Even Mary could have held the James family accountable for the mess.
Of course, the first person to face the consequences would be Latham's shady mistress.
Mary saw right through the entire situation.
She usually preferred to turn a blind eye and stay out of it.
But if her eldest son and his wife dared to use the debt of raising Claire as a weapon, she had no problem exposing their absurd hypocrisy.
Sure enough, the couple snapped their mouths shut.
No matter whose fault the past was, it had absolutely nothing to do with Claire.
"Mother, we know we were wrong. We weren't trying to emotionally blackmail Claire; we just want her to do her best."
"Please, hurry into the operating room."
Seeing that his mother was wasting precious time, Latham quickly urged her on.
Mary shot him a look but ultimately stayed quiet.
Cindy had been keeping her mouth shut for a while now.
When she realized Claire was actually the only one who could save her brother, a crushing sense of worthlessness washed over her.
She even found herself hating Octavia.
If Octavia hadn't just watched her get swapped out, would she have been the one raised in the James family?
Would she have been the one learning medicine directly from Mary?
If she had been as brilliant as Claire, she wouldn't have been terrified of leaving
when Latham discovered she wasn't his biological daughter.
Because she would have possessed the skills to stand on her own two feet.
Her knowledge and worldview would have been entirely different.
Wouldn't that have been infinitely better than growing up in some backwater town?
The burning resentment inside Cindy had nowhere to go.
One second she hated Fallon, the next she hated Octavia, and she despised Latham most of all.
If Fallon hadn't had an affair, she wouldn't have been born to another man.
In the end, it was all the adults' fault, so why was she the only one suffering the consequences?
Even Claire, who was supposedly a victim, had reaped all the benefits. Only she... Cindy's eyes were red with unshed tears.
Octavia didn't even notice her, and even if she had, she probably would have just assumed Cindy was worried about Lance.
When Claire stepped out in her surgical scrubs, she looked incredibly professional.
Once she entered the operating room, the panel of experts watching the live video feed saw her assisting Mary with flawless precision. Finally, they had to admit that true geniuses walked among them.
She was born for the operating table!
Claire anticipated every move, knowing exactly what to do before Mary even asked.
Dr. Duncan watched the entire process in pure awe.
He truly couldn't offer any help; with Claire there, no one else was needed.
Halfway through, the artery in Lance's thigh ruptured twice. Both times, Claire miraculously stopped the bleeding with her Golden Needles.
At first, the nurses panicked, but by the end, they were simply standing back, watching the grandmother-granddaughter duo put on a masterclass.
The surgery dragged on for over nine hours.
Mary held strong for the first six before fatigue began to overtake her.
Claire flawlessly took over for the remainder of the procedure.
"I thought this girl was only a master of traditional medicine and just a
beginner in modern surgery
Watching her today proves h
surgical skills are just as
phenomenal."
"Why couldn't I have found a prodigy like her?"
Barry had watched the entire operation and couldn't praise Claire enough.
The other experts were practically speechless.
It wasn't unheard of for a surgeon to pass out from exhaustion on the
table, and having a backup step in
was normal, but it
was never done
With the cool confidence Clae possessed.
"Do you think Claire and Dr. Mary practiced this exact routine in private?"
Someone sighed enviously. "If only I'd had a mentor like that guiding me when I was young."
"Not necessarily. Even with a mentor like that, you'd still need Claire's innate talent to pull it off."
"Look at how calm she is she hasn't even broken a sweat. That girl is a natural- born healer."