On My Deathbed, She Wants a Confession

It's my third year living with ALS, and my 11th day since losing the ability to speak completely. My wife, Renee Sutton, bursts into my hospital room with a lawyer and a notary in tow, gripping a so-called expert report that concludes all of my symptoms can be faked. She throws it onto my bed. "Miles, you're really a hell of an actor," she says. "You had me fooled for three years. Today, you're finally going to tell the truth." I look at her and open my mouth, but no sound comes out. She shoves a divorce agreement in front of me. "Sign it. Admit you faked your illness to swindle marital assets. You're not walking away with a single cent." I look down at the pen, then at my right hand lying motionless on the sheet. Her eyes hold nothing but a cold sneer. "Still faking? Fine. Keep faking. "Back then, you told me you didn't love me anymore, and I believed you. You said you wanted to marry that older woman, and I believed that too. "Now you've circled back and landed flat on your back, needing someone to take care of you. Did you really think I'd go soft on you again?" A nurse rushes in from the hallway and forces a writing board into my stiff left hand. "Ms. Sutton, he had a tracheotomy just yesterday! This board is the only way he can speak!" Renee stares at the board. Her expression slowly shifts as she lowers her head to look. Scrawled across it, in two shaky words, is my answer. I pour the last of my strength into every stroke. "I'm sorry." 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 flipped the agreement to the last page and pressed it flat against my wrist. "Fine. Don't sign it. Press your thumbprint instead." The lawyer handed her a small ink pad. Renee grabbed my wrist without hesitation, pressed my thumb into the ink, and pushed it hard onto the signature line. "The asset breakdown is in the attachment. Someone will come for the house under your name tomorrow. As for the three million dollars you transferred to that old woman, I'll get it back through the courts." She let go, and my hand dropped onto the sheet. She pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her fingers clean with obvious disgust, then turned toward the door. Just as it opened, she paused with her back to the bed. "I'll have someone arrange your transfer tomorrow. I'm not letting my money cover a private hospital you don't deserve." The door closed, and the room fell silent except for the ventilator. I stared at the ceiling as oxygen moved through the tube in my throat and into my lungs. A trace of ink still clung to my thumb, drying at the edges. Half an hour later, two care workers walked into the room. They weren't carrying any medical equipment. 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 hospital. Starting today, your attending physician is being replaced by someone I brought in. The one who helped you fake those medical records got fired this morning." I looked at Julian, and my left hand twitched once against the sheet. Renee stood and walked over to the equipment panel by the bed. She pressed a red button, and the monitor screen connected to me went dark, its readings vanishing. "Renting this machine costs 1,200 dollars a day," she said, looking down at me. "If there's nothing wrong with you, don't waste the hospital's resources." Three care workers in green uniforms walked in through the door. Renee pointed at the bed. "Wheel him down to the general observation ward on the first floor," she ordered. "No need to bring anything." The workers stepped forward and disconnected every line and cable anchored to the headboard, then wheeled my bed out of the private room. The wheels rattled loudly down the hallway. My bed rolled through the corridor, into the elevator, and finally stopped in a room tucked into the farthest corner of the first floor. Six beds filled the space, and the air reeked of spoiled food and waste. The workers pushed my bed against the wall, left the curtain open, and walked out without a word. Renee and Julian stood in the doorway. The families of the other patients turned to look. "Miles." Renee walked into the aisle between two beds. "I gave you a chance. Tell me where that three million dollars went and where that old woman is, and I'll let you walk out of this hospital in peace. Otherwise, you can lie here until you're finally ready to talk." She didn't look at me again. She left the room with Julian trailing behind her. At 3:00 pm, the patient in the bed beside mine rolled over and knocked a water cup off his nightstand. The water spilled across me completely. His family member walked over, wiped my blanket down with a rag a couple of times, and left it at that. I stayed flat on my back, unable to move, as the cold water soaked through my hospital gown and pressed against my skin. By 9:00 pm, fluid had begun to build up at the opening of my tracheotomy tube. Breathing grew harder, and my chest was forced to rise and fall with greater effort. 