Chapter 3 - The Attending’s Consultation
The discharge lounge on the second floor of St. Claire Medical Center was quiet, save for the low murmur of a daytime talk show playing on the wall-mounted television. Danielle sat in a wheelchair near the door, wearing an expensive maternity wrap dress that Eleanor had undoubtedly paid for, her hair neatly curled. David stood behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders, his face wearing the smug, self-satisfied grin of a man who had successfully navigated a minor crisis and was now returning to his kingdom.
He was looking down at his phone, dictating an email to his secretary, when I stepped into the room with her discharge file in my hand.
"Mr. Salvatore, Miss Vance," I said, my voice carrying the crisp, neutral authority of an attending physician.
David didn't look up immediately. "Just give the paperwork to the nurse, Doctor. We’re in a bit of a rush. My mother is waiting for us at the—"
He stopped mid-sentence. His eyes rose from the phone screen, locking onto my face.
The transformation was spectacular. The smug, patrician composure melted off his features like hot wax, his eyes widening into twin pools of absolute, unadulterated horror. His phone slipped from his fingers, clattering loudly against the linoleum floor, the screen cracking into a spiderweb pattern.
"Ca... Camila?" he stammered, his voice dropping into a high, reedy octave he usually reserved for when a judge rejected his primary motion in court. "What... what are you doing here?"
"I work here, David," I said, stepping closer and giving him a bright, professional smile that didn't reach my eyes. "I’m the head of the maternal-fetal medicine department for this shift. I’m the physician who stabilized your... wife... last night when she arrived with amniotic fluid leakage."
Danielle’s head snapped around, her eyes darting from David’s pale face to mine. The victory I had seen in her expression the previous night instantly curdled into a sharp, defensive panic. "David? Who is this? Is this... is this her?"
"The 'empty' wife," I said smoothly, pulling a silver pen from my coat pocket and tapping it against the discharge file. "The one who allegedly failed the Salvatore family for eight years due to severe ovarian reserve depletion in Boston. Isn't that right, David?"
David stepped away from the wheelchair, his hands raised in a frantic, placating gesture. "Camila, listen to me... this isn't what it looks like. I was going to tell you. I was going to call you tonight—"
"You don't need to explain anything to her, David!" Danielle hissed, her fingers gripping the armrests of the wheelchair so hard the leather groaned. She glared at me with a venomous, white-hot hatred. "So you're the doctor. Fine. You stabilized me, you did your job, now give us the discharge papers so we can leave. You're history, Camila. Eleanor already told me about the agreement she gave you this morning. You're signing the house over on Friday."
"Am I?" I asked, tilting my head and looking down at Danielle with a sense of clinical amusement. "You seem very certain about the financial future of this child, Miss Vance. But as her physician, I have a medical duty to ensure the father is fully aware of the... unique genetic profile we discovered during the prenatal screening."
David’s breath hitched. He stepped forward, his legal instincts finally kicking through his panic. "What genetic profile? Is there something wrong with my daughter?"
"Not with her health, David," I said, leaning against the counter and folding my arms. "She is a beautiful, robust eight-month-old fetus. But during the fluid analysis we ran last night to check for intrauterine infection, our lab automatically processed a standard familial compatibility screening. It’s protocol here at St. Claire for high-risk admissions."
I opened the folder, pulling out a sheet of white paper with a bright blue medical seal at the top. I didn't hand it to him; I held it just far enough away that he could see the bold, red text at the bottom: Paternal Compatibility: 0.00%.
"What is that?" David whispered, his eyes scanning the numbers, his face turning from pale to a dark, mottled red. "What does that mean?"
"It means that whoever the father of this baby is, David, he shares absolutely zero genetic markers with the fetus," I said, my voice dropping into a low, steady whisper that felt like a guillotine blade sliding down its track. "It means that after eight years of blaming me for your own empty ledger, you’ve been brought to your knees by a woman who used your desperate, pathetic vanity to buy herself a brownstone on the Gold Coast."
"You're lying!" Danielle screamed, lunging forward in the wheelchair, her face contorting into a mask of pure terror. "She’s lying, David! She forged that! She’s trying to destroy us because she’s jealous! She’s a barren bitch who wants to steal my baby!"
"I don't need to forge anything, Danielle," I said, pulling my phone from my pocket and tapping the screen.
The audio from Room 204 filled the discharge lounge, clear and crisp. "David thinks he’s God's gift to the legal system... His ego is our security blanket, Ivan. If you open your mouth before the final settlement is filed... we lose everything."
David stood entirely frozen. He looked at the paper in my hand, then at the phone playing his mistress’s voice, and finally down at Danielle, who had dissolved into a fit of breathless, hysterical sobbing, her face buried in her hands.
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The silence that followed the end of the recording was absolute.
"You have until Friday to move your things out of my house, David," I said, snapping the discharge folder shut and tossing it into Danielle’s lap. "And tell your mother she can keep the Earl Grey tea. I’m filing the partition suit at nine o'clock tomorrow morning."
