I sent Kelly’s Disneyland grid, along with a screenshot of the medical malpractice news.
"Steven, she killed our child, right?"
All I received was a red exclamation mark. He had blocked me.
I went back to my Instagram, but Kelly’s posts had all been deleted, leaving only a solitary apology.
[The patient treated us to dinner to express his gratitude for saving his child. We got drunk and played games and I lost the dare. The patient’s family asked me to choose a male present to post on Instagram. Doctor Steven was worried I’d feel wronged, so he went along with it. I apologize for causing a bad impression.]
The accompanying image was a crying, bowing kitten.
Steven commented, [Don’t be afraid, Kelly. I’ve got your back. Don’t let them bully you.]
The following comments were endless.
[We all know it. It must have been a joke. Just a disgusting joke from the family. There’s nothing we can do about it.]
[Someone? Could it be Doctor Steven’s? Doctor Steven is so pitiful. He has a crazy wife. It’s unfortunate that she lost her child. And yet, she’s been causing trouble at the hospital every day, insisting that Doctor Steven and Kelly were responsible for her child’s death.]
[Doctor Steven is so domineering and protective.]
I sneered, wrote down each of their names and added them to the list.
The original intention behind establishing the private hospital had been to make Steven one of the top cardiologists in the country. I had invested the most money and managed the publicity.
Now, he truly was the hospital’s chief physician, praised by everyone. Even his most favored and beloved protégé, Kelly, had risen to prominence. And yet, I—the hospital’s largest shareholder—was now being used as a stepping stone beneath their feet.
Perhaps they believed I loved Steven too deeply, or that the hospital owed its current success solely to him. I hadn’t dared to anger Steven; both the hospital and I feared losing him. But they had forgotten—it was my hospital that had made him successful. Without him, I could have trained many other leading specialists.
Kelly replied to everyone’s comments with a smiling cat emoji and then sent Steven a kiss emoji in response.
The doorbell rang suddenly. It was the delivery man handed me a signed divorce agreement and a bag. I asked what it was.