"Cousins, you all stand guard outside the door!"
Wayne barked it at the four Pruitt relatives.
They meant to keep Daisy and me locked in this room.
For the moment, I really had no way out.
But there was a signing this afternoon. When the company couldn't reach me, they'd track my car for sure.
For now, all I could do was stall.
I tried once more to wake some scrap of maternal feeling in Alma.
"Alma, if a kidney is taken out at eight years old, her risk of high blood pressure and kidney failure doubles when she grows up.
"She'll never be able to overexert herself. No P.E. class, no field days, none of it. She'll live her whole life under the shadow of illness.
"Harvey can wait for a donor, wait for a match. Why does it have to be our daughter we sacrifice?"
Alma stayed just as cold.
"Wait? Harvey can't afford to wait. Dialysis is agony. Every extra day is torture for him."
"Daisy's young, she'll bounce back fast. A price this small is nothing."
"You just work harder and make more money. Hire a nutritionist for Daisy, buy Harvey plenty of supplements. Raising two kids costs a fortune."
That was when I saw it clearly. Alma had no maternal love for Daisy at all. There was nothing left to say to her.
All I had to do now was keep Daisy safe.
So I held her and edged back slowly toward the nightstand. There was a fruit knife there.
Seeing me go quiet, Alma just picked up where she'd left off.
"Jacob, think hard. Without my family, what would you even be right now?"
"Back when I married you, you had nothing!"
"It was my brother who begged our mother for me, that's the only reason she let me marry you. Am I wrong?"
"Without my brother, you wouldn't even have a wife!"
"Now my brother's son is sick, and you won't even give him your daughter's kidney. Are you even human?"
"You're nothing but an ungrateful dog!"
I couldn't hold back a cold laugh.
"Alma, you lie without even blinking, don't you?"
"When I married you I didn't have much money, sure, but both my parents were teachers. They'd put a little something away!"
"They gave your family a hundred and eighty grand for the wedding, and you never brought a cent of it home, you handed it all to your brother. Did my family say one word about it?"
"Later, when I started my own company, you never once looked after Daisy or me. Every day you were off helping your brother run his breakfast shop. It was my parents who took care of Daisy and me the whole time!"
"And that idiot brother of yours and his wife, the second the shop made a little money they went out and blew it. I've never even gambled in Las Vegas, and he had the nerve to lose over a million there!"
"I'm the one who paid off that million. Did you forget?"
"I'm the ungrateful dog? How much money I've poured into your family all these years, do you really not have a clue?"
Honestly, the only reason was that I didn't want Daisy growing up without both parents. Otherwise I'd have divorced this rotten, maggot-ridden woman long ago.
Alma shoved her sleeve up.
"So what if you spent money on my family?"
"We're married, so your money is my money, and my money, I'll give it to whoever I want!"
"And I'll say it right here and now: Daisy is giving Harvey that kidney, end of story!"
Wayne came over and jabbed a finger in my face, cursing.
"Jacob, don't go thinking too much of yourself. Us spending your money, using your daughter's kidney, that's an honor for you, you get that?"
"And you think it makes any difference whether you agree?"
"You know who owns this hospital? My uncle. This is my turf, damn it!"
No wonder they were so brazen. So the hospital was in on it too.
I snatched the fruit knife into my hand and backed away again, thinking that even if I had to kill someone, I'd keep Daisy from being touched.
Just then the door opened.
A crowd of medical staff pushed a gurney in.
A man dressed like the attending physician gave Wayne a nod. "The operating room's ready. Has the paperwork been signed?"
"Do the surgery first, sign after!"
Wayne ground out the words through his teeth.
