“While I was lying in the hospital, my parents prioritized my sister’s $385 ticket over me, but the instant Dad walked in and realized who was standing beside my bed, everything changed…

My phone rang six times from the emergency room before one of my parents finally answered.

Mom picked up at last.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“In the hospital.”

Silence followed.

Then, somehow, the first words out of her mouth were, “Your sister just got a $385 speeding ticket. We’re dealing with enough tonight.”

I stared up at the white ceiling.

My left arm was secured in a sling. My ankle was bandaged. The doctor had already explained how fortunate I was that the delivery van had struck the passenger side rather than the driver’s door.

“I was in an accident,” I said.

“I heard you,” Mom replied. “But Claire is hysterical. Your father is helping her figure out the citation.”

A traffic ticket.

My sister had gotten a traffic ticket.

I had arrived at the hospital in an ambulance.

Yet somehow, I was still the child who mattered less.

“Can Dad come?” I asked.

Mom sighed. “Don’t make this into a competition.”

The call ended.

I rested the phone against my chest and watched it until the screen turned black.

My coworker, Lena, was sitting beside the bed with the bag paramedics had recovered from my car.

“You want me to call someone else?” she asked.

My first instinct was to say no.

Then I remembered the emergency contact card tucked inside my wallet.

Not Mom.

Not Dad.

Not Claire.

It listed a name I had added three months earlier, after my company secured its largest contract.

Marcus Reed.

Founder and CEO of Reed Medical Technologies.

My boss.

And more importantly, the man who had mentored me throughout the past year after I designed the monitoring system his company was preparing to roll out nationwide.

I had listed his number because the project kept me traveling constantly, and he required every senior engineer to have a dependable emergency contact.

Calling him because of a car accident felt ridiculous.

Lena called anyway.

Forty minutes later, Marcus arrived with a coat thrown over his dinner suit, still carrying the folder from the board meeting he had left behind.

He didn’t ask whether the project was okay.

He asked whether I was.

Then he contacted my insurance company, instructed his assistant to arrange a secure ride home once I was discharged, and informed the nurse that all my work responsibilities were canceled until my doctor cleared me.

At 10:38 p.m., Dad finally sent me a text.

Coming by. Claire’s ticket situation is handled.

I laughed once.

The movement hurt.

Marcus glanced at me. “What?”

“My dad finally has time.”

At 11:06, the hospital room door opened.

Dad entered with his phone in hand, already in the middle of talking.

“You made everyone panic for nothing,” he said before even looking at me. “Your mother says—”

Then he froze.

His gaze shifted from me to Marcus.

Every trace of color disappeared from his face.

Because Dad knew exactly who Marcus Reed was.

For the previous six months, he had been desperately trying to secure a supplier contract with Reed Medical Technologies.

And now the billionaire CEO he had spent months trying to impress was standing beside my hospital bed, holding my discharge paperwork.

The full story continues in the comments section.”

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