All Chapters of On My Deathbed, She Wants a Confession: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

10 Chapters

Chapter 1

Renee Sutton stared at the two words scrawled on the writing board. Her eyes moved between the handwriting and my face for five long seconds.Then, she snatched the board out of my hand and smashed it against the wall. The plastic cracked and clattered to the floor."Tracheotomy?" She turned to the nurse. "How much did Miles pay you to help him keep up the act?"The nurse took a step back. "Ms. Sutton, this is a medical diagnosis. His vitals show—""Get out." The lawyer behind Renee stepped forward, pulled the door open, and gestured for the nurse to leave.The nurse glanced at me lying in the bed before a bodyguard outside the door pulled her out by force. The door shut behind her.Renee walked to the right side of the bed. She picked up the divorce agreement and a black signing pen and pushed the pen into my right hand.My fingers were locked stiff, unable to close around it. The pen rolled off the back of my hand and hit the floor."Your hand's broken too, is it?"She flipp

Chapter 2

One of the care workers walked to the head of the bed and unplugged the humidifier from the nightstand. "It's Ms. Sutton's orders. Care services end at noon today."The doctor set a notice down by my pillow. "Mr. Bennett, your family just filed the paperwork to cut off your medication over unpaid bills."He looked at my face and let out a sigh.The next morning at 9:00 am, the door to my room swung open. Renee walked in, and behind her came Julian Cross, dressed in a black suit and carrying a file folder.He walked up to the bed, his eyes moving over the bruises on the back of my hand, then over the ventilator connection at my throat."Renee, Miles really does look weak," Julian said.Renee pulled over a chair, sat down, and crossed her legs. "He once played a corpse in a theater production and held his breath for a long time. A prop like that is nothing to him."Julian opened the folder and dropped a stack of documents onto my blanket. "Miles, Renee's already bought 30% of this

Chapter 3

The oxygen deprivation continued into the fourth day. During that stretch, only a regular nurse came by once a day to swap out my basic IV fluids.On the afternoon of the fourth day, Julian came to the ward alone. He pulled the blue curtain shut around my bed, blocking the view from everyone else, then walked to the head of the bed and switched off the small oxygen concentrator keeping me alive at the bare minimum.The suffocating, drowning feeling closed in on me again almost instantly.Julian pulled a tablet out of his bag and opened a video, then shoved the glowing screen right up against my sunken eyes. The moment the image came into focus, my breath caught in my throat.On the screen was my sister, Amelia Bennett, the one person who'd always carried herself with pride and treated her dignity like her life. She was on her knees on the floor of Sutton Group's lobby."Please, Ms. Sutton, please let Miles go. He's really sick… He's dying."She sobbed and pleaded, pressing hersel

Chapter 4

"Can't you walk? Can't you run? Weren't you able to take my money and keep some other woman on the side? Get up!"I stared Renee down, hatred boiling through my blood. I loved her with everything I had for seven years, and not only did she destroy me, but she nearly killed my sister too. If a look alone could kill, I would have torn her apart a hundred times over by now."Are you deaf or just slow?" Renee's voice shot up sharply.The other patients in the ward craned their necks to watch, watching with the same detached curiosity people bring to a show.Renee ripped the blanket off me and clamped both hands around my left arm, wrenching my upper body up off the bed. The muscles in my neck had long since gone dead, and my head fell back at a sickening angle with nothing left to hold it up."Renee, don't do this. There are people watching." Julian's protest was hollow, and even as he spoke, he was stepping backward."I want to see how long he can keep this up!" Renee's fury only bu

Chapter 5

Renee's eyes moved slowly from the document in the officer's hand down to me on the floor. I lay on my side against the cold tile, blood still pouring from my throat. My eyes stayed open, my gaze passing straight through her toward the pale gray window across the room.Dr. Marsh knelt on the ground, both hands pressed hard over the bleeding at my tracheotomy opening. Blood seeped through her fingers and dripped onto the white tile.The door burst open, and four ER nurses rushed in pushing a crash cart."Get the suction ready, clear the airway of blood. Open two IV lines and push a tiny ounce of epinephrine," Dr. Marsh ordered.A nurse pulled open a drawer on the cart and grabbed a portable suction device, feeding the tube into the opening at my throat. The machine switched on, pulling out a steady stream of dark red blood and fluid through the tubing.Another nurse cut open the sleeve of my hospital gown and set two IV lines into the veins of each arm, connecting them to saline an

