Chapter 7 - The First Doctor Who Said She Might See Again
Hope arrived on a Tuesday morning wearing green scrubs and refusing to shake my hand.
Dr. Priya Shah had brought in a neuro-ophthalmologist from Johns Hopkins named Dr. Evelyn Grant.
Grant was sixty-one, blunt, and apparently immune to my reputation.
I liked her immediately.
She examined Lila for nearly two hours.
Camille was not there.
Not because I banned her.
Because Lila asked for me only.
That hurt Camille when I told her.
It should have.
Lila sat in the exam chair with her cane across her lap.
Dr. Grant moved lights.
Asked questions.
Measured responses.
At one point she held up colored cards.
“Can you see anything?”
Lila squinted.
“Gray.”
“All of them?”
“One is less gray.”
“Which?”
Lila pointed wrong.
Then right.
Then laughed nervously.
“I don’t know.”
“That is okay,” Grant said.
Not sweetheart.
Not poor thing.
Okay.
Lila relaxed.
Afterward, Grant asked her to wait with Priya.
I stood before the window while she reviewed scans.
“Tell me.”
“She has optic-nerve injury.”
“I know.”
“No, you know what people called it.”
I turned.
Grant pointed to the images.
“This pattern is not behaving like the inherited degeneration in her previous diagnosis.”
“What is it behaving like?”
“Toxic injury.”
My jaw tightened.
“Can she recover?”
Grant looked at me.
“Some children recover meaningful function once exposure stops.”
Meaningful.
Another cruelly vague medical word.
“How much?”
“I will not make a promise your daughter has to live inside.”
Priya had found me another honest doctor.
I hated her too.
Good.
“What do we do?”
“Stop exposure. Correct nutritional deficiencies. Monitor the nerve. Rehabilitation. Time.”
“Treatment?”
“Yes, but no miracle.”
“I can pay for anything.”
“That sentence is probably useful in most rooms.”
She tapped the scan.
“Not this one.”
I looked through the glass at Lila.
She was telling Priya about Eli.
Animated.
Smiling.
“She might see again?”
Grant’s voice softened.
“She may see better.”
That was enough to break me.
I sat.
Not because I chose humility.
Because my legs stopped working.
For six months, every doctor had moved us toward darkness.
Now one had opened a window the width of a sentence.
She may see better.
When Lila came in, I did not tell her she would recover.
I had spent too much of my life using certainty as a weapon.
I said, “The doctors think your eyes might get stronger now that the bad drops are gone.”
Lila thought.
“Will I see your face?”
My throat tightened.
“I don’t know.”
She nodded.
“Okay.”
Then she reached for me.
I held her.
Later, Eli arrived with Tasha.
Their reunion the night before had not magically repaired anything.
Eli was angry.
Tasha was guilty.
They sat three feet apart in the waiting room like people who loved each other and did not yet know how to get home.
Lila heard his voice.
“Eli!”
He came over.
“Hey.”
“Daddy says you helped save my eyes.”
Eli looked uncomfortable.
“I just told him.”
“That’s helping.”
He glanced at me.
Maybe I was not the only one learning from children.
Tasha gave Priya the original shipment records.
Priya handed them to investigators through an attorney.
I allowed that too.
Dante noticed my expression.
“You hate this.”
“I hate not controlling it.”
“Same thing.”
“Careful.”
Before we left the clinic, Tasha stood near the elevator with Eli.
They were still not touching.
I recognized the distance now.
Love did not automatically repair abandonment.
Tasha said, “He wants to stay at the hotel tonight.”
Eli looked defensive.
I asked, “Is that what you want?”
“Yes.”
Tasha nodded even though it hurt her.
“Okay.”
I watched her accept the answer without using motherhood as a veto.
There was a lesson in that.
Eli looked at me.
“You going to the mansion?”
“Yes.”
“Your wife there?”
“Yes.”
He hesitated.
“Don’t yell at her because of what I said.”
I stared.
“She hurt Lila.”
“I know. But yelling doesn’t make people tell the truth better.”
A homeless twelve-year-old had now corrected my leadership twice.
I nodded.
“I’ll remember.”
He shrugged.
“Probably not.”
Dante laughed before remembering he worked for me.
At home, I opened Lila Trust Amendment Four again.
Aaliyah’s signature sat at the bottom.
I knew that signature.
She used to make the A too large.
This one looked right.
Too right.
Aaliyah had created Lila’s trust after her birth.
Thirty-one percent of Moretti Logistics.
Her own shares.
She wanted our daughter to have power no man in my family could take from her.
Why would she name Dominic interim trustee?
Aaliyah barely trusted Dominic to order wine.
I called her old attorney.
Retired.
Seventy-eight.
Living in Charleston.
Arthur Bell answered on the fourth ring.
“Vincent Moretti.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“At my age, every call is either family or trouble. You are not family.”
“Do you remember Amendment Four?”
Silence.
Then:
“There was no Amendment Four.”
I stood.
“What?”
“Aaliyah amended Lila’s trust twice.”
“The document has your firm’s seal.”
“Then someone forged my seal.”
My pulse slowed.
Danger always made it slow.
“Who knew the trust terms?”
“Very few people.”
“Dominic?”
“Only if you told him.”
“I didn’t.”
Arthur hesitated.
“There was one other copy.”
“Where?”
“With Aaliyah’s private financial adviser.”
“Name.”
He gave it.
I knew the man.
Marcus Hale.
Not just our doctor.
May you like
Aaliyah’s adviser.
And suddenly the family physician was standing in the center of everything.
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