Sarah looked at me.
“What do you mean?”
“I want to adopt her.”
She started crying.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do.”
I smiled.
“She’s already my daughter.”
So I adopted Emma.
Not because I thought I was dying.
Not because I wanted sympathy.
Because I loved her.
And because I wanted her to have legal proof of something I already knew in my heart.
She was my little girl.
Now, sitting in that doctor’s office, I suddenly realized something else.
If I had never been sick, then someone had allowed me to believe I was dying for ten years.
I looked at Dr. Weller.
“Who knew?”
He lowered his eyes.
“I don’t know.”
“Then find out.”
He nodded.
“I already started.”
He opened a second folder.
“There is one more problem.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
He placed a photocopy on the desk.
It was an insurance authorization form from ten years earlier.
My signature was on it.
But I knew immediately that something was wrong.
The signature looked like mine.
But it wasn’t.
I looked at the date.
Then at the doctor’s name.
And finally at the account number.
“What’s this?”
Dr. Weller took a breath.
“Your medical insurance was billed for treatments you never received.”
My stomach dropped.
“How much?”
“Over ten years?”
He hesitated.
“Just under two million dollars.”
I stood up.
“Two million?”
He nodded.
“And Daniel…”
“What?”
“The money wasn’t billed by the hospital.”
He turned the document toward me.
It was billed through a private medical foundation.
A foundation whose board had one familiar name.
My fiancée’s father.
I felt the room tilt.
“That’s impossible.”
Dr. Weller looked at me.
“I thought so too.”
I grabbed the document.
“Sarah’s father has been dead for three years.”
“I know.”
“Then who runs the foundation?”
Dr. Weller didn’t answer.
He simply pointed to the bottom of the page.
There was a signature.
My hands began to shake.
Because I recognized it.
It belonged to someone I had trusted for ten years.
Dr. Weller.
I looked up at him.
He was crying.
“Daniel,” he whispered, “I didn’t know the full extent of it.”
I stepped backward.
“Then tell me who did.”
He opened his mouth.
Before he could speak, his office door suddenly opened.
Sarah stood there.
Her face was completely white.
She had heard everything.
And behind her stood Emma, holding the little stuffed rabbit I had given her on her sixth birthday.
Emma looked at me.
“Daddy?”
I couldn’t answer.
Sarah walked toward me.
“Daniel, there’s something I should have told you ten years ago.”
My heart stopped.
She took Emma’s hand.
Then whispered:
“Your diagnosis wasn’t an accident.”
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