. We can all eat together.” Valerie walked over to the kitchen with practiced ease, opening our refrigerator and pulling out a bottle of sparkling water. “I want that seafood rice porridge you make! Mara, have you ever tried it? He makes the absolute best cream porridge.” A bitter, metallic taste filled my mouth. Through all my miscarriages, Derek had only ever ordered bland, pre-packaged post-partum meal kits from a delivery service. He had never once cooked a meal for me. “He puts silken tofu in it,” Valerie added with a bright smile. “It’s his signature dish.” I stood frozen. Whenever Derek suffered from stomach ulcers, I was the one who cooked that exact silken tofu porridge for him, teaching him the recipe step by step. He had taken my care, refined it, and turned around to serve it to another woman. Mag stayed silent, her little hand tightening around my fingers. I saw the quiet hunger and longing in her eyes. I slowly released my grip, letting her walk over and sit obediently at the dining table. I pulled out my phone, snapped a photo of Mag’s emergency room medical record, and sent it to my legal contact. “Something came up,” I wrote. “I’ll be there as soon as I handle this.” The reply came back instantly: “Understood.” When I looked back toward the dining table, my heart stopped. Mag’s skin was breaking out in angry, blotchy red hives. “Mag!” I rushed over. Her body was burning hot against my touch, her breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches. Her small, swollen fingers feebly clawed at my hands. The porridge bowl in front of her contained crushed, minced shrimp. Mag had a severe, life-threatening shellfish allergy. “She just suffered severe burns!” I screamed, grabbing Derek by the lapels of his shirt, my eyes bloodshot with fury. “You’re a medical doctor! How could you feed her shellfish?!” My hands shook violently as I pulled out my phone to dial 911. Derek froze, a fleeting shadow of panic crossing his features. “I… I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—” Before he could finish, Valerie stepped between us, shoving me back with all her weight. “Don’t yell at Derek! It’s my fault! Ever since our divorce, no one has peeled shrimp for me, so I begged him to put some in the porridge. If you want to blame someone, blame me!” In the scuffle, several drops of hot porridge splashed onto the back of Valerie’s hand. Derek’s expression transformed instantly into pure rage. He lunged forward and shoved me violently out of the way, catching Valerie’s wrist and dragging her toward the sink to run cold water over her skin. I wasn’t prepared for the force of his push. I crashed hard onto the hardwood floor, my knees slamming directly against the sharp wooden edge of the coffee table. Blood immediately seeped through my jeans, hot and sticky. Derek didn’t offer a single glance in my direction. At the table, the bandages covering Mag’s hand were beginning to bleed through with yellow fluid from her ruptured blisters. She forced her small eyes open, looking at her father’s back as he coddled Valerie at the sink. “It’s okay, Dad…” Mag whimpered in a tiny, breaking voice. “The burn doesn’t hurt… just blow on it…” Derek spun around, his chest heaving with fury. “Mara, is this how you teach your daughter? To be as cold-blooded and manipulative as you are?!” Valerie’s eyes welled with dramatic tears. “Derek, please don’t fight because of me. Mara just doesn’t want me here. You two are the real family. I’ll just leave.” Derek grabbed her arm, holding her firmly. “Wait for me. I’ll get the car keys and drive you to the urgent care clinic myself.” I stood outside the house in the freezing night air, cradling Mag in my arms as we waited for the ambulance. Suddenly, Derek’s sedan pulled up to the curb, screeching to a halt beside us. A tiny flicker of hope flared in my chest—until the door opened, and Derek grabbed me roughly by the collar. “Mara, look what you’ve done!” he roared, his voice shaking with anger. “Valerie left because of your hostility! To prove a point to you, she’s on her way right now to sign marriage papers with that blind date from tonight!” He shoved me backward, his final words cutting through the cold exhaust smoke of his car: “I only married you because you were an orphan—I thought you’d be grateful and understanding of Valerie! You’d better pray nothing goes wrong with her tonight!” Mag was burning up in my arms, her small body trembling against mine. I stared at the red taillights fading into the distance, but not a single tear would fall. I didn’t even remember how we got into the ambulance. By the time we arrived at the children’s hospital, Mag was curling into a tight ball, the yellow fluid oozing through her bandages, her skin scalding to the touch. The attending physician took one look at her arm and his face darkened. “Secondary infection from a severe burn, complicated by an acute allergic reaction. We need to perform emergency debridement and skin graft evaluation right now.” He handed me a slip. “Go settle the deposit at the billing counter first.” I ran to the window and pressed my debit card against the glass. The clerk swiped it twice, then looked up with a frown. “Ma’am, this card has been declined. Zero balance.” My brain went completely blank. This was Derek’s primary salary account. Even if he transferred money to Valerie regularly, it shouldn’t be completely empty. With trembling hands, I called his cell. “Where’s the money in the account?” I cried out, clutching the phone against my ear. “Mag needs emergency surgery!” Derek’s voice came through the speaker, laced with deep irritation. “Stop exaggerating, Mara. It was a bowl of porridge, for God’s sake. How bad could it be?” My knuckles