Chapter 2
Saylor
The sun personally attacks my eyeballs the moment I step out of the subway.
It’s not glamorous work, but it pays cash, and cash is the only language my landlord speaks.
I dig my keys out of my pocket as I approach our building—a crumbling, five-story in Alphabet City that’s seen better decades.
The lobby smells like mildew and someone’s attempt to mask mildew with lavender air freshener.
It’s not working. The lift’s been broken since the week we moved in, which means five flights of stairs that feel like fifty when you haven’t slept.
By the time I reach our door, my thighs are burning and I’m reconsidering every life choice that led me to a fourth-floor apartment with no lift.
I pause with my hand on the knob, taking a breath. Resetting my face. Mum doesn’t need to see how tired I am. She’s got enough to worry about.
The door swings open before I can turn the key.
“There he is.” Callie’s standing in the doorway, her scrubs printed with little cartoon bunnies today.
She’s five-foot-nothing, with deeply tan skin, kind eyes, and the sort of smile that makes you feel like everything might actually be okay, even when it’s demonstrably not. “I was starting to think you got lost.”
“Traffic,” I say, which is a lie. The truth is, the moment Callie texted me that she could bring Mum home this morning, I sat on a bench in Tompkins Square Park for twenty minutes, staring at pigeons and trying to remember what it feels like to not be exhausted.
Callie steps aside to let me in. “Your mom’s in good spirits today. We just finished up.”
Our apartment is small—two bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen that’s more of a suggestion than a room.
But it’s clean, and the morning light coming through the windows makes it feel almost cheerful.
Mum’s favorite red, velvet reading chair dominates what used to be the living room, surrounded by the medical equipment that’s become as familiar as furniture: the adjustable tray table, the shower chair we wheel in and out of the bathroom, the grab bars I installed myself after watching forty YouTube tutorials.
Mum is propped up against her pillows, her silver-streaked auburn hair freshly brushed and braided. Callie’s work. Mum’s hands shake too much these days to manage it herself, and my attempts at braiding look like something a drunk toddler would produce.
Mum’s eyes find mine. “Morning, love.” Her smile breaks across her face like sunrise—the same one she gave me when I won the Year Three spelling bee, when I graduated, when I helped her through her first steps of physical therapy.
A smile that says I’m still her boy, her anchor, even though we’re drowning in medical bills in a country where our slight accents mark us as outsiders.
I don’t deserve it. But I’ll take it anyway.
“Morning, Mum.” I cross the room and drop a kiss on her forehead. She smells like the lavender soap Callie uses, clean and familiar. “How are we feeling?”
“Oh, you know.” She waves a hand vaguely. “I’m vertical. That’s something.”
“Vertical is underrated.”
“That’s what I keep telling her,” Callie chimes in from the kitchen, where she’s packing up her bag. “Gravity is the enemy. We resist.”
I perch on the edge of Mum’s oversized chair, careful not to jostle her. The chronic pain is worst in the mornings, before her medications fully kick in. I can see it in the tightness around her eyes, the way she holds her shoulders. But she never complains. Never has.
It makes it all worse, somehow. Sometimes I think it’d be easier to handle someone who rages against their circumstances than someone who just…accepts them.
“Callie helped me wash my hair,” Mum announces, touching her braid like it’s a prize. “Feel how soft.”
I dutifully run my fingers along the plait.
Something catches in my chest when I feel how much of her has disappeared between my fingertips.
The pills that dull her pain sharpen everything else into focus—the weight loss, the yellowing whites of her eyes, the tremor in her hands.
Her medical chart tracks the shocking resilience of her organs, but it’s this—this gossamer thread where rope used to be—that makes it impossible to pretend.
But I hide my fear and replace it with jovial optimism. “Very soft. Like a fancy shampoo commercial. You should charge for this, Cal.”
“Please. Your mother’s hair is a joy. Long and wavy like that?
Mine would never.” Callie emerges from the kitchen, satchel slung across her body.
“Okay, I’ve got her meds sorted for the next two weeks.
Morning meds in the blue organizer, the afternoon in the orange.
If she’s having a particularly difficult day—”
“The red vial in the fridge. Twenty units, I remember.”
Callie nods. “There are new syringes in the medical bag. And I left some extra anti-nausea in the bathroom cabinet, just in case.” She hesitates. “I, um. I managed to get the Styrica at cost again. My contact at the pharmacy owed me a favor.”
