Alpha Billionaire Series

MANDY

I was functioning on autopilot. The afternoon before, I cried myself to sleep and slept around the clock and then some. At some point during the night, I had gotten up and gone to the bathroom, but I went right back to bed. Physically, I felt a bit better for having slept, but it was hard to get past the mentally defeated sense of having been beaten up. It felt like I was in a fight every day, and I was losing.

Iwas still in the same clothes I had put on after my shower. I had been in the previous outfit for more days than I cared to admit. I checked my phone. The only message I had was from Mom's nurse who had texted me as promised. Everything was fine. She was right, Mom was hanging in there. My stomach rumbled, I hadn't eaten a proper dinner, having slept through it. needed to take care of myself. Letting the message from the nurse grant me a moment where I didn't need to constantly worry, I took a second shower, in two days, and put on fresh clothes.

I didn’t want to spend any more time away from Mom than I had to. I grabbed the evil bill and headed out the door. I stopped at a fast-food drive-thru for breakfast on my way to the hospital. I finished one meal as I drove and stopped at another drive-thru for a second one. I was incredibly hungry for the first time in days.

As s00n as I was in the hospital's parking garage, I scarfed down my second sausage and egg biscuit of the morning. I neede fortitude for what I was about to do. I hated the finance department of the hospital. They made me feel so inadequate and stupid. Of course, I owed them money, why would I think otherwise? Why would I want to pay for something that hasn't beer billed yet, even though I knew the charges were being made as we spoke?

Knowing I needed to go talk about the bill, I avoided doing the responsible thing and went straight to Mom's room instead. I didn't matter that I had a text telling me everything was the same, Mom was stable. That text had been sent more than fourteen hours earlier, Mom's situation could have changed.

It hadn't, but I wasn't going to accept that everything was fine until I saw her for myself. She was sleeping peacefully. Nothin had changed. The monitoring equipment in her room whirred and made soft beeping sounds. I wanted to stay and watch he sleep, count the breaths, and know my mom was all right. But this bill tugged at me, pulling me deeper into a depression that I had already been struggling with ever since I took on the burden of saving the company, and now my mother.

I needed someone to come save me. That wasn't going to happen. The one man who I had thought would be my knight in shining armor ended up being the villain trying to destroy me. No one was coming to save me. I had to do it myself.

“I'l be back before you even know I wasn't here,” I whispered before leaving.

I made the long trek to the bowels of the hospital, where they hid the finance department. The soles of my shoes made squeaking noises down the freshly polished corridor. It had to be a psychological trick of theirs to make me feel off my guard. I was vulnerable enough having to sign over so much money. I cringed with each step.

“Ms. Wilson, how can I help you today?” Sylvie asked.

I knew it was bad when the finance clerk knew my name. Maybe it was excellent customer service, but to me, it felt more like the substitute teacher knowing my name within the first twenty minutes, nothing good could come from it. Sylvie was the clerk I always spoke to. Her name tag had the title Financial Advisor under her name. The only thing she advised me on was how much money I owed the hospital.

I held out the new bill. “Is this accurate? I mean, I just paid the hospital a hefty chunk of change. This can’t be right, can it?" She indicated for me to sit while she clicked away on the computer keyboard. Every time I sat in this chair I was amazed at her fingernails, and the way she pressed down on the keyboard. She was quick and efficient, it just astounded me how she did it all with such beautifully long and elaborate nails. I tried nails like that once while in grad school. They had gotten in the way of everything, and I had stabbed myself several times.

Ityped with the tips of my fingers; she used the flat pad at the end of her fingers giving each key a full fingerprint. She held the rest of her fingers up and out as if the nails also had spacers splaying her fingers apart.

I admired the big hoops of her earrings and her shiny red lipstick. I looked at the encouraging poster on the wall behind her with an affirmation quote over a sunset, and the info-graphic poster of how insurance worked hanging next to that.

Ilet my attention be distracted by anything and everything as long as it kept me thinking about how much more money, I didn't have that the hospital was asking from me. I hoped I could get a job that would pay well, I would probably need to take on a second job as well.