turned white. I wanted to scream at him that it wasn’t just a spoonful—Mag had eaten the entire bowl because it was the first thing her father had ever cooked for her! He let out an impatient sigh over the line. “I transferred the balance to Valerie as a travel fund for her upcoming trip to Australia. You’re the one who drove her away tonight. Using our joint savings to pay for her emotional distress is the least we can do. Is there a problem with that?” Before I could answer, the line went dead. I sank onto the cold tile floor of the hospital corridor, my knees pulled tightly against my chest. A second later, my phone chimed. A Venmo deposit of $5,000 appeared on the screen, followed by a text from Derek: “There. Take Mag to a theme park this weekend and stop taking your issues out on Valerie.” I scrambled up from the floor and ran back to the billing window. “Please, schedule her room! I want to request the private recovery suite using physician family privileges!” The clerk typed on her keyboard, then looked at me with an awkward expression. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Dr. Derek’s family quota for the private suite was used up today. It was booked this morning.” I leaned over the glass to look at the monitor. My fingertips turned icy cold. I turned around and ran down the hallway toward the VIP wing, slamming open the door to Room 402. “Valerie!” I shouted, my voice cracking. “What right do you have to use his family medical quota?!” Valerie was sitting on the plush bed, sipping tea, looking perfectly relaxed. She offered me a sweet smile. “I’m going to Australia soon, and Derek insisted I get a full physical and diving clearance exam before I leave. He said he didn’t trust any other clinic.” I pulled out my phone and dialed Derek, demanding he transfer the reservation to his daughter. “Give it a rest, Mara,” Derek’s voice cut in coolly through the speaker. “Even if Mag actually needs to stay overnight, isn’t a standard ward good enough? Her leg is already impaired—putting her in a giant private suite is just going to exhaust her walking back and forth.” Before I could speak, a nurse came running down the hall toward me, her face pale. “Ma’am! The patient’s immune system is overwhelmed—she’s going into pediatric septic shock! We need to transfer her to the ICU immediately!” My knees gave out completely. I had to grab the doorframe to keep from collapsing onto the floor. Valerie sighed dramatically, looking at me with a sad, pitying expression. “Oh, poor little girl. Her real father didn’t care about her leg back then, and now… well, maybe passing away quietly is a mercy for her.” I snapped my head toward her. “What did you just say?” Valerie smirked, stepping closer and lowering her voice so only I could hear. “You already know the answer, don’t you? Derek felt like you and Mag were taking up too much of his precious time.” “So,” she whispered gleefully, “he helped arrange that little car accident three years ago.” “He knew that if Mag was permanently injured, all your energy would be trapped taking care of her. And then he’d finally be free to focus on helping me.” The final thread holding my sanity together snapped into pieces. Darkness flooded the edges of my vision. The blood roared in my ears like a deafening wave. I swung my arm with everything I had, landing a slap squarely across Valerie’s face so hard my own hand went numb. A second later, a heavy blow struck my chest. I was sent flying backward, slamming hard against the metal doorframe before crashing onto the floor. A sharp, blinding pain shot up my spine. Derek stood above me, his chest heaving, the veins bulging on his forehead. “I was fool enough to believe you!” he roared, his eyes bloodshot. “I actually went down to the pediatric wing to check on Mag! She wasn’t even in the emergency room!” “The second my back is turned, you come up here to assault Valerie?!” I pushed myself up against the doorframe, tasting blood in my mouth. I laughed hysterically, dragging myself up to go after him again. Before I could reach him, three security guards rushed into the hallway, grabbing my arms and pinning me forcefully against the wall. “What is wrong with people these days? Attacking doctors and patients!” “Dr. Derek gives up so much for this hospital—what’s wrong with giving his family a little priority benefit? You entitled people ruin everything!” Derek stood in the center of the corridor, adjusting his coat. His brow furrowed slightly, his lips moving as if he wanted to say something, but he stopped. “My flight to Sydney leaves in two hours,” he said, his voice returning to a smooth, detached chill as he looked down at me. “Take Mag home and behave yourself.” He stepped past me, pausing for a fraction of a second. “Stop making a scene. Australia has incredible scar-reduction ointments. I’ll bring a box back for Mag.” He walked away without looking back once, leaving me pinned against the wall by the crowd. Suddenly, a pair of warm, strong hands pushed through the angry bystanders, shielding my head and lifting me gently off the cold floor… In the back of the sleek black sedan, Mag lay curled in my lap, her breath small and ragged. I bent down, pressing my lips softly against her feverish forehead, then turned to look at the man sitting in the driver’s seat. “I changed my mind,” I said, my voice quiet, cold, and sharper than steel. “I don’t want a quiet, uncontested divorce.” “I want to sue him.” “For medical negligence, abuse of authority, and intentional harm.” “I want full custody of Mag. And I want his parental rights permanently stripped.”
🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “552803”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel
Leave a Reply