The mall's PA system was blaring a jewelry store theft alarm, and I was clutching my phone, sprinting for the exit.
"Mom, there's an emergency at the hospital. I have to go NOW!"
My mother grabbed my arm and her voice shot up an octave:
"Sweetheart, you're in such a rush. Don't tell me YOU'RE the one who stole that gold?"
The words barely left her mouth before security closed in around us.
My brain whited out.
Back in the ER, a teenage boy's trachea had been severed by a sheet of glass that fell from a high floor. His oxygen saturation had plummeted to sixty percent. Severe subcutaneous emphysema covered his entire body.
Without surgery in the next fifteen minutes, he would suffocate to death.
And right now, my mother was staring at me with that look, the one that said she was disappointed but not surprised, sighing like I'd let her down again:
"We may be poor, but that's no excuse to do something this shameful."
To find gold that never existed, I was strip-searched, force-fed laxatives, and locked in a back room.
I dropped to my knees and begged them to let me go save my patient first.
It wasn't until I tried to escape through a window and my mother caught me, slamming me down so hard my arm snapped, ensuring I would never hold a scalpel again.
Only then did she get the phone call. The boy hanging between life and death, the one waiting to be saved, was her son.
——
"Mom, what are you TALKING about?"
I was frantic, prying at her fingers with both hands.
"I'm a doctor! There's a patient in the ER right now, and they will die without me!"
She didn't let go. Her grip only tightened.
She turned toward a security guard patrolling nearby and raised her voice for maximum carry:
"Sir, I am NOT making this up!"
"My daughter has been acting suspicious since the moment we walked in. She kept glancing toward the jewelry store..."
She clapped a hand over her mouth and sucked in a sharp breath, as though she'd just cracked some grand conspiracy.
"Oh my God. You don't think she actually..."
Before she even finished, mall security swarmed in.
The security captain was a heavyset man in his forties with a hard face and a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. His eyes had already changed.
"Ma'am, you need to cooperate with an inspection."
Blood roared in my ears.
"Inspect WHAT? I didn't steal anything! I'm a surgeon at Riverdale City First Hospital!"
"There's a teenager in the ER with a severed trachea. If I don't operate, he dies!"
I pulled out my phone and shoved the screen in his face, showing him the message from the department chief.
Captain Paulson glanced at it. His frown deepened, and for a second he wavered.
My mother's voice curled with mock sympathy: "Those messages are so easy to fake. That doesn't prove a thing..."
Greg Paulson's expression hardened immediately:
"She's right. If you've got nothing to hide, a quick pat-down shouldn't be a problem."
My fists clenched so tight I nearly cracked the phone screen.
"How long will the search take?"
"Five minutes, if we're quick."
Five minutes. Plus the three already wasted. Eight minutes total.
Still enough time.
I ground my teeth until I tasted iron, threw my bag on the floor, and spread my arms wide.
"Search me. Do it fast."
Two female guards stepped forward and patted me down head to toe.
Jacket pockets. Pants pockets. Every compartment of my bag. They even pulled out my insoles.
Nothing.
I bent down to grab my bag and turned to run for the exit.
My mother screamed: "WAIT!"
She looked like she'd been possessed by Sherlock Holmes himself, eyes bulging, finger trembling as she pointed at me.
"I figured it out! No WONDER they couldn't find anything!"
She lunged forward and seized my arm, terrified I'd bolt:
"At lunch! You INSISTED on ordering that soup dumpling!"
"I thought it was strange. You never eat pork, but today you were scarfing it down like your life depended on it!"
She whipped around to face the guards, her voice piercing:
"She must have hidden the gold inside the dumpling and swallowed it!"
