Next of Kin

What we choose to forget returns to haunt. - Michelle Liew

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The voice on the line was politely pedantic, clinical. "Hi, Miss Lisa Wong, you're listed as the emergency contact for a Daniel Wong."

The call was a Sherlock's mystery, and one that Lisa wasn't in the mood to solve.

"Yes, I'm Lisa. But I don't have a brother or relative named Daniel Wong."

The urgency in the nurse's tone escalated. "But you signed off on his surgery last year!"

Lisa's heart pounded. She drove to the hospital, stomach in knots.

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The man in the sterile hospital bed looked eerily familiar. Too much. His pale face bore a crooked smile.

"Lisa," He knew her name. The tiny hairs on her arm bristled. And when he spoke, his voice sounded in gravelly rasps, dry and unemotional, just like--

HER FATHER'S.

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Lisa's frantic digging through old files produced a birth certificate with the name Daniel Wong. Her supposed brother. A black-and-white family photo accompanied the find.

But the photo seemed--wrong. It was a childhood birthday picture that evoked nostalgic emotions --of Lisa at a table with a boy--still nameless--standing, stoic, beside her.

Could someone edit a printed picture? Lisa's doubt gnawed, an old tale she couldn't quite recall. She scanned a photo. And another.Daniel was in EVERY ONE. But he seemed--misplaced.

She called her mother, whose incredulous tone was like a banshee's. "Of course you have a brother. What are you saying?"

Lisa hung up and stared at her reflection in the mirror, her breath shallow. Was her mind caving before its time?

She returned to the hospital with a heavy stone of questions. Daniel's hoarse voice rang in her ears, a muffled whisper. "I knew you'd make it. You promised not to leave me again."

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Lisa looked at his near-skeletal frame and knew she had to find answers. She made a frantic dash to the attic and retrieved a myriad of documents. Among them was a dog-eared certificate for a Daniel Wong.

Her practiced secretary's fingers flipped like a copypress through a photo album. One picture showed Daniel standing beside her. A few relatives she called expressed Daniel nostalgia; others drew a blank. Through it all, her mother insisted that she had a brother.

Strange gaps peppered her memory. Was he real at all? Did she forget him? An old friend's text was an outstanding thumb.

"I saw Danny years ago..."

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Lisa lifted the receiver to call her doctor. Perhaps it was just an illness--was it?

The answer came from a haphazard stack of files in the corner of the attic.

Daniel wasn't the only patient. So was Lisa.

Her car rushed her to the hospital, embodying her mania. The doctor told her about the surgery. "Before we operated on him, he kept repeating your name."

Lisa's fingers clutched her chair as she looked at the frail man before her. "Why would you remember me? I've never even met you!"

Daniel's eyes took on a glassy appearance. "You didn't forget me, Lisa. You chose to erase me."

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This text is NOT AI-generated. The presence of AI tags is coincidental. It has 500 words.