Chapter 70
Chapter 70
Mira’s POV
I waited until Ace dropped me off before I called.
Stood outside Zara’s building in the cold with my phone pressed against my ear and my free hand flat against my sternum, listening to it ring twice before a woman with a crisp efficient voice picked up and confirmed she was calling from Dr. Harrington’s office and could she please confirm she was speaking with Mira Martinez.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s me.”
“Miss Martinez, thank you for calling back so promptly.” The sound of typing in the background. “I’m calling regarding your position on Dr. Harrington’s surgical list. There’s been a development we needed to notify you about immediately.”
My stomach dropped somewhere around the word development.
“What kind of development?” I asked carefully.
“A cancellation came through this morning,” she replied. “A significant one. It’s moved your slot considerably.”
“How considerably?”
There was a brief pause.
“Dr. Harrington can take you in twelve days, Miss Martinez.”
The street went very quiet around me.
Not actually. There was still traffic and a dog barking somewhere nearby and the wind doing its thing through the gap between buildings. But inside my head everything went absolutely silent in the way it did when information arrived that was too large for normal processing speed.
“Twelve days,” I repeated.
“Yes. I understand that’s significantly sooner than anticipated, which is why we wanted to contact you immediately. These slots don’t stay open long and given the notes Dr. Harrington received from your cardiologist regarding the progression of your condition—” She paused delicately. “He specifically flagged your file when the cancellation came through. He’d like to take this slot for you if at all possible.”
My throat tightened.
Harrington had flagged my file himself.
Which meant Dr. Osei had told him more than he’d told me, or told him the same things in the kind of clinical language that landed differently between doctors than it did between a doctor and his patient who was standing on a pavement trying to remember how to breathe.
“Miss Martinez?”
“I’m here,” I said. “Sorry. I just—” I pressed my fingers against my eyes briefly. “What do I need to do?”
“We’d need confirmation within forty eight hours,” she replied. “And the first payment installment would need to clear within seventy two. After that Dr. Harrington’s team handles everything from their end.”
Seventy two hours.
The number I was still short by sat in my chest alongside everything else.
“I understand,” I said, my voice coming out steadier than I had any right to. “I’ll call you back within forty eight hours.”
“Wonderful. We’ll hold the slot until then.”
The line went dead.
I stood on the pavement for a long moment.
Twelve days.
Not six weeks. Twelve days, which changed everything about every calculation I’d been making for the last four months, every careful budgeting and quiet saving and patient waiting that had been built on the assumption that I had more time than I apparently did.
Dr. Harrington had flagged my file personally.
I thought about what that meant and then immediately stopped thinking about it because there were only so many things a person could hold at once and I was already at capacity.
I went inside.
Zara was home early.
She was in the kitchen when I walked in, still in her work clothes, eating leftover pasta standing at the counter with her fork and her phone and the specific energy of someone who had not yet decompressed from their day.
She took one look at my face and put both down.
“What happened?” she asked immediately.
“Dr. Harrington’s office called.”
Her eyes sharpened. “And?”
“Twelve days,” I said. “There was a cancellation. He wants to take the slot for me.”
Zara’s mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again.
“Twelve—” She pressed her hand over her mouth briefly. “Mira.”
“I know.”
“That’s—”
“I know, Zara.”
“Do you have the money?”
I sat down at the kitchen table and put my phone on the surface in front of me and looked at it.
“I’m short,” I admitted. “Not by much. But enough.”
“How much is not by much?”
I told her.
She leaned back against the counter and looked at the ceiling with the expression of someone doing rapid mental arithmetic and not loving the results.
“I have some savings,” she said immediately.
“No,” I replied.
“Mira—”
“Absolutely not,” I said firmly. “You are not touching your savings for this.”
“They are literally just sitting there,” she argued, pushing off the counter. “What’s the point of savings if your best friend needs surgery in twelve days and you’re short—”
“Zara.” I looked at her. “No.”
She stared at me with the frustrated expression of a woman being prevented from doing the one thing she wanted to do, which for Zara was one of the most uncomfortable positions in existence.
“Then what’s the plan,” she demanded. “Because forty eight hours is not a lot of time to find that kind of money and I know you well enough to know you’re not calling Alejandro.”
“I’m not calling Alejandro,” I confirmed.
“And Ace?”
I was quiet.
“Mira—”
“I’m not asking either of them for money,” I said. “I’m not doing that.”
“So what then?” She sat down across from me, her voice losing some of its edge, dropping into something quieter. “Because I need you to hear me right now. Not as your annoying best friend who says too much. As the person who has known you your entire adult life.”
She leaned forward. “You have twelve days and a surgeon who flagged your file personally and a slot that is not going to come back around. This is not the moment for pride.”
I looked at her.
“I know,” I said softly.
“So what are you going to do?”
My phone lit up on the table between us.
We both looked at it.
It was Alejandro.
Not a text. An actual call, his name sitting on the screen in the quiet kitchen, and the timing of it was so specific it felt like the universe making a point I hadn’t asked for.
Zara looked at me with one eyebrow raised.
“I’m not answering that right now,” I said.
“Mira—”
“I need to think,” I cut her off, standing up. “I just need—give me an hour. Let me think.”
She looked at me for a long second.
“One hour,” she agreed. Then, because she couldn’t help herself. “The universe called Mira. Literally. It’s on your screen right now with a contact name and everything.”
“Zara.”
“I’m just saying.” She picked up her fork again. “Even God knows you need to answer that call.”
I took my phone and went to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed in the silence.
Alejandro’s call had already gone to voicemail.
A notification appeared three seconds later.
A message.
I found her. I know where Flora is. Call me.
I read it three times.
My mother. Alive, and found, and sitting in a message on my phone alongside a surgery slot I had twelve days to confirm and a number I was still short by and a heart that was running out of patience with all of it.
My hands were shaking.
I called him back before I’d decided to.
He picked up on the first ring.