Chapter2

"Only yours are perfect."

I had listened to that exact phrase for nine whole years.

A few days ago, Diana had led me to the examination table. "Just bear with it. You're the only one in the family whose vitals and markers are an absolutely perfect match." She smiled, placing my hand into the nurse's. Those hands hadn't genuinely held mine since I was eight years old.

The rhythmic beeping of the monitor yanked me back to the present for a split second, but the memories kept surging up, piece by piece.

When I was eight, I was wheeled into that underground operating room for the very first time.

The lights were white, blindingly white. The doctor held up a syringe and leaned in toward Diana. "Ma'am, without anesthesia, the child will be in excruciating pain. We usually..."

"The stem cell viability will be compromised, and you know that better than anyone," Diana interrupted him. "She has a strong constitution. She can take it."

The doctor's hand hesitated for a fraction of a second, but he plunged the needle in anyway.

The agony sent violent spasms through my entire body. The cries squeezed from my throat, raw and distorted.

"Don't stop." Diana stood three feet away from the bed. She didn't look at me; her eyes were locked on the dark red fluid slowly pooling in the collection bag. "Her oldest brother's legs can't wait."

Back then, I genuinely believed that if I just endured it, once my eldest brother stood up again, Diana would pat my head exactly the way she hugged Bianca.

I only found out later that my brother did, indeed, stand up again. No one bothered to tell me the outcome. After the anesthesia wore off, I lay all alone in the empty ward, counting to myself until dawn. Laughter echoed from the far end of the corridor.

But that was only the beginning.

At thirteen, when I woke up from the anesthesia, thick gauze was taped over the right side of my abdomen. It was the agonizing aftermath of having half my liver sliced away.

I remembered that right before they wheeled me into the OR, my second brother stood in the hallway, his voice muffled behind a surgical mask as he asked, "Is she really going to be okay?"

"She'll be fine. Young people recover fast." Diana patted his shoulder, her tone impossibly light. "You just focus on resting and getting better."

Not a single person bothered to ask me, "Are you scared?"

Because my second brother, the transplant recipient, required "an absolutely quiet, sterile environment to recover," Diana had me carried down to the basement storage room. I ran a raging fever for two whole days.

Not a single person came to see me. Not Diana, not Richard, and certainly not my second brother who was using my liver.

It wasn't until the middle of the third night that a temporary cleaning lady sneaked in and hurriedly shoved two fever-reducing pills into my cracked, dry mouth.

"It's a sin... an absolute sin," she sighed, before scurrying away.

I curled up in the freezing darkness and told myself: Mom is just too busy. Tomorrow, she'll come and bring me upstairs.

But she never came. Not once.

When I was sixteen, I lost my left cornea.

That was the gentlest Diana had ever been to me. She intentionally sat by my bedside, brushing my hair with slow, measured strokes.

"Chloe, your third brother's racing career is his life. This car crash damaged his eye, and if you just give him a cornea, he can return to the track."

I gripped the bedsheets, my voice trembling slightly. "Mom, what if I need my eye too...?"

"Silly girl," she laughed, cutting me off. She tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, her voice incredibly soft. "You still have your other eye; it won't affect your life at all. Once you finish the surgery, Mom promises to stay by your bed every single day and read you your favorite books."

I believed her. I even smiled as I willingly climbed onto the operating table.

Yet, when I finally fumbled my way out, leaning heavily against the wall to push open my bedroom door, the entire mansion was completely empty.

The maids were in the backyard, cleaning up the remnants of a champagne tower.

"Sir and Ma'am took the young masters and young misses to a private venue to celebrate the third master's return to the racing team." A maid tossed the words at me when she saw me, immediately resuming her chores without letting her gaze linger on me for even a second.

I stood frozen in place, my hands pressing against the wall, and suddenly let out a faint laugh. It turned out that her promise to "stay by my bed every single day" didn't even require one day of fulfillment.

Right now, my eldest brother used those perfectly fine legs to walk the red carpets of charity galas. My second brother's liver easily supported his passion for golf. My third brother's racing career was thriving once again. Not a single one of them remembered how those surgeries came to be, and absolutely no one remembered me.

I finally realized one undeniable truth.

They had never treated me as their daughter.