Chapter 20: The Award

The ballroom held four hundred people and a portrait of my father the size of a door.

It stood on an easel beside the stage, in a black frame, with a spotlight on his hands.

I stood in the wings in a dark green dress and watched them fill the tables.

Declan was at the front, at the table nearest the stage.

My grandfather sat two tables back with his cane across his knees, and the chair the list had promised his one guest sat empty beside him.

Fiona sat in the front row, between an empty chair and the aisle, in a gray dress, with Theo's fever long gone and her hands folded in her lap.

Desmond stood at the side of the room in his black tie, alone against the wall.

The hospital's board chairwoman walked to the lectern and read the citation for my father's lifetime award.

She said thirty years.

She said forty thousand patients.

She said the name Vaughan, and four hundred people applauded.

"Dr. Imogen Vaughan will accept on her father's behalf," she finished.

I walked out.

The lights were hot, and the lectern was higher than I'd expected, and I put both my hands on the wood to keep them from shaking.

They were steady.

My father had said so.

"My father was a surgeon for thirty years," I said. "He taught me that you never leave the table until the patient is closed."

I looked at the portrait.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Surgeon He Betrayed Now Belongs to a CEO from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.