Who Was Dr. Seuss?

Before the divorce, she thinks he's absolutely worthless. After the divorce, he's transformed into the most amazing doctor of the millennium with boundless power and wealth. Unbeknownst to her, he's the one who's given her everything she owns now, and everything she could ever want would be served to him with a snap of his fingers. Since being average was a crime, he would show her who was the unworthy one!

I had just gotten home when a parent in my son’s class group chat erupted: [Ms. Zinn, what kind of place are you running? Do you let just any random stray off the street become a teacher?] [My daughter came home, grabbed two forks, and tried to jump off the balcony. She said it was Miss Never who told her to!] The homeroom teacher panicked and denied it at once, insisting there was no such person as Miss Never at the kindergarten. She even posted the official teaching schedule in the chat to prove it. On the security footage, there was not a single trace of this so-called Miss Never. However, later, my son whispered to me in secret, “Mom, Miss Never is an old lady with a cat’s face.” “She says only kids can see her.”

What happens when your life is just a lie? What happens when you finally find out that none of what you believe to be real is real? What if you met someone who made you question everything? And what happens when your life is nothing but a fiction carved by Mr. Fiction himself? "The truth is rarely pure and never simple." — Oscar Wilde. Disclaimer: this story touches on depression, losing someone, and facing reality instead of taking the easy way out. ( ( ( part of TBNB Series, this is the story of Clarabelle Summers's writers ))

It was my daughter's first day of kindergarten, but she was nowhere to be found. My wife's first love texted me. "Guess where your daughter is." This was already the fourth time Donald Shaw had played a cruel joke like this. On the day Claire Wilson and I went official, he told me she got into a car crash. I cried as I ran nearly two miles through the freezing night to reach her. When the truth came out, Donald hid behind Claire and laughed. "Just a prank. I only wanted to see how much you loved her." On the day of our wedding, he took Claire away and disappeared with her for twenty-four hours, leaving me alone to face the guests' mockery and her parents' anger. The next day, he came back holding her arm and said casually, "I just wanted to play a little game." When Tina was born, he came with a fake DNA test and said she was his. Only after I was overwhelmed with rage and ended up in the hospital did he finally reveal the real report. Every single time, my wife protected him like a heartbroken girl defending her first love. Then she would turn around and scold me. "He's just a bit childlike. Don't be so serious." And now, that bastard was using my daughter as the punchline of his latest joke. I was shivering with fury and I called my wife. But Claire only said impatiently, "He just wants to play hide and seek. Stop crying already." Then she hung up. My eyes stayed fixed on the screen. It showed my daughter's location. And right now, she was in the middle of a river.

The new intern in the unit had to be chronically incompetent. He handled my mother's post-surgery medication and somehow mixed up the drug. He gave her a potent blood thinner. That night, she died from a hemorrhage after her operation. Before I could even accuse him, the intern had his puppy-dog eyes ready. "I'm sorry, Dr. Benford, but I thought that was the drug you wanted me to mix. Who was I to question my superior's order?" Then the hospital director, who was also my wife, chimed in, "Your mom is the idiot for taking her meds without checking. She brought this on herself." I was so enraged that I had a heart attack, which meant I had to undergo surgery in the same hospital. The intern insisted on redeeming himself and assisted Victoria during the operation. He could not even thread a needle because his hands kept trembling. In the middle of the procedure, this medical fraud removed his mask and wet the end of the surgical thread to force it through. I died in the ICU the next day. The cause was a bacterial infection. As I neared death, I heard the intern whine through tears, "How could I be so careless? If I weren't so clumsy, Dr. Benford would have lived." Victoria gently ruffled his hair. "Don't take it to heart, pumpkin. Everyone knows how risky medical procedures can be. You're just starting out, so don't be so hard on yourself." Because of my wife's efforts, both my mother and I were cremated without any investigation or disciplinary action. You would think that was the end. It wasn't. The next time I opened my eyes, I was back on the day Hugo Spencer first joined our hospital as an intern.

My mother, Yvonne Scott, is a maternal health specialist who has helped countless women safely deliver healthy babies. Her delivery with my older brother goes smoothly, but she suffers a difficult labor with me. After everything she endures to bring me into the world, I'm diagnosed with autism at the age of six. Dad can't accept it, so he leaves her. Mom blames me for derailing her career and destroying her marriage. Even as a kid, I can always see the resentment in her eyes. Over the next two years, she loses me twice. The third time, I watch her burn every trace of my existence. That's why I choose to leave home. 20 years later, I become a child psychologist specializing in autism and work as a special education specialist at Haverly's most prestigious school for children with autism. The school requires every incoming student to attend a one-on-one introductory session before the new term begins. When I spot Yvonne arriving with her grandson, my heart drops.