Gilded Cage

Chapter 68

In the midst of our mind-altering discovery about the lockbox, an email notification popped up on my phone. It was from Andrea. I glanced apologetically to Zac on the FaceTime screen. "Shit. Hold on, baby. My stepmom just sent me an email with my dad's medical forms. Do you mind if I take a look real quick?"

His jaw dropped. "Wait, hold the fuck up! What stepmom? Did your dad get married again?"

I blinked rapidly. I could've sworn that I told Zac about Andrea at some point. Guess not. "Yeah, I thought I mentioned her to you before, but, for some reason, I suppose she never came up in our conversations?"

Zac nodded with a dumbfounded expression on his face. "Okay... wow. I'm shocked anyone would actually wanna marry a guy like your dad, but... carry on. You should check that email. It sounds important."

"Thanks, baby. I promise this won't take long."

Frantically, I opened up Andrea's attachments and started dragging my eyes across the contents of each document from the first page to the last.

Patient Name: Charles William Hayes II

Age: 52

Primary Care Physician: Dr. Deepti Rawal

Secondary Physician: Dr. Vince Samson (Oncology)

Oncology?

Fuck.

As I scanned through the forms, almost everything my dad said about his diagnosis seemed to check out. He was indeed suffering from Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma cancer. He started chemotherapy about two months ago.

The furrowed concern on my face must have prompted Zac to ask, "Is everything as bad as you expected?"

"Almost," I replied glumly, "but..."

"But?"

There was a small detail that raised a trickle of doubt in my mind. On the very first page of my dad's diagnosis, the fine print clearly indicated that my dad had been diagnosed with stage one and not stage four of the disease. Obviously, I needed to do more research on the survival rates of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma cancer before jumping to any conclusions, but, even with my lack of medical knowledge, I was pretty sure that the prognosis for stage one patients were probably far rosier than stage four ones.

Why would my dad tell me that he had stage four cancer and then send me forms with a stage one diagnosis?

Granted, the forms Andrea sent me were a few months old.

Was it possible for NHL patients to progress from stage one to four within a few months?

I sighed. "My dad might have lied about having stage four cancer. His diagnosis states that his cancer is only in stage one. The forms are a few months old, but it's still a bit suspect, don't you think?"

"You should ask him about it. Just to be sure."

"Yeah, I'll do that."

I turned my attention back to Mr. Mazur's lockbox and the flashdrive sitting inside of it. "Have you plugged in that flash drive? What's saved on it?"

Zac averted his gaze for a minute. "I was gonna do it, but then... I chickened out last minute. A part of me is scared of what I might find."

"Did you want me to look at it for you?"

"No, no. I'll definitely get around to it tonight. I'm just trying to work up the courage, I suppose. What if my dad ends up being guilty as fuck?"

My eyes shone with sympathy as my heart went out to him. "Aw, baby. Try not to think about that right now. Just focus on doing things one step at a time so we can get closer to the truth."