“I'll be right back,” she announced.

She was gone before it occurred to me to ask if everything was okay.

“Miss Wilson?” An older woman asked. Sylvie hovered behind her.

“Yeah?” What was wrong?

“I'm Katherine Fontaine with patient billing, could you come with me please?”

I'stood and followed her down an actual carpeted hall, no squeaky shoes on polished linoleum. It didn't make me feel any better to not have my shoes squeaking, not when every step I felt more and more like I was being led away to the principal's office to call my parents because I had done something I shouldn't have. Even though the hospital couldn't give me detention, or even have me arrested for owing them money, I still couldn't shake the feeling that I was headed into some kind of punishment.

“Is there a problem?”

“We can discuss this in my office.”

Didn't she realize that by not answering me she sent my imagination into overdrive, and in the wrong direction? I thought of every worst-case scenario possible. If it could go wrong, I was imagining it as I followed her.

“Please have a seat.” She indicated a chair in her serviceable office and closed the door.

Closed doors in the finance department did not bode well.

“Miss Wilson, it would appear we owe you a sizable refund.”

“What? No," I started whining before I had adequately heard her. I thought she said I owed them even more money. “Wait, what? I overpaid?”

Ilet go a deep sigh of relief. My shoulders melted away from my ears, where they had been steadily climbing toward all morning.

“50 that bill is wrong?” I pointed to the piece of paper I hadn't taken my eyes from the second I saw she had it in her hands. “Oh, this” She tore it in half.

I gasped.

“This has been taken care of”

“What do you mean taken care of? You mean it was a clerical error?”

“No, it's been taken care of. Your previous bill has also been paid, meaning we have received a duplicate payment, and need to return those funds to you. We're here to make those arrangements. I have forms for issuing a transfer of funds if you would prefer that over having a check made out. We find that for large amounts, transfers are more secure.’

She slid a form across her desk.

“If you could just fill this out. We'll need the routing number and account number for your bank”

I stared dumbly down at the form. *I don't have this information on me," I confessed.This belongs to NôvelDrama.Org - ©.

“Not a problem. You can take it and fill it out and bring it back at any time."

I was confused. How had I gone from owing them what felt like every penny I would ever earn in my lifetime, to them owing me almost a hundred thousand dollars?

“I'm sorry, I still don't understand what's happening. Did the insurance company change its mind or something? How?"

She smiled, and it wasn't one of those smiles that took pity on me or was condescending. It was a genuine smile. “You have an anonymous benefactor. All hospital and medical-related expenses for the current hospitalization of Susan Wilson, your sister?”

“Mother,” I corrected.

“For your mother, has been paid in full. There is a balance here that is to go toward incidentals, and a deposit toward additional treatments”

My jaw hung open. That was an insane amount of money. And on top of it all, they were refunding me almost the full amoun of the MiMa Play loan money I had given to them.

“I'm sorry, who did this?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It's all been done anonymously. I couldn't tell you even if I did know. And I don't”

I left her office in a daze. I had a short to-do list of getting the information I needed from the bank. I was torn, head back to Mom's room or go to the bank? I walked slowly, hoping I'd reach a decision sooner than later. Still, dragging my feet, I found myself at the first-floor coffee shop. Maybe I needed more caffeine to boost my brain.

Maybe I just needed to take a moment and accept that we suddenly had an incredible bout of good luck. I would accept it with open arms. I let the fresh coffee warm my hands, and I inhaled the steam. I needed to see Mom. The bank could wait. The hospital wasn't going to change its mind and yank away the refund or tell me it was all a joke and demand that I pay them everything back, including the amount on the bill that Katherine woman had just torn up. At least that's what I kept telling myself as I made my way through the endless hallways back to Mom's room.

The elevator door opened on Mom's floor. I started to step out but stopped. I stood there in shock, the elevator started binging at me since I was blocking the door, preventing it from closing. I took a second step, and the elevator door slid closed.

In front of me, looking as rumpled as I felt like he had slept in his suit, stood Grant.