Chapter 43

The remnants of the exquisite dinner lay untouched, a landscape of shattered appetite. The mahogany table, reflecting the warm, golden light of the chandelier, was now the stage for a silent, psychological war.

Ralph leaned forward, concern softening his features.
“Darling… is everything alright?”

She stroked his hand, sensing his quiet frustration from Williams’ continuous snubs. She watched her daughter. Williams was motionless, observing them, her mother and the man she loved, without a flicker of warmth or aversion. It was the sterile, clinical gaze of a scientist studying specimens. This detachment silenced the last whisper of Miss Kai’s denial. She pulled a folded note from her sleeve, the paper slightly crumpled from her anxious handling, Adeline’s logic bomb.

Confront Williams with these logic questions, and you will have your answer.

She took a deep breath, forcing a bright, brittle smile. “I’d like us to play a game,” she insisted, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the quiet room.

Ralph blinked. “Seriously, darling?”

Williams sighed. “I don’t have time for that, I—”

“It concerns medicine,” Kai retorted, laying the bait. “Unless you want to back out. A friend recommended it, apparently only the best can answer.”

Williams’ thin, shark-like smile returned. “A medical game? And how would you even know the correct answer?”

“It’s logic,” Kai replied. “I worked in medical administration long before you. Everyone gives an opinion.”

“And how do we decide who wins?”

Emilio gave a small laugh. “You don’t always have to win, Williams.”

Williams’ eyes hardened. “So we should lose? Is that your point?”

Ralph jumped in. “Let’s just share our thoughts. Whoever explains best wins.”

“Three questions is too little to determine a winner,” Williams muttered.

“Come on, Williams,” her mother pleaded.

After a brief, agonizing silence, Williams leaned back. “Go ahead. Ask your three questions if it can help us move on with time.”

Miss Kai’s hand trembled slightly as she read the first card. “So, here is the first question. This concerns a pregnant woman…”

The air shifted instantly. Emilio adjusted his collar, a bead of sweat forming at his temple. The mention of a pregnant woman and a difficult choice immediately brought Evelyn’s case screaming to his mind. He darted a discreet, nervous glance at Williams, who remained fixed on her mother, listening attentively.

Kai continued. “If a woman arrives on the day of delivery in distress and you have to save either the mother or the child, whom would you save, knowing the woman deeply cared for her unborn baby? Emilio, you start.”

Emilio swallowed, forcing professionalism. “I mean… I would review the diagnosis if there was a way to save both. If it’s absolutely impossible, then I would save the unborn baby. I believe the mother would have done the same for her baby.”

Ralph nodded.
“Same. The child has his whole life ahead of him.”

Williams rested her hands on the table, completely calm.
“If a complication appears during childbirth, it means it existed long before and was ignored, likely because of an incompetent doctor who encouraged her to keep the child.”

She paused.
“If I were her physician, we wouldn’t be in this situation. But if she arrives as an emergency, I remove the child and save the mother. She can have another. Trying to guess her choice in the middle of chaos will only ensure both die. I do not value nine months of unconscious existence over a fully formed life. What’s the second question?”

Silence swallowed the room. They were stunned. No one breathed. Williams had reduced a life-or-death moral choice to pure mathematical utility.

Ralph’s fork slid slightly across his plate. As Kai forced a polite smile, something inside her cracked.

“Alright,” she said faintly. “Second question. Imagine you’re a doctor with thirty years of experience. You’re in an accident and must have your hand amputated to survive. What do you do?”

Emilio exhaled. “Difficult question, because medicine is my entire career. But if my life is impacted, then I think I would do it. Life is paramount.”

Ralph, attempting to lighten the mood, said, “Hahaha, my dear, it will depend on the hand in question. Both or just one?”

“Only one,” Kai managed.

Ralph smiled at his wife. “Okay, then it’s fine. I would only lose one hand. Would you still love me?”

Miss Kai smiled back sadly. “Even if you lost both, I would love you just the same.”

Williams’ response sliced through the tender moment like a scalpel.
“You are essentially asking a doctor to mutilate the hand he swore to use for others. With or without it, he is already dead, alive without purpose or dead with it intact. There is no advantage on either side. Both paths are pointless.”

“Your life, Williams,” Emilio insisted, desperation creeping into his voice. “That’s the advantage. Being here, with your loved ones.”

Williams stared at him, almost pitying his ignorance.
“My life is medicine. Without my hands, there is no life.”

Emilio murmured, heart sinking.
“There’s more to life than work, than duty, than being alone.”

Williams turned to her mother.
“Next question.”

Miss Kai struggled to even formulate the third question. She finally understood Adeline’s grim logic. Williams did not grasp the emotional core. She answered like a machine, calculating only utility. Medicine was her life, her purpose, not her means. If her hands were gone, her life was over. What, then, was Miss Kai’s purpose in her daughter’s world? Why did Williams even bother to come home?

