I turned around and dropped to my knees. The impact jolted through my bones.
"Mom! The patient, it's Hal Fox!"
It hit me then. That morning at breakfast, my brother had told me something.
He was going to spend the weekend hauling bricks at a construction site so he could buy Mom a birthday present. He'd made me promise not to tell.
And the hospital had said the boy was injured at a construction site.
The age matched too.
My mother blinked, then her brow furrowed.
"What did you just say?"
I held the phone up to her face.
"The hospital sent this photo. The person whose trachea was severed by falling glass at the construction site, the one waiting for me to operate, it's Hal!"
She glanced down at the screen, then slapped the phone out of my hand.
"Bullshit! Your brother's at home playing video games! I saw him this morning!"
"You faked this photo!"
"Mom, just call him! Please, I'm begging you!"
I was on my knees, fists clenched around the fabric of her pants.
"Hal is really hurt! I have to get to the hospital in fifteen minutes! Any later and it'll be too late!"
"Get off me!" She kicked my hands away.
"You'd curse your own brother just to wriggle out of this? Are you even human?!"
"Mom! I'm not lying!"