The One Who Came to Save Mother Was Ruined by You

My mother was dying of irreversible heart failure, and she begged me to fly back to the States to perform her transplant surgery.

Stepping off the plane, I took a deep breath of the familiar Boston air, wondering if I would ever be able to call her Mom again.

Ten years ago, the Brooks family found their biological daughter living out in the boondocks. The fake daughter, who had supposedly committed a string of vicious, unforgivable acts, was kicked to the curb.

I was that fake daughter. The one who never stood a chance to clear her name.

I was rushing to the hospital with the donor heart secured in my arms when a sports car swerved into the wrong lane and forced my cab to a screeching halt.

The biological daughter stepped out of the passenger seat. She gave me one look, and before I could react, her bodyguard kicked the back of my knees, forcing me to hit the hard pavement.

"Cynthia Brooks, you stole twenty years of my rich, perfect life, and you still want more? You actually have the nerve to come back and fight me for my parents?"

I looked up into her glaring eyes.

"Harper, if you value the life you have right now, you need to let me go. Now."

Before the words even left my mouth, Harpers hand cracked across my cheek in a vicious slap.

"Who the hell do you think you are to threaten me?"

She stared down at me, her eyes brimming with absolute disgust. "I didn't get to completely destroy you ten years ago, Cynthia. But look at you now, delivering yourself right to my doorstep."

She bent down, her manicured fingers digging into my jaw, forcing my face up.

"You think you deserve to call her Mom? That is my mother. Not yours. You are a cheap knockoff. Where do you get off calling her that?"

I didn't have the energy to argue with her toxic logic. I just tightened my grip around the insulated medical cooler in my arms.

Inside that box was a donor heart. It had to be transplanted within six hours.

Harper noticed my death grip. Her gaze dropped to the cooler. "What kind of treasure are you guarding like your life depends on it?"

She shot a look to her left. Two massive bodyguards stepped forward and violently wrenched the cooler from my chest.

Harper popped the latches. A cloud of chilled vapor spilled out into the humid air, revealing the perfectly preserved human heart resting inside.

Staring at the organ, a twisted, sick smile spread across Harper's face. She looked at me with a morbid kind of thrill.

"Wait, is your heart failing, Cynthia? Do you need a transplant? Oh, how tragic. Looks like karma is real after all!"

"Tell me something," she taunted. "If I just rub my dirty, unwashed hands all over this thing, it'll be ruined, right? It'll be completely useless. And you'll just die."

She reached her hand toward the open cooler.

"Don't touch it!" I finally screamed.

My entire body was shaking, but I forced myself to swallow the panic.

"Harper, listen to me. That heart isn't for me."

"I am a surgeon now. That heart belongs to my patient. Do not touch it. Destroying that will not hurt me!"

I desperately wanted to scream that the heart was for our mother. But before I flew back, Margaret had explicitly forbidden me from telling anyone. Especially Harper.

Margaret had kept her failing health a total secret from her biological daughter. She felt so guilty about the twenty years Harper spent in poverty that she refused to cause her any emotional pain.

Harper's hand hovered over the ice. She tilted her head, her eyes darkening with pure venom.

"A surgeon?"

She let out a dry, hacking laugh. "You really do have all the luck, Cynthia. Why?"

"Why didn't you end up homeless, wandering the streets like a stray dog? How did you become a doctor? How do you get to stand in an operating room?"

She turned away, staring off as if sucked into a nightmare. "Do you have any idea what my life was like for those first twenty years? The years you stole from me?"

"A rotting shack in the middle of nowhere. Freezing in the winter, flooded in the summer. Eating stale bread and pickled garbage. Wearing other people's stained hand-me-downs."

"That man beat me senseless whenever he drank. That woman hated the sight of me. I was forced to work the dirt since I was a toddler. Look at my hands! I had frostbite and calluses before I could even read."

"And you? You wore the princess dresses that belonged to me. You slept in my mansion. You took ballet, you learned the piano, you got accepted into a prestigious university abroad."

"Why didn't you have to suffer the misery that was meant for you? God is so completely blind!"

Her voice escalated into a hysterical screech.

I tried to keep my tone even. "Harper, a nurse switched us at the hospital."

"If you want to say I lived your life, I accept that. Even though I had no say in it."

"But later? You framed me. You bullied me. You forced Mom and Dad to publicly disown me and throw me out on the street with absolutely nothing. Hasn't the debt been paid?"

I paused, my voice trembling. "I have never personally done a single thing to hurt you. My conscience is clear."

Harper burst into maniacal laughter. "Paid? You think it's that easy?"

Before the echo of her laugh faded, she plunged her bare, unsterilized hand straight into the medical cooler and squeezed the donor heart.

Preservation fluid dripped through her fingers as the vibrant, life-saving organ deformed under her grip.

She held it up right in front of my face, her voice dripping with malicious amusement.

"Sucks to be your patient. Guess this piece of meat is garbage now."

A raw scream tore out of my throat. "Do you have any idea who needs that heart!"

Seeing me break down completely only made Harper smile wider.

"I don't give a damn who needs it."

"All I know is that I am the true heiress of the Brooks family. With how much Mom and Dad owe me, they will cover up anything I do."

"But you? With this heart ruined, let's see if you can keep playing doctor."

The blood was pounding in my ears. The roaring in my head was deafening.

Since begging wouldn't work on a psychopath, I was going to call the cops.

But the second I pulled my phone from my pocket, Harper snatched it right out of my grip.

At that exact moment, the screen lit up. A text notification popped onto the lock screen.

[Mom: Cynthia, where are you?]