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 herself to the floor again and again, her forehead striking the tile each time. The dull thud of it carried through the screen, hammering into my nerves one blow at a time. A pair of familiar custom heels stepped into frame. It was Renee's. "Throw this lying lunatic out. I don't want her filth in my building." Renee's voice was ice cold. A group of burly security guards rushed forward and brought batons down on Amelia's back without mercy. She didn't fight back, only curled up tight on the floor, arms locked over her head, still begging through her tears. "Please, please just go check on him at the hospital... Save him." A sickening crack of bone rang out clearly through the video. Amelia coughed up a mouthful of blood that spread across the tile in front of her, and then she went still. Julian hit pause, freezing the frame on her bloodied, battered face. "Your sister's got three broken ribs. Right now she's in some run-down clinic across the street, waiting to die." Something in my chest tore open like a rusted blade dragged straight through it. This was the sister who'd shielded me since we were kids. After our parents died, she'd dropped out of school to haul bricks on construction sites, her hands blistered raw so I could stay in class. She'd once told me, eyes wet, that she wanted to live long enough to see me in a suit, the happiest boy in the world. And now, she was on the ground taking a beating because of me, a man who couldn't even lift a finger. My eyes burned, my chest heaved, and a raw, broken sound tore its way out of my throat. I wanted to rip Julian apart with my bare hands. I wanted to charge out and take Renee down with me. But I couldn't even move a finger. All I could do was let my soul bleed and scream inside a body that wouldn't answer me. Why? She could have taken everything from me and I wouldn't have cared. Why did she have to go after the one family I had left? Hatred coiled through me, total and consuming, eating me alive from the inside. Julian watched me suffer, savoring it, then pulled out a waiver with a cold smile. "Sign this. Admit you moved assets during the marriage, and state that your condition is from starving yourself on purpose." He slapped the paper down over my face, blocking out my last view of the room. "Sign it, and I'll have someone treat your sister. Otherwise, she can lie there and die in pain." The paper trembled faintly with each ragged breath I took. I closed my eyes, and tears slid down into my dried-out hair. Fast footsteps suddenly approached outside the curtain. The blue fabric was yanked open, and Renee stood there, radiating cold. Julian stepped back at once, his expression shifting instantly to wounded and anxious. "Renee, Miles still won't admit what he did. He just covered his face with the paper and won't even look at me." Renee strode over and tore the waiver off my face. She looked down at my tear-streaked, ashen face, and there wasn't a trace of pity in her eyes. "Don't feel like dealing with anyone?" She crushed the waiver in her fist. "Miles, your sister made a scene outside my company for you, groveling on the ground, and you've still got the nerve to put on an attitude." She leaned down, staring straight into my eyes from above. 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 burned hotter. Her other hand grabbed my shoulder and dragged me roughly toward the edge of the bed. "Stand up straight!" She let go the moment I reached the edge. With nothing left holding me up, my body dropped like a slab of lead, completely out of my control. My knees slammed into the hard tile, and my chin cracked against the rusted metal frame of the bed. The sharp edge of the plastic tubing tore straight through the already fragile opening in my throat. Warm blood surged out instantly, soaking through my hospital gown and blooming across the pale floor in a stark, violent red. The lack of oxygen swallowed my vision into black, and my consciousness began to slip. In that last second before I went under, a wave of noise erupted just outside the door. Several people in police uniforms and an elderly doctor in a white coat pushed through the crowd and rushed into the room. "Stop!" The doctor's eyes blazed with fury as she flung her briefcase aside and threw herself down beside me. Like a lioness protecting her cub, she shoved Renee back hard enough to send her stumbling. Her hands trembled, but they found the wound at my throat with perfect precision and pressed down. Renee stumbled into another bed and snapped her head up. "Who are you? Who let you in here?" "I'm Dr. Helen Marsh, the director of the Medical Research Center." Dr. Marsh's eyes had gone red, and she checked my pupils while her voice shook with fury. "He's in the final stage of his illness. His heart and lungs could fail at any moment. What exactly have you done to him?" Renee's expression froze on her face. She stared at the spreading pool of blood on the floor, unable to look away. "That's not possible." She pointed at me, her voice carrying a tremor she didn't seem to notice. "The evaluation center already gave a report. He's not sick. Are you another one of his hired liars too?" Two police officers stepped forward from behind Dr. Marsh, their expressions grim, and held up an official document bearing the department's letterhead directly in front of Renee's face. "Ms. Sutton, we're with the Financial Crimes Unit." The officer's voice cracked through the dead silence of the room like thunder. "Your assistant, Julian Cross, has been placed under arrest as of ten minutes ago on suspicion of falsifying medical records and commercial fraud." The officer flipped to the second page of the document and looked coldly at Renee, whose face had already begun to twist. "As for the three million dollars you claimed Mr. Bennett moved without authorization, that money was a full donation he made to a national ALS research fund. He was spending his own life to buy clinical data for this disease."