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“Chef Ana has cooked for our family since before I was born,” Lila began as the bluebonn
ets, cedar trees, broken-down gas stations, and workborn diners slipped past the car. “Her oldest daughter was named Holly. We were the same age, and as close as my mother would allow before propriety took over. If I had kept my damn mouth shut, we might have been closer.”
“What does that mean?”
“I asked my mother once if Holly could be my sister instead of Jewel.”
“How old were you?”
“Five or six. My mother didn’t take it well. I had to sneak around more to play with Holly after that, but Chef didn’t try very hard to keep us apart.”
“Where’s Holly now?”
“Dead. She got sick when we were eleven, and she never got better. Watching Holly spend her last few years dying was hard enough, but I saw what it did to Chef. It tore her apart a little more each day. And every day she grew a little more desperate. My mother saw it too. She sent Holly to the best doctors, even got her into an experimental trial in Our Lady of the Light.”
“That was Randolph General before you took over?”
“Yes. But in the end, Holly still died.”
“Most matrons wouldn’t have bothered for a servant’s child,” Tristan said.
“I never said my mother was evil, Tristan. We just don’t get along. We have different concerns about the family and different priorities, and she wants me to be someone I’m not.”
“So you took over the hospital to save little girls like Holly?”
Lila shook her head. “No. When I watched my friend die, I learned that you can’t save everyone. People just die sometimes, no matter what you do. And every morning, the sun still rises even when it shouldn’t, and it laughs at whatever you’ve done to stop it.”
“That might be the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Well, I became quite the angst-ridden teenager after she died.”
“Anyone would be after losing their best friend. Why did you take over the hospital if it wasn’t to save other kids?”
“I saw what my mother’s persistence had done for Chef. It wasn’t much of a consolation, but it gave her peace of mind in the end. Me too. And I think it helped Holly too, as horrible as that sounds. She couldn’t keep reaching for treatments that weren’t there because she knew that doctors didn’t have the answers. Holly was able to go home for a while and be a stupid, goofy kid at the end, at least when she wasn’t sleeping. It seemed like that’s all she did, tubes in her nose, those stupid machines wheezing in the background.” Lila frowned, remembering how she’d snuck into her friend’s room some nights, just to snuggle next to her, terrified Holly might die alone.
She hadn’t, as it turned out. Lila had been with her when she stopped breathing. She jumped up by her side, completely powerless and frantic to help her friend. Pax had run in after Lila began screaming. Only a toddler, he’d cried because he did not understand and cried more because he didn’t know what to do or how to help. He claimed he didn’t remember it, but Lila had to wonder.
Why on earth had the boy become so obsessed with being a doctor if not for that? She’d done that to him, and she didn’t know if it was a good thing.
Chef had run into the room a moment later and shooed them out. She had only left the room for a second, just for a cup of coffee.
Perhaps Holly had known somehow, even though she’d been asleep for days. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted her mother to see her last gasping breaths.
And she’d gasped, terrifyingly so.
“I remember Chef telling me that if you’ve tried everything, even if you fail, you’re not left torturing yourself with what-ifs. It stuck with me. I wanted a way for everyone to feel like that. Tragedy sucks enough without spending the rest of your days bitter and angry because you might have saved someone you cared about, if only you’d had more money, if only you’d had a better doctor, if only, if only, if only…”
“So your mother gave you Our Lady of Light.”
“It was my fourteenth birthday present. She even told me it was a test. To show her, the family, and myself what I could do if I became chairwoman someday. We’d never even been involved with hospitals before. The insufferable woman gave me the one thing that I couldn’t say no to, all because she thought it might tempt me to take up the whitecoat. She’s not evil, Tristan. She’s just manipulative in the coldest, most infuriating ways possible.”
“You passed her test, then, and got what you wanted from the process. From what I hear, the hospital is profitable. Zoe was treated for free when he broke his ankle.”
“It’s not the hospital that’s profitable. We make our profits from the businesses around the hospital, from the drugs Grace Medical tests there, for overcharging the highborn. My mother was pleased when I asked for all the land two blocks around Our Lady of Light. She thought I was already getting a taste.”
“The Randolphs owned those blocks?”
“Not back then. Not all of it. But my mother is very fond of acquiring land.”
