I Will Never Save My Father's Son Blurb

When I was six, my father and his mistress drove my mother to jump to her death.

Suicide is a sin, and the Church said her soul could not enter Heaven.

So I set out to save her the only way I could: with my Rh-null "golden blood," I worked ninety-nine miracles of life.

Then came the hundredth call. The hospital needed me to save my father's illegitimate son.

Chapter 1

"Ms. Olivia, I'm begging you. The patient can't hold on much longer!"

On speakerphone, the head of hematology at Holy Cross Hospital sounded close to breaking.

"The bleed in that six-year-old's brain is still spreading. We have to operate within eight hours." The words tumbled out of him. "We've searched every blood bank in the state. Your Rh-null is the only match that can keep him alive!"

I leaned back on the sofa, my eyes on the black-and-white portrait of my mother on the table.

Once, I would have been out the door in a heartbeat, no matter the hour.

But this time, I looked at the patient file the hospital had sent to my tablet, at a boy's face where all I could see was my father's eyes, and my stomach turned.

"I'm sorry. I'm not feeling well." My voice was perfectly flat.

"We can send a helicopter for you! We can do a full workup first!" He sounded like he was about to cry. "You're the most selfless donor in the state of New York. This is a human life. You can't just let him die!"

"Being a volunteer means I have the right to say no." I gave a cold laugh. "I don't owe you anything. And I certainly don't owe that child anything."

I ended the call and switched off the phone.

The room went dead silent again.

I looked at my mother's gentle face and curled my hands into fists.

According to Catholic teaching, those who take their own lives cannot enter Heaven.

But the priest had told me that if I worked a hundred miracles of life with the blood of her own child, my mother's sin would be washed away.

For twenty years, I had saved strangers in the middle of the night: a construction worker crushed in a car wreck, a new mother hemorrhaging on the delivery table. One more, and my mother would finally be free.

But the hundredth life I was meant to save belonged to the son of the people I hated most.

I sat with that for a long moment. Then I picked up my phone and called a man at the top of the medical world, someone I had once helped.

"Dr. Allen, it's me. I need a favor..."

The moment I hung up, my backup work phone lit up.

Only a handful of people in the highest circles of business and politics had that number.

"Is this Olivia?" a furious male voice barked. "This is the editor-in-chief of the Manhattan Herald. The entire internet is looking for you! That boy with the brain bleed at Holy Cross, why are you letting him die? This is murder by another name!"

"Murder?" My voice dropped to ice. "If that's how you see it, that boy's parents committed a murder twenty years ago. Why don't you reporters go dig into that?"

I hung up and blocked the number.

On my tablet, I pulled up the local news livestream. Outside the emergency room at Holy Cross, camera flashes formed a solid wall of light.

A woman with flawless makeup and wild, disheveled hair was on her knees, sobbing as if her heart were being torn out. "Please, everyone, help me find that donor! If she'll just give blood to save my son, I'll gladly die in his place!"

I would have known that face even if it had been burned to ash. Celia.

The camera swung to a man in a tailored suit, who stepped forward with a look of righteous grief and helped her to her feet.

"I cannot understand how this donor can be so cold-blooded." Arthur stared into the lens, his jaw tight. "If it's money she wants, I'll give her ten million dollars. A six-year-old boy is lying in there between life and death. How can anyone be so selfish? I'm asking everyone out there to help me find this woman, so I can ask her to her face whether her conscience has rotted all the way through!"

The live chat had gone completely insane.

This woman is disgusting!

Those ninety-nine donations were all for show! Dox her!

Drag her in and make her give blood!

I stared at the screen full of vicious curses, and one corner of my mouth lifted in contempt.

Me, selfish? Me, cold-blooded?

For my mother's salvation, I had saved ninety-nine people I had no connection to.

But the two of you? You deserve nothing more than to drown in your own despair.