Page 4 of Ruthless Savior
So far. Half the reason I’m not sleeping is the nightmares I have every night about showing up to meetings unprepared, documents getting mysteriously deleted from my computer, being late to work because I slept in. The typical late-to-an-exam high school nightmares—but now with much more at stake, and dialed up to eleven.
My mom pushes her sesame chicken around her plate again, and my stomach twists. “You’re barely eating,” I murmur. I’d promised myself we wouldn’t talk about anything bad overdinner, but worry is making me break my rule already. "Is the nausea getting worse?"
She shrugs, pushing a piece of chicken around on her plate. “It’s not great,” she says with a chuckle. “But mostly I just don’t have much of an appetite. It’s really good, though,” she adds, taking a bite. “Thank you for ordering it, Alicia.”
“It’s the least I could do,” Alicia says quickly. “That, and helping Leila move in. I wish I could do more—” She looks at me, and I give her a narrow-eyed glare.
Don’t,I mouth, and she lets out a sigh.
“What?” Mom looks between the two of us. “Is there something I’m missing?”
Alicia looks at me nervously, then at my mom. “I offered to give Leila some money,” she blurts out. “I’ve got some savings. But she said no?—”
“Absolutely not,” my mom interrupts. “We will be just fine. There’s no way I’m taking money from you, sweetheart.”
“I want to help, though?—”
“I know.” Mom offers her a smile. "But we'll figure it out. We always do."
“How?” Alicia blurts out, ignoring the kick I give to her shin under the table. “How are you going to figure it out? I know what Leila makes, and it’s a lot, but this place and food and medical bills—” She looks at me nervously. “I just think if anyone else can help?—”
I almost say something, then, about the card in my purse. But I know that’s not the kind ofanyone elsethat Alicia means. And I know exactly what my mother would say.
“What about family?” Alicia presses on. “I know your grandparents are gone, but maybe you could contact your dad?—”
“No,” both my mom and I say in unison. It almost makes me laugh.
“We’ve managed on our own without him for twenty-two years,” my mom says firmly. “I understand where you’re coming from, Alicia, but I’m not reaching out to him for anything. Even if I could find him, which I don’t care to.”
"What about a payment plan with the hospital?" Alicia suggests, and I can hear the note of desperation in her voice—a feeling I’m already well acquainted with. I’ve been through this entire conversation already, with my mom, with myself, with my boss. Alicia is just catching up. "Or financial aid programs?"
"We've tried everything," I say quietly. "We make too much money to qualify for most programs, but not enough to actually afford the treatment. Their suggestions were credit cards and loans, both of which we’ve run the numbers on. We took out a loan, but it isn’t going to last long."
I’ve run the numbers so many times I have them memorized. We’ll be out of savings and the loan my mom took out by the end of the month. The cards are maxed out. We’ll just be living on my income then, and it’s not enough. I can’t get a sizable enough loan to help—not enough credit yet.
Except for the one my boss gave me the contact for.
"That's fucked up," Alicia says, then immediately looks apologetic. "Sorry,” she adds, looking at my mom.
"No, you're right," Mom says with a bitter laugh. "It is fucked up. The whole system is designed to bankrupt people like us."
We eat in silence for a few minutes, each lost in our own thoughts. The weight of the impossible situation settles over the table like a heavy blanket. It’s exactly what I was hoping to avoid tonight, but that, too, feels impossible—like the cancer is already infecting not only my mother but our entire lives.
"You know what?" Alicia says suddenly, setting down her chopsticks. "Let's not talk about this anymore tonight. Let's talk about something else. Something good."
"Like what?" I ask gratefully. I needed someone to help pull us out of this funk, because I don’t have the energy to do it myself tonight.
"Like... remember in high school when we decided to dye our hair blue for junior prom?" Alicia grins, reaching for another crab rangoon.
Mom laughs—the first real laugh I've heard from her in weeks. "I still have pictures of that disaster. They’re on an old laptop somewhere."
"It wasn't that bad," I protest, but I'm smiling too. I remember it very clearly—itwasa disaster.
"You looked like a smurf," Alicia giggles. "An elegant, prom-dress-wearing smurf."
“So did you!” I exclaim. “It didn’t help that your dress was thesamecolor.”
“Imatched,” Alicia says with a sniff, and we both dissolve into laughter. It feels like something in my chest pops, a weight briefly lifting off of me as we keep talking about old stories and memories, and my mother looks brighter than she has in weeks. I can almost forget about calculations that don’t add up, and not enough hours of sleep, and the phone call I need to make later.
