I believed it too. Or rather, I chose to ignore the reality. I’m a doctor. My oath is to preserve life, not to audit the accounts receivable. If the hospital’s buggy, antiquated software wanted to give a broke single mom a break, who was I to report it? I had bigger problems, like keeping Sophie’s oxygen levels above ninety percent.

But last Tuesday, the software didn’t just glitch. It crashed. And it brought the sharks.

I was in my office, reviewing the imaging from Sophie’s latest echo, when my door flew open without a knock. It wasn’t a nurse. It was Marcus Sterling, the hospital’s new Chief Financial Officer. He was a man who wore suits that cost more than Clara’s annual salary, and he looked like he wanted to fire someone just to get his heart rate up.

“Dr. Evans,” he barked, slamming a thick manila folder onto my desk. It slid across the mahogany and knocked over my coffee. “Do you know who authorizes the ‘Alpha’ charity codes?”

I looked at the file. Sophie’s name was on the tab in bold red letters.