Harper's smug face contorted the second she read the caller ID.

She glared down at me, her eyes burning with absolute hatred. "You are still secretly talking to my mother!"

"Cynthia Brooks, you are still trying to steal my place!"

"You have a career, you have everything, why do you still have to steal my mother!"

I looked up at her, my mouth tasting like ash. "I am not trying to steal her from you."

The moment the words left my lips, Harper brought my own phone down and smashed it brutally against my temple.

"Then why the hell is she saved as 'Mom' in your phone!"

The heavy device struck my head with a sickening thud. A blinding flash of pain and extreme dizziness washed over me, and the world tilted. I nearly collapsed fully onto the concrete.

Harper grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back to look at her. "Tell me! Why do you still call her Mom! What gives you the right!"

I stayed completely silent. There was no way to explain it to her.

Even if Margaret wasn't my biological mother, she had raised me for twenty years.

Even though she threw me out like trash, some pathetic, broken part of me still viewed her as a mother.

I was so starved for the memory of her maternal warmth that I never had the heart to change her contact name.

But I wasn't going to justify my trauma to Harper. It would only make her crazier.

I bit my lip and bent down to pick up my shattered phone from the asphalt. But just as my fingers brushed the screen, a heavy leather shoe stepped squarely onto the back of my hand.

I slowly looked up.

Standing above me was Liam Spencer. My childhood sweetheart. The boy who had promised to marry me. He stared down at me with dead eyes, the pressure of his shoe steadily increasing.

After ten years of not seeing each other, his first words to me were a demand.

"Cynthia, apologize to Harper right now."

The boy who once swore he would protect me from the world was now grinding my hand into the dirt, demanding I apologize for a crime I didn't commit.

My chest caved in. Whatever lingering affection I had for my parents or Liam was officially dead. Their love belonged exclusively to Harper now.

Harper smirked, her face glowing with triumph. "Oh Liam, you always know how to take care of me."

I swallowed the sharp pain radiating up my arm. "Liam, I will tell Harper whatever she wants to hear. I will say I'm sorry a thousand times."

"But I have a critical surgery to perform right now. This is a matter of life and death. If I am late, every single one of you will regret this for the rest of your lives."

Liam didn't lift his foot.

"The surgery doesn't matter, Cynthia. What matters is that you shouldn't even be here. Your presence is making Harper anxious."

"She finally came home and got the life she deserved, and you, you little fraud, have the audacity to show your face again?"

I ignored the agonizing pain in my hand and stared at him in pure disbelief.

"Liam, I am a doctor. I have to save a dying patient. Harper is angry, fine, but have you lost your mind too?"

"A heart transplant has a six-hour window. The clock is ticking."

"Harper contaminated the surface, but there is still a slight chance I can salvage it with heavy sterilization protocols. But if you keep me here any longer, this heart is going straight to the incinerator!"

Seeing zero reaction from either of them, I finally drew a deep breath and screamed the truth.

"The person I am trying to save is Harper's mother."

"Margaret is lying on an operating table right now with total heart failure, waiting for this exact heart to save her life!"

Harper froze for a split second before letting out a mocking scoff.

"You actually have the nerve to use my mother as a shield?"

"Mom is perfectly healthy. She doesn't have heart problems. You really won't give up your pathetic lies until you're in a coffin, will you?"

She turned to Liam, her voice turning sweet and sickeningly cruel. "Liam, I want her hand destroyed. I want to make sure this little thief can never pretend to be a doctor again."

"Step on it. Step on it as hard as you can. Crush it until she can never hold a scalpel for the rest of her miserable life."

Without a shred of hesitation, Liam shifted his body weight over his foot.

My right hand was pinned to the abrasive asphalt. I could feel my knuckles shifting violently under his sole. My fingernails began to crack, and bright red blood pooled out from the edges of his expensive shoe.

My whole body convulsed in agony. Tears streamed down my face without my permission. "Liam..."

"Stop... please stop... don't you remember what you promised me when we were kids... Liam, look at me... it's me... it's Cynthia..."

Liam refused to meet my eyes.

"Harper is the true daughter. You didn't just steal her parents' love, Cynthia. You stole my love."

"You are nothing but a thief. A thief doesn't deserve the prestige of being a surgeon. Do you honestly think dirty hands like yours deserve to hold a scalpel?"

And then, I heard the sharp, sickening crack of my own bones snapping.

Harper heard it too. She gasped in faux concern. "Oh no, Cynthia, what a tragedy! Your bones just broke."

"I heard that cardiac surgery requires intense, microscopic precision. With your finger bones shattered to pieces, how are you going to do all those delicate little stitches?"

"Stop crying and tell me. Can you still play doctor now?"

In that exact moment, the last ember of hope in my soul died.

Liam finally lifted his foot.

I stared blankly at my right hand. The same hand that had meticulously sutured hundreds of arteries on the operating table.

It was a mangled, bloody mess of crushed bone and torn skin.

A guttural wail tore out of my throat, a sound of absolute, soul-ripping despair echoing from the deepest part of my chest.

Harper didn't just want me kicked out of the family. She wanted to obliterate my entire existence.

I stared at the hand I was so incredibly proud of.

It was ruined. I would never perform heart surgery again. And I could no longer save my mother.

Right then, the driver's side door of Harper's sports car opened.

My father stepped out.

Richard Brooks.

He had been sitting inside the car the entire time. Watching with cold, indifferent eyes as I was forced to the pavement, slapped, and as Liam crushed my fingers into dust.

"Alright, alright, Harper. Her hand is ruined. Let's call it a day."