Chapter 5 - Sabrina Learned Why I Stopped Competing
Sabrina stared at Rebecca.
“Who is she?”
“My mother.”
Her face changed.
“I thought your mother was dead.”
“So did I.”
She looked at Dad.
“What?”
He said nothing.
I explained.
Not every painful detail.
Just enough.
Rebecca was alive.
Dad had hidden her attempts to contact me.
Leonard recognized her at the hospital.
I had spent eight months rebuilding a relationship with the woman I thought abandoned me.
Sabrina listened.
Then did something I didn't expect.
She sat down.
“Oh my God.”
No insult.
No joke.
No competition.
Just shock.
I almost believed something had changed.
Then she looked at Leonard.
“So that's why you defended Laurel last night?”
Leonard frowned.
“No.”
“But you knew her secret.”
“I defended Laurel because you insulted her.”
Sabrina's mouth tightened.
“I was joking.”
Rebecca looked at her.
“You're Sabrina?”
She nodded.
Rebecca had heard about her.
Mostly from me.
Rebecca studied her.
“Your joke made my daughter cry in a hospital bathroom three years ago.”
Sabrina froze.
I stared at Rebecca.
“What?”
“You told me.”
“I didn't tell you that.”
“You told me you hid in a bathroom after a family dinner because somebody called nursing ‘the career people choose when they can't become doctors.’”
Sabrina's face went pale.
I had forgotten.
She hadn't.
Rebecca looked at her.
“That was you?”
Sabrina said nothing.
I realized something.
My mother had known me again for only eight months.
Yet she remembered one painful story I mentioned once.
My father had lived beside me for decades and repeatedly forgotten the things that mattered.
Love wasn't measured only by time.
Attention mattered.
Sabrina stood.
“I can't do this.”
She turned toward Dad.
“Are you coming?”
Dad looked at her.
Then at me.
“No.”
Sabrina froze.
“What?”
“I need to stay.”
“With her?”
Dad's expression changed.
“With my daughter.”
Sabrina's face twisted.
“I am your daughter too.”
“Yes.”
“Then choose.”
Silence.
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The game Sabrina had played for years.
Choose me.
Prove I'm more important.
Dad stood.
“No.”
She stared.
“No what?”
“I won't choose between my daughters.”
“You always did before.”
Nobody breathed.
Sabrina realized what she had admitted.
Dad's eyes filled.
“Yes.”
He whispered.
“I did.”
Sabrina stepped backward.
“And now you're choosing her.”
“No.”
Dad shook his head.
“I'm finally refusing to choose you at her expense.”
Sabrina began crying.
She left.
This time Dad did not follow.
Two weeks later, Preston filed for an annulment.
Not because Sabrina insulted me.
That was merely the moment he stopped ignoring everything else.
He discovered she had lied about debt.
Hidden nearly sixty thousand dollars in credit-card balances.
Used wedding gift money to cover overdue payments.
And told him my five-thousand-dollar check had already been deposited when it hadn't.
Their marriage had problems long before the microphone.
The wedding simply turned the lights on.
Sabrina blamed me.
Of course.
She sent:
YOU DESTROYED MY MARRIAGE.
I replied:
I didn't marry Preston.
Then blocked her.
It felt wonderful.
Meanwhile, my new job began.
Director of Clinical Response and Nursing Innovation.
The title looked ridiculous on my office door.
On my first morning, I stood outside staring.
Aaron Mercer appeared behind me.
“You can go inside.”
“I know.”
“You look frightened.”
“I am.”
“Good.”
I frowned.
“Good?”
“People who aren't frightened by responsibility usually shouldn't have it.”
He handed me a stack of folders.
“Welcome to management.”
I groaned.
But something else was waiting inside.
Flowers.
From Leonard.
Congratulations to “just a nurse.”
I laughed so loudly my assistant came running.
Then I found another envelope.
From Rebecca.
Inside was a photograph.
Me at age four.
Sitting on her lap.
Both of us wearing toy stethoscopes.
On the back she had written:
You always wanted to help people breathe easier.
I sat at my desk and cried.
May you like
For the first time in years, they weren't tears caused by being made smaller.
They came because my life was finally beginning to fit me.
