My Father Died Waiting, But She Saved Childhood Sweetheart’s Dog First

Vanessa glanced down at the mud-streaked notice. She didn't take it. She took half a step back instead, as if it were a piece of filthy garbage.

"Ethan, are you done throwing your tantrum?"

She frowned impatiently, her flawless makeup absurd against the wreckage behind her. "You're trying to scare me with some fake document you had printed at a copy shop? I told you, Julian's dog is claustrophobic. It had to be moved first. Can't you even tell what matters more?"

I looked at the page lying in the mud by her heel. My throat felt packed with broken glass.

I didn't pick it up, and I didn't look at her again. I turned and walked toward the tent of the field medical station.

"Stop right there! I'm not finished!"

Behind me, Vanessa laughed coldly. "Don't think threatening me with divorce will make me cave. When the rain lets up, I'll go get your father myself and put him in the best care home there is. Happy now?"

She thought this was some jealous power game.

She thought one small handout would send me back to my invisible corner, the way it had for the last three years.

I pushed the tent flap aside without looking back.

Five minutes later, the emergency doctor pushed the flap open and came out.

He pulled off his mask. His white coat was smeared with mud and blood, and the look he gave me was full of helplessness and swallowed anger.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Cole."

"Five minutes earlier on that medical boat, flat on a stretcher, and he might have had a chance," the doctor said, his voice hoarse with regret. "But now... organ failure. We did everything we could."

I stood frozen, a roaring in my ears.

On the bed, my father's face was ruined, burned where a falling beam had struck him three years ago while he was carrying Vanessa out of the fire.

Back then Vanessa had knelt at that bedside, gripping his one good hand and sobbing like her heart was tearing apart. "Warren, this happened to you because you saved me. I'll honor you like my own father for the rest of my life. I'll never let you suffer, not for a second!"

But now he hadn't even been given one steady breath at the end. She had dragged him to death in the rain, in the name of saving people first.

A family member of another patient in the room sighed. "What a cruel thing. Such a good old man. He was in the news back then, a hero who ran into a fire. How does he end up like this..."

I stepped forward and, with shaking hands, drew the white sheet up inch by inch until it covered his weathered face.

My phone lit up.

It was a message from Mira, Vanessa's assistant. "Mr. Cole, Vanessa says you need to clear out of the house that was awarded to your father for civilian bravery, immediately. Mr. Marsh's dog is traumatized and needs somewhere with a yard to recover."