“Mr. Julian Vance?” she asked, looking at her tablet.
“Yes. This is my father, Raymond Vance,” I said, using his last name for the first time in my life.
Mr. Raymond looked at me sharply, his mouth opening slightly, but the woman—Dr. Aris, the chief of thoracic surgery—interrupted him with a warm smile. “We’ve been expecting you, Mr. Vance. The operating room is booked for Thursday morning, and your private suite is ready for pre-op testing. Your son has already cleared the balances and authorized the specialist team from Boston.”
Mr. Raymond stood frozen in the middle of the luxury corridor. He looked down at his patched shoes, then at the polished marble floor, and finally at me.
“Julian… what is this?” his voice shook. “The twenty thousand dollars…”
“The surgery doesn’t cost twenty thousand, Dad,” I said, the tears finally spilling over my eyelids. “The advanced procedure you need, with the specialists and the recovery care, costs eighty-five thousand. And I paid it three weeks ago, the moment your doctor in Savannah secretly mailed me your medical records because he knew you’d rather die than burden me.”