“Darling,” Ralph called, seeing the paralysis in her eyes.

Miss Kai lifted her gaze and met Williams’. The final question was a direct confrontation of Miss Kai’s entire reality.

“Suppose your mother is in a relationship with someone she deeply loves, but they are not married,” she said, her throat tightening. “She gets into an accident and falls into a coma. As her only legal child, you must decide whether to keep her alive to find a solution, or end her life, against the wishes of the man who loves her.”

The table fell into absolute silence. The parallel to Miss Kai’s past and present, her unmarried status with Ralph years ago, and her legal status versus his emotional one, was a stunningly cruel trap.

Williams stared at her mother as though the question were nothing more than paperwork.

“Williams,” her mother whispered, her voice cracking.

Ralph and Emilio understood the devastating nature of the duel.

“I’m the third to answer. It’s Emilio’s turn.”

Kai blinked.
“What?”

Williams’ gaze sharpened.
“We follow the order. Emilio first.”

Emilio cleared his throat, voice trembling. “I… I… I didn’t know my mother. So, I think I would be in favor of doing everything to save her life.”

Ralph nodded.
“Same. I would keep my mother alive if there is hope, unless the hospital tells me to give up. And it also depends on her age.”

Kai could feel her heartbeat in her palms. They looked at Williams, impatient for her reply. Adeline’s design had worked. The question had forced Kai to face how her daughter could analyze her relationship with Ralph as a cold, hypothetical scenario.

Williams finally spoke.
“What type of coma are we talking about? There are various types. Some have recovery chances; others are wasteful to maintain. If recovery is possible, we try. If the patient is preserved only out of foolish hope, then she should be removed from life support. Hospitals are not shrines for lost causes.”

The word “patient” echoed in Miss Kai’s head. Not “my mother.” Williams had just categorized her as a clinical case, a drain on resources if she failed to recover.

Suddenly, Williams’ private phone on the desk chimed with an encrypted message. She glanced at the screen, and the change in her expression was immediate, not emotional but a cold activation.

Williams looked up. “I have to go back.”

“Oh, already,” Ralph said, disappointed.

Williams stood, her chair scraping on the polished wood. Her mother rose with her. “Wait, I’ll walk you out.”

Once the women were gone, Ralph and Emilio exchanged heavy, silent glances.

“Well, I’m going to rest,” Ralph said, the evening’s tension leaving his heart heavy. He stood and left the room.

Miss Kai returned, her face etched with profound sorrow, watching the door close behind Williams. She turned to Emilio.

“Emilio,” she said quietly.

He stood up, forcing a professional smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Madame Kai, thank you for the meal.”

“Emilio,” Miss Kai insisted, moving closer, her voice thick with worry. “Listen, Williams seemed cold with you tonight. Is there a problem between you?”

Emilio looked at Madame Kai, and the genuine maternal affection in her eyes was too much. Tears welled up instantly, blurring the warm light of the chandelier. “Madame Kai, don’t worry. It’s just that there are many things to do.”

He struggled to get the final words out. “I agreed to come today because I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. But tomorrow, I will resign from Niran Kai.”

Miss Kai was shocked. “Why?”

She had met Emilio through an acquaintance, recognizing his brilliance and work ethic. She had taken him under her wing, inviting him to these small family dinners, hoping to foster a genuine, stable friendship for Williams, who rarely connected with anyone. Williams had given him a certain professional respect, even engaging in small, private sessions to develop methodologies, but for Emilio, the relationship was always one-sided. Now, he realized he was merely a brain Williams found agreeable. His initial suffering over risking her reputation was replaced by the crushing realization that he had been utterly alone in his affection.

Standing before Miss Kai, his tears finally broke.

“Emilio, what is it?”

“Everything is fine. It’s just time for me to change environment,” he whispered. “It’s the hospital where my father died…”

Kai understood his pain. She was there when his father died, the souvenir still vivid in her mind.

He hugged Miss Kai for a long, aching moment, then turned and walked out the door, abandoning the warmth and the threat in one final act of self-preservation.

Miss Kai had the confirmation she had fought to deny. She took her phone and typed a hurried message to Adeline:

I’m sorry.

The reply was immediate.

I will call you with an unknown number. Don’t say anything to Williams.

It was painfully clear. Williams’ clinical detachment was not a character flaw, it was a psychological chasm. She had closed her eyes for years, confusing work obsession with a dangerous, fundamental imbalance, simply because she desperately wanted to believe her life had finally stabilized.

A word from the author: Sometimes, in trying too hard to believe your life is fine, you close your eyes to the darkness growing right in front of you.