Chapter 3 - Digital Detox.
By the time David's plane reached cruising altitude, Lilly was on medication to keep her blood pressure from collapsing.
Maya sat beside the ICU bed with her phone on speaker and listened to David's voicemail greeting for the fifth time.
She left another message.
"This is serious."
She swallowed hard.
"Please call before you land."
Lilly slept beneath a warming blanket.
Every few minutes, Maya watched the monitor instead of her daughter's face because the numbers seemed less frightening than how small Lilly looked against the white pillow.
At 2:07 p.m., David's flight Wi-Fi activated.
Maya knew because her messages suddenly showed as read.
She called.
He declined.
Call number six.
Then her screen lit with a text.
I told you I can't do this while traveling.
Maya stared at the sentence in disbelief.
She typed back.
SHE IS IN INTENSIVE CARE.
A nurse came to adjust a medication pump.
Maya lowered the phone.
"Can her father speak to the cardiologist remotely?"
"Absolutely."
The nurse looked at Maya gently.
"We can arrange anything you need."
Maya nodded as if David were simply in a meeting instead of deliberately refusing to answer.
At 2:30, Dr. Singh entered and explained that Lilly might need to be placed on ECMO if her heart weakened further.
Maya listened while the room seemed to narrow around her.
"Is she going to die?"
Dr. Singh did not offer false certainty.
"We are doing everything we can to prevent that."
Maya called David again.
Call seven.
Declined.
She called again.
Call eight.
Declined.
She sent a voice note.
"David, the doctor needs to talk to you about a machine that may have to support her heart."
Her voice cracked.
"This is not anxiety."
For twelve minutes there was no response.
Then David sent three words.
Stop doing this.
Maya's hands went cold.
She looked at Lilly and remembered all the smaller moments that had trained her to doubt her own alarm.
David forgetting a parent conference and saying Maya should have reminded him twice.
David spending a night away after an argument and saying she had forced him to need space.
David hiding his phone and telling her that asking about it proved she lacked trust.
Now his favorite accusation had followed them into the ICU.
She was panicking.
She was overwhelming him.
She was doing this.
At 3:02, David landed in Miami for his connection to Nassau.
Maya knew because a location notification from their shared family account flashed briefly before disappearing.
David had turned off location sharing.
She called again.
Call nine.
He answered.
Maya almost dropped the phone.
"David?"
Airport noise filled the line.
"You have sixty seconds."
Maya could not understand the sentence.
"What?"
"My connection is boarding."
"Then miss it."
There was a pause.
"Maya."
"Lilly may need a machine to keep her heart working."
David exhaled loudly.
"You said they are treating her."
"She is getting worse."
"Then she is exactly where she needs to be."
Maya stood so fast the chair struck the wall.
"She needs her father."
David's voice hardened.
"And I need two weeks without every problem in that house becoming my emergency."
Maya stopped breathing.
Behind him, a woman's voice said his name.
Soft.
Close.
Familiar enough to make him turn away from the phone.
Maya recognized it.
Julianne.
David's fitness instructor.
The woman whose name had appeared too often in harmless explanations.
Maya pressed the phone harder to her ear.
"Who is with you?"
Silence.
"David, who is with you?"
"Not now."
"Is Julianne there?"
The line went dead.
Maya stared at the screen.
Call ten began thirty seconds later.
He rejected it.
Call eleven.
Rejected.
Call twelve.
Rejected.
Then the text arrived.
You are proving my point.
Maya's vision blurred.
She typed with both thumbs.
Our daughter may die and you are with another woman.
Call me now.
David did not answer.
At 3:19, Maya's phone rang from an unknown number.
For one wild second she thought it might be him using another phone.
Instead it was the bank.
A representative asked whether Maya had authorized a transfer of forty-eight thousand dollars from the Lilly Mercer Medical Trust to a marine charter company.
Maya sat down slowly.
"What transfer?"
The representative repeated the amount.
Maya looked through the glass wall at her sleeping daughter.
"That account is for medical expenses."
The representative asked whether David Mercer was an authorized trustee.
Maya said yes.
The woman explained that his credentials had been used.
Maya whispered, "Freeze everything."
The representative said she would begin the process but needed verification.
Maya called David again before the bank conversation had even ended.
Call thirteen.
Declined.
She sent a screenshot of the transfer alert.
WHAT DID YOU DO?
David finally responded at 3:27.
It's temporary.
We will discuss finances when I get back.
Maya read the message until she felt physically sick.
Then another arrived.
I am turning my phone off now.
And then the one he would later claim he had written without understanding the situation.
Stop overwhelming me with your anxiety.
I'm doing a digital detox for my mental health.
Do not contact me for the next two weeks.
Maya looked at the words.
Lilly's monitor began alarming behind her.
A nurse rushed into the room.
Maya pressed call again.
Call fourteen went straight to voicemail.
At 4:05 p.m., Maya received a call from David's office assistant, Ben.
Ben sounded confused.
"David said he would be unavailable, but I saw your message in the family calendar. Is Lilly okay?"
Maya asked how he knew David was unavailable.
Ben explained that David had blocked off the entire trip as personal leave, not a company retreat.
Maya gripped the edge of the chair.
"There is no leadership retreat?"
Ben went silent.
"Not that I know of."
The lie settled beside all the medical fear already filling the room.
Maya thanked him and ended the call.
She did not have energy to investigate the affair then.
Lilly needed her eyes, her hands, and every clear thought she could still produce.
But Maya took one screenshot of David's calendar before access disappeared later that evening.
PRIVATE LEAVE - BAHAMAS.
No colleagues.
No conference.
No meetings.
Just fourteen days he had chosen to protect from interruption.
When a nurse asked whether Maya needed someone to sit with her, Maya almost said no automatically.
Then she stopped.
"Yes."
May you like
The nurse stayed for ten minutes while Maya drank water.
It was the first time that day Maya accepted help without apologizing for needing it.
