“Gretchen, it is Mom, and the doctor’s name is Dr. Randall Hayes, ID number 8824, and the surgery is an emergency appendectomy that costs nineteen thousand dollars, so deposit it into the account I sent you and hurry up,” the recording said.
I listened to it twice, backed it up to a secure drive, and stared into the darkness of my apartment knowing my family wasn’t in a medical crisis. They were just trying to squeeze the last drop of life out of me.
I put on my navy blue scrubs like a suit of armor and walked out to the parking lot where the desert night air felt like ice. As I drove toward the supposed hospital, the number kept pounding in my head.
Three weeks earlier, I had stopped by my mother’s house and seen open envelopes from several credit card companies marked with final notices of immediate payment. Tiffany had spent months building an image on social media with designer bags and expensive dinners, all financed by other people’s money.
At the reception desk of Ocean View Memorial, I calmly asked the clerk about my sister’s admission status. The woman typed into her computer, checked again, and shook her head.
“We don’t have anyone named Tiffany Miller admitted tonight, and there are no appendectomies scheduled for the next few hours,” she informed me.
“Is there a Dr. Randall Hayes on staff here?” I asked.
“No, we don’t have anyone by that name working in this facility,” she replied.
I left the hospital without feeling any anger, but I felt a sharp sense of clarity that was much more dangerous. I opened the family tracking app my mother had forced me to install for safety and saw three blue dots located in an upscale neighborhood called Silver Ridge.
They weren’t at a hospital, but at a high-end steakhouse where people go when they want to be seen spending money. Twenty minutes later, I saw them through the large glass window of the restaurant.
Tiffany was laughing with a glass of wine in her hand, her makeup looking perfect while she leaned back as if she didn’t have a care in the world. My mother was slicing into a large steak, and my stepfather, Bill, was busy pouring more wine for everyone.
They weren’t trying to save a life; they were celebrating the money they thought they were about to take from me.