My chest tightens. The Styrica alone would be almost fourteen hundred dollars a month without insurance. With Callie’s “contacts” and “favors,” we pay maybe one-sixty. I don’t ask too many questions about how she makes it happen. I’m too grateful to risk the answer.
“Cal…” I start, but she waves me off.
“Don’t. Seriously. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. It’s—” I drag my fingers through my unwashed hair, searching for a way to express gratitude that doesn’t sound hollow against the mountain of what I owe her.
“You’ve been helping us for over a year now.
The meds, the visits, the—” I gesture around at everything.
“All of it. I don’t even know how to begin to thank you properly. ”
“Then don’t begin.” She shoulders her bag, but something in her expression shifts. A flicker of something I’ve been pretending not to see for months now. “Actually, can we talk for a sec? In the hall?”
My stomach drops, but I keep my voice light. “Sounds ominous.”
“It’s not. It’s just…” She glances at Mum, then back at me. “Private.”
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Mum, who nods knowingly. She’s not stupid. She’s seen the way Callie looks at me. She’s probably been waiting for this conversation longer than I have.
The hallway smells marginally better than the lobby, more like old carpet than active mildew. Small victories. Callie leans against the wall opposite our door, arms crossed, and I mirror her position because I don’t know what else to do with my body.
“So,” she starts.
“So,” I echo.
“I’m moving.”
The revelation lands like a punch I should’ve seen coming. “Moving where?”
“Paris.”
“You’re kidding—”
“No, not that Paris. The small town in Kansas.”
“Oh…okay. Well, congratulations. This is a good thing, right?”
She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, not quite meeting my eyes.
“There’s a hospice program out there, really progressive, and they offered me a lead position as a nurse practitioner.
Better pay, better hours, amazing experience.
It’s kind of a dream job, honestly. Even if it is the wrong Paris. ”
“That’s…” I swallow. “That’s great, Cal. Really. You deserve it.”
“I leave in three weeks.”
Three weeks. That’s twenty-one days to find a new nurse, a new source for discounted meds, a new everything.
The mental math is already happening, numbers scrolling through my brain like a doomsday ticker.
More escort shifts. More security gigs. Less sleep.
Less time with Mum. Even less time for myself—
“Saylor.” Callie’s voice cuts through the spiral. “Breathe.”
I realize I’ve been holding my breath. I force myself to exhale. “Sorry. Just…processing.”
“I know. And I’m sorry. I wanted to give you more notice, but the offer came together fast and I had to make a decision and—” She stops herself, takes a breath of her own.
“I’ll help you find someone who can help you guys.
I’ve got contacts, other nurses or CNAs who might be able to step in, at least part-time. ”
“Right. Yeah. Thank you. I hate to ask you for anything more, but that’d be helpful.”
We stand there in the flickering hallway light, and I can feel the other conversation hovering between us. The one we’ve been dancing around for months. Callie’s too kind to force it, and I’m too much of a coward to address it.
But she’s leaving. And apparently that changes things.
“Saylor.” She pushes off the wall, moving closer. Close enough that I can smell her perfume—something warm and slightly spicy, like cinnamon. “I’m going to miss you guys. I feel so guilty.”
“Oh, hey, Cal.” I gently squeeze the top of her shoulder. “You’ve done more for us than I could’ve prayed for. It’s time. I can’t even pay you properly. I don’t know why you’ve put up with me this long.”
“You really don’t know?” Her voice softens, eyebrows ever so slightly arched. “Why I’ve stuck around so long? Why I keep finding ways to help, even when you won’t accept it properly?”
In spite of her tone, the question hits like a sledgehammer.
I open my mouth to deflect, to make a joke, to do the thing I always do when conversations get too real.
But the words won’t come. Callie reaches out and takes my hand.
Her fingers are small and warm against mine, and she looks up at me with those kind eyes, and I hate myself a little for what I’m about to not say.
I know. Of course I know. I’ve known since the third month, when she started packing us home-cooked meals “because she made too much.” Since the sixth month, when she started bringing Mum home from physical therapy appointments to spare me the drive into the city, always finding an excuse to linger and chat.
Since the first time she touched my arm and I felt her fingers tremble, slightly, before she pulled away.
But knowing and acknowledging are different things. And acknowledging would mean having a conversation I’m not equipped for.
“Cal—”