Chapter 6

The officers didn't stop her. Renee followed the gurney down the hallway, and the patients' families lining the walls pressed back to clear a path. The gurney disappeared into the elevator, and the doors closed.Renee stood outside the elevator, watching the floor numbers climb one by one until they stopped on the ninth floor, the ICU.Renee sat down on a plastic bench outside the ICU doors. Dust clung to one side of her suit jacket from where the officers had pinned her against the bed earlier. The hallway light fell across her face.The elevator doors opened, and Amelia burst out. Gauze wrapped her forehead, a patch of yellow fluid seeping through at the center, and a brace was strapped around her right ribs, forcing her to lean to the left as she walked. She crossed straight to Renee.Renee looked up. Amelia's right hand swung and struck her across the left cheek. Renee's body pitched to the right and slammed into the armrest of the plastic chair.She didn't fight back. She sat

Chapter 7

Renee's fingers tightened around the papers, and they crumpled slightly with a soft, folding sound.The ICU's automatic doors slid open, and Dr. Marsh stepped out, pulling off her mask."His blood pressure's stabilized, barely," she said, looking at Amelia. "But the fall caused a second injury to his cervical spine, and it's irreversible."He's lost his ability to swallow and to breathe on his own completely. From here on, he'll need a feeding tube to eat and a ventilator just to keep his vitals going."Renee walked toward her. "Dr. Marsh, I want to transfer him overseas, somewhere with the best equipment available."She pulled out her phone.Dr. Marsh blocked the doorway. "Ms. Sutton, his condition right now can't survive any kind of transport. And according to the authorization document Mr. Bennett signed three days ago using an eye-tracking device, all medical decisions are now entirely in Ms. Bennett's hands. You don't have visitation rights."…At the city police departmen

Chapter 8

Renee walked out through the doors of the holding facility. Sunlight spread across the pavement outside. She made her way to a green trash bin at the curb and doubled over as her stomach seized violently. She leaned over the bin and was sick in the liner.She threw up three times until nothing was left in her stomach but yellow bile. She pulled a handkerchief from her jacket pocket, wiped the corner of her mouth, and dropped it into the bin.Then, she got into her car, started the engine, and drove toward the hospital.Renee returned to City General Hospital, but instead of going up to the ICU on the ninth floor, she went straight to the neurology office on the eighth. Dr. Marsh was reviewing an EEG report. Renee pulled out a chair and sat down across the desk from her."Dr. Marsh, there's an experimental ALS drug currently in Phase 3 trials overseas. I've already arranged a medical charter flight and a team of specialists from overseas. I'll cover every cost." Renee pulled out s

Chapter 9

Renee reached for the tablet on the desk. Her fingers brushed the metal casing with a sharp clink, but her grip failed, and it slid across the surface.She stood without picking the foreign medical papers back up and walked out of the office. She headed for the stairwell, skipping the elevator, and climbed the fire stairs one floor at a time until she reached the ninth floor. She stopped outside the ICU, in front of the glass window.Inside, I lay on the bed. A thick tube ran from the opening at my throat to a ventilator standing half my height beside the bed.A feeding tube ran through my nose, and an IV pump pushed yellow nutrient fluid in a steady rhythm. Months of lying still had wasted my limbs down to almost nothing, the bones visible beneath the skin. My hospital gown hung loose over deep hollows where muscle used to be. An eye-tracking screen was mounted directly above the bed.The ICU door opened, and Renee stepped in wearing a blue sterile gown, a mask, and shoe covers.

Chapter 10

Six months later, in winter, inside the ICU of City General Hospital, the numbers on the heart monitor began to fall off a cliff. Oxygen saturation dropped below 60%, and the ventilator let out one high, piercing alarm after another.Dr. Marsh stood at the bedside, watching every reading lose all meaning for resuscitation. She checked the time."Call it," she said.A nurse stepped forward and switched off the ventilator and the monitor. The alarms stopped, and the only sound left in the room was the faint hum of the equipment's cooling fans.Amelia stood at the bedside in a sterile gown. She picked up a damp cloth and slowly wiped my face, smoothed down my hair, and then drew the white sheet up over my head.Outside the room, Renee stood in front of the glass window. Over the past six months, she'd stepped down as CEO of Sutton Group, sold off all three of her properties and every share of her private stock, and put the money into the national ALS research foundation.Julian's se

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