Mom put her hand on his knee. “Cecil, I think we should let them sort things out on their own time, don’t you? They’re both so busy with work—”
“Which reminds me,” Dad said, cutting her off, “I’ve been informed that Dr. Gibson is retiring in a few months, which means that chief of emergency medicine is going to be available. You’ll run for this. We’ve both already made our recommendations to the board. Your mother and I have tolerated your lack of ambition for long enough. If all you wanted was to be a glorified paramedic, you should have saved us three hundred thousand dollars on med school.”
I felt my heart rate pick up.
I licked my lips. “Just because I’m not a surgeon doesn’t mean what I do isn’t important,” I said carefully.
But it was pointless. Because to my dad that’s exactly what it meant.
Both my parents were surgeons. Dad had wanted me to go into neurosurgery. He would have preferred Derek had followed one of their specialties instead of plastics, but my brother proved early on that his field came with enough fame to placate Dad. But I didn’t have that.
What I had was Neil.
Neil had leveled me up. Dad didn’t like my field, but he dropped his neurosurgery campaign because Derek was there to carry the torch and I landed the chief of surgery. To him, dating Neil was an accomplishment in and of itself. But on my own I wasn’t enough. Especially now.
It occurred to me that Neil would have made a much better Montgomery than I ever did. In fact, right now, I think Dad saw him as a son more than he saw me as a daughter.
In that moment I wished it was the truth—that Neil was Dad’s son and I was just Neil’s ex-girlfriend, some random, unimportant woman who could break up with him and go on with her life. It would have been so easy for the universe to arrange it that way.
But the universe doesn’t care.
Neil breezed in, and I fought down the tears that were welling. There was no way he hadn’t heard us from the other room.
“Cecil! Jennifer!” Neil said, beaming. “Ready to hit the holes?” He swung an invisible club.
I watched Dad light up. He pushed up on his knees and shook Neil’s hand. Then he turned to me. “Alexis, we need to discuss your speech for the hospital’s quasquicentennial. Meet us for lunch at the clubhouse at twelve-thirty.”
I gawked at him. “Wha—no! I’m not having lunch with him!”
Dad pinned me with a glare. “Young lady—”
Neil put a hand on his shoulder. “Ali has a full day today, C. We’ll catch up with her another time,” he said.
I watched Dad immediately give up the crusade. If Neil was fine with it, Dad was fine with it.
The idea of Neil bailing me out of this situation only pissed me off more.
Dad gave me one more disapproving glance. Then he made for the door.
Mom stopped and hugged me. “You know how he is,” she whispered. “He loves you very much and just wants to see you achieve what he knows you’re capable of. I love you, sweetie.” She kissed my cheek, patted my back, and left.
Neil waited behind, and when my parents were too far to hear, he leaned in, his voice low. “He’s under a lot of stress, Ali. Your brother married some trashy pop star and moved out of the country. And he’s taking our separation pretty hard. Go easy on him.”
I blinked at him. “Dad told you about her? He signed an NDA.”
“Of course he told me.” He paused, giving me a look I couldn’t decipher. “Can we talk later? Please?”
I pressed my lips into a line, my breath shaky.
He waited, but I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Because if I had to speak, I was going to scream.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he said, obviously taking my silence for a yes.
And he left.
The second the door was closed, I lost it. Rage and indignation and hysteria bubbled out of me, and I breathed into my hands.
I hated this. I hated everything.
I hated that Derek left me. I hated that Dad had zero integrity. I hated that I was such a disappointment, that I’d never wanted to be a surgeon, that I found the idea of standing in an operating room for hours on end boring and tedious. I resented the entire culmination of my existence and everything that had led me here. I hated Dr. Charles Montgomery, the very first in my family line to work at Royaume Northwestern. I hated every Montgomery who played into the legacy, strengthening it so that I couldn’t break it, because for all the good it did, all the lives I knew it saved, right now I wished to God it didn’t exist.