Chapter 1

Tags: Spoiled Charity Case, Falsified Medical Records, Framed, Awakening and Revenge

I personally operated on the underprivileged student my husband sponsored.

Never did I imagine that my hands—revered across the medical world—would meet their Waterloo. A catastrophic surgical error occurred.

The scholarship student was left brain-damaged.

To make me atone, my husband severed the tendons in my wrists and had my medical license revoked.

He even forced me to get a caregiver certificate so I could wait on her hand and foot, tending to her every daily need.

I threw myself into atonement, cooking three meals a day, slaving away like a beast of burden.

Until one day, I found the falsified medical records hidden by my husband.

Scalding boiling water spilled over the back of my hand, and both of my arms began to tremble uncontrollably.

Fortunately, with my wrist tendons severed, the sensation of pain was dull and distant.

Justin Vance stared at me with pure disgust. "Aren't you supposed to be a top surgeon from Johns Hopkins? You can't even pour a simple cup of tea!"

His mother, Evelyn, rolled her eyes at me. "If she were really that brilliant, our sweet Chloe wouldn't have been turned into an idiot!"

A year ago, Chloe Miller—the poor college student sponsored by the Vance family—suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage.

I was a leading specialist in neurosurgery. She was an honor student from an impoverished background.

Moved by her situation, I voluntarily petitioned the hospital board to be the lead surgeon and personally covered all her medical expenses.

Back then, the press sang my praises: *“Mrs. Vance, a Heart of Gold: Financing and Operating to Save a Young Life—A True Modern Healer.”*

Justin had beamed with pride, holding my hand. "Thank God for you, Natalie. Otherwise, the Vance family's reputation for philanthropy would have died with my generation!"

Yet that very surgery, my greatest pride, ended in total disaster when Chloe woke up with the mental capacity of a toddler.

The Vance Group's stock plummeted to rock bottom. To control the narrative and save face, Justin publicly adopted her as his younger sister and revoked my medical license.

That night, Evelyn forced me to my knees in the family study, whipping my bare back with a heavy riding crop for half an hour.

"You humiliated the Vance name!"

"An Ivy League medical degree? You're nothing but an incompetent fraud!"

I wept frantically, pleading through gasps of air.

"Mom! The surgery couldn't have gone wrong! I spent an entire month reviewing every scan! I could perform that procedure in my sleep! There has to be a mistake!"

Justin rushed in, falling to his knees beside his mother, shouting desperately, "Mom, please stop! She's human, mistakes happen! Just spare her!"

Evelyn didn't stop. She lashed him too for defending me.

My skin split, blood soaking through my clothes, and I vomited stomach acid until blackness swallowed me whole.

When I woke up, a bucket of ice water splashed across my face.

Blinding camera flashes instantly captured my battered, broken state.

Reporters shoved microphones into Justin's face.

"Mr. Vance, she's your wife! Aren't you going to hold her accountable?"

"A brilliant young woman was turned into a vegetable under her knife! Doesn't your family bear any responsibility?"

"Some philanthropists you are! It's all a PR stunt!"

"Today it's Chloe Miller, who will it be tomorrow?!"

"The public demands justice! The Vance family owes everyone an explanation!"

Justin clenched his fists, his eyes bloodshot as he stared into the cameras.

"I will give everyone here full closure today. On behalf of my wife, I apologize to Chloe and the public."

"I will not only personally sever the tendons in her operating hands, but I will also ensure she spends the rest of her life repenting for her crime."

I stared at him in utter disbelief. Could these horrific words really be coming out of Justin's mouth?!

The only reason we stood together at the altar was because I had spent sixteen straight hours in the OR saving his grandfather from the brink of death!

How could he do this to me?

More importantly, I was a surgeon. Without the tendons in my hands, what was left of me?!

Medicine was my life, my dream, my entire identity!

I shook my head violently, my voice ragged as I desperately appealed to the love he once claimed to have.

"Justin, you can't do this to me! You said it yourself... you said it was just a tragic accident!"