Lucy had come.

Of course she had come; there was no one else on the chart.

She had emptied what little savings she had to cover his stabilization.

Then she had tried to reach me — called my personal cell, which had blocked her number three years before; called my corporate office, where my brother-in-law Ryan, who ran my operations, hung up the instant he heard her voice; came in person to my headquarters, where the security desk had standing orders from Ryan to escort her off the property as a known scammer.

Every door I owned had been closed against her in advance, and she had stood outside all of them with my dying father’s life in her hands.