Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(41)

That made Ma smile. And sigh. “Oh, Shasha, haven’t you learned that the world doesn’t see things as simply as your brain does?”

Trisha almost gasped. Yes, she was aware of how simply, and wrongly, she had seen Julia. She should not have let HRH bully her into coming here. Her mother took her rubber gloves off. Good. Trisha was done with this entire wheelchair-cleaning drama. It was nothing but emotional blackmail. Entirely unnecessary emotional blackmail.

“I know what she did to him, Ma. I am aware.”

“It’s not what she did to him that matters. It’s what she can do to him now. If we don’t make sure she doesn’t.”

Trisha stood. A sick churn in her stomach. “Would I not have come to you if she had contacted me?”

“Well, one isn’t always sure why you hold your silence when you do.”

Wow, Ma was not pulling any punches today. Trisha definitely preferred the ostrich theory. But Ma was right. If Trisha had said something, spoken up, Julia wouldn’t have been able to violate Yash the way she had. And there wouldn’t be a video that could destroy everything he had worked for floating around. It wasn’t like Trisha didn’t know this. Didn’t carry it with her constantly. If she let it, the guilt would crush her under its weight, make it impossible to crawl out from under. The way it had for months after it happened. She pressed a fist into her belly. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything. I have to get back to the hospital.”

Ma stood, too, with one last sad stroke of the chair’s wheel. “You know what Yash has been through to get here. This is Yash we’re talking about, Shasha. Your brother loves no one more than he loves you.”

Trisha almost snorted at that. This was not true. Or at least it was no longer true. And it shouldn’t matter. They were all grown adults and no one should be measuring who loved whom most.

“Okay, never mind all that now. At least I got to see you, baby girl,” Ma said much more softly, hooking a finger around a curl that had popped out of Trisha’s ponytail and tucking it back.

Trisha gave her mother a quick kiss on her cheek and was almost across the attic when Ma stopped her again. “Well, if it isn’t that Wickham girl, then what’s bothering you?”

“Nothing.”

Ma walked up to her and took her hand. “Shasha?”

“I had to tell a patient that the surgery to save her life is going to make her blind.”

Her mother waited as though it was the most obvious thing in the world that there was more.

“She’s an artist. She’s refusing the surgery.”

The stark sense of failure that jabbed at her was embarrassing. The pain in DJ’s eyes when he’d told her about Emma’s decision that wouldn’t stop flashing in Trisha’s head was downright baffling. She tucked her chin and turned away from her mother.

Ma pulled the door to Yash’s special storage room shut and punched in a code to lock it and made one of her sounds, sadness combined with disapproval that said, such is life.

She led Trisha down the corridor to the stairs that led to Aji’s floor. “Will it affect the grant? Was this surgery key to that?”

Trisha didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at her mother’s pragmatism. “No, Ma, the grant won’t be affected.” Not unless Trisha botched the surgery, and she wouldn’t. “But I can’t just let a patient die when I can save her.” She let her mother’s hand go and made her way down the stairs.

“Beta,” her mother said following her. “You know the best thing your father ever did?” Trisha rolled her eyes, since Ma couldn’t see. “Somehow, he cultivated this decency, this goodness in all of you.”

Trisha spun around. “Dad did not do that by himself.”

Her mother flicked Trisha’s words away. She was but a satellite to the greatness that was Shree Raje. “My job was to instill street smarts in all of you.” She wrapped her arm around Trisha and nudged her down the last few steps. “How to present yourself to the world, how to give the world something they couldn’t get enough of, but to also get what you needed in return. With the rest of them, I managed it. Some would even say I managed too well.” Her smile was self-deprecating, as though raising children who were too successful wasn’t a huge accomplishment. “But you . . .” She shook her head dolefully as though she didn’t know where they had gone wrong with Trisha. “I think you might be the first simpleton in the Raje family.”

Simpleton? “I just won my hospital a multimillion-dollar grant!” Not one of her siblings had achieved such a thing.

“True. No one said you aren’t good at what you do. But the smart thing to do would be to focus on the grant and to not get hung up on one case.”

She wasn’t hung up on the case. This wasn’t about being hung up on a case. “I can save her life, Ma. How can I let her choose not to let me?”

Her mother threw a meaningful look up the stairs. “You remember Yash in the chair?”

Well, say by some miracle she had forgotten, wasn’t Ma’s little performance just now aimed at jogging her memory?

“Yash didn’t get out of it because any of us pushed him. He did that because it was what he wanted. You provide the solutions. In the end, the patient’s decision is not on you.”