Chapter 2 #2
“It’s okay.” She squeezes my hand once, then lets go. When she reaches up to touch my cheek, her smile is sad but not bitter. “I tried my best. But some walls don’t come down, do they?”
“It’s not—” I start, then stop. What am I going to say? It’s not you, it’s me? The most clichéd brush-off in history, except it’s actually true?
“You don’t have to explain.” She pats my cheek gently, the way you’d comfort a child. “You’ve got a lot on your plate. More than most people could handle. I just thought maybe…” Her small shoulders lift in a shrug. “Anyway. I get it. No hard feelings.”
“I’m sorry,” I manage. “You’ve been so good to us, and I wish I could—”
“Don’t. Seriously, Saylor. Don’t apologize for not having feelings you don’t have.”
But that’s the thing. It’s not that I don’t have feelings.
It’s that I can’t afford them. Not when Mum needs me.
Not when I’m working three jobs and barely keeping us afloat.
Not when the idea of adding another person to my life feels less like companionship and more like another weight I’m not strong enough to hold.
I don’t say any of this. I just nod, and Callie seems to understand.
“Okay.” She takes a breath, squares her shoulders. “One more thing, and then I’ll let you go get some sleep because you look like absolute hell, by the way.”
“Cheers for that.”
“Your mom’s mobility—”
“Is improving,” I answer, sounding accusing for some reason. “Sorry, I mean, she’s getting around a little better lately. She barely touches the wheelchair. That’s a good thing, right?”
Callie’s face falls. “Saylor…your mom…”
“What?” I coax gently. “What about Mum?”
“I think it’s important to Ada that you think she’s improving, but the truth is her range of motion is getting worse, not better. The pain? Almost unbearable and she hates how the medication makes her feel.”
The guilt sweeps me up like it always does. My mum lives in a prison of pain with only brief moments of relief when she’s drugged out of consciousness. It’s no way to live, but she has to because of me. She’s like this…because of me.
“What about hydrotherapy?” I ask weakly.
Callie shakes her head. “I doubt it’d do much. The damage to her spine is so severe and none of the treatments we’re trying are helping.”
“Cal, I understand the prognosis. But seeing my mum walk one day without cringing from pain is sort of the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning. You’ll have to pardon me if I choose to hold onto hope.”
Wearing a half-smile, she digs into her satchel and pulls out a sticky note—bright yellow, with handwriting so neat it looks typed.
“What’s that?”
“Hope. A friend of a friend told me about this hotshot new neurosurgeon the hospital just drafted.” She waves vaguely at the space between us.
“Dr. Ali Yassa. He’s running a research study on experimental spinal treatments—some new laser technique that’s showing really promising results for chronic pain patients with little to no mobility. ”
I take the sticky note. The email address stares back at me: a.yassa.spinalstudy@.
“I don’t know all the details for participation,” Callie continues, “but from what I’ve heard, it could be life-changing. They’re saying this technology could put him in the running for a Nobel.”
Hope is a dangerous thing. It’s a lit match in a room full of gasoline, and I’ve been burned too many times to trust it. But I’m staring at this sticky note like it’s a winning lottery ticket anyway.
“So what do I do?”
“Email him,” Callie tells me. “You can use my name but it’d be pointless. He doesn’t know me.”
“I just email him, and say…what?” I look at her desperately.
Callie adjusts her bag strap. “That’s the tricky part.
I was able to get the email, but there’s no official inquiry for experimental procedures.
The hospital hasn’t even announced his employment yet.
So, your guess is as good as mine, but I would email him and ask for a meeting if you can get through. I wish I could do more—”
“You’ve already done too much, Callie. Thank you.” I hold up the sticky note in wonder like it’s the holy grail. “You are incredible.” Abandoning my better sense for boundaries, I reach out to collect her hand as if I can press my gratitude deep into her palm.
Right when I release her, she steps closer, rises to her tiptoes, and presses a kiss to my cheek—quick, gentle, final. “It’s wonderful how you take care of your mom, but take care of yourself too, okay? Even Superman had days off.”
I smirk at her. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“Oh, I’m sure of it.” Callie gives me a wink. “Lois Lane would’ve insisted. All those big macho, mighty heroes are always kept in check by a woman.”
Lost for a response, I duck my head and answer with a sheepish nod.
She starts toward the stairs, then pauses, looking back over her shoulder. “For what it’s worth? Whoever eventually gets through those walls is going to be a very lucky girl.”
And then she’s gone, her footsteps echoing down the stairwell until I can’t hear them anymore.
I stand in the hallway for a long moment, staring at the yellow sticky in my hand. The email address blurs slightly, and I realize my eyes are burning. From exhaustion, probably. That’s what I tell myself.
When I go back inside, Mum is watching me with that look—the one that says she knows exactly what just happened and is waiting to see if I want to talk about it.
I don’t.
“She’s leaving,” I say instead, moving to the kitchen to start the kettle. Tea fixes everything, according to Mum. It doesn’t, obviously, but the ritual of making it helps. “Kansas. She got a big promotion.”
“Ah.” Mum’s voice is carefully neutral. “That’s a shame. She’s lovely.”
“She is.”
“And she fancies you.”
I busy myself with the tea bags. “Mum.”
“What? I’ve got eyes. Broken spine, not blind.” There’s a smile in her voice, but when I glance over, her expression is more thoughtful than teasing. “You could’ve had something there, you know. If you’d let yourself.”
“Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve.” The kettle starts to whistle, and I pour the water with more focus than the task requires. “Doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters if you’re lonely.”
“I’m not lonely. I’ve got you.” I bring her tea over—chamomile, two sugars, in the chipped mug she’s had since I was a kid. “Besides, I’m too tired to be lonely. Loneliness requires energy I don’t have.”
Mum takes the mug with both hands, cradling it like a small treasure. Her fingers are gnarled now, the joints swollen from inflammation, but her grip is still steady. Small mercies.
“You work too much,” she says. The same thing she’s said every day for the past two years.
“Someone’s gotta pay for this palatial estate.” I gesture grandly at our cramped living room.
“Saylor.” Her tone sharpens, just slightly. “I’m serious. You’re running yourself into the ground. I see you leaving at all hours, coming back looking like death warmed over. The ‘bartending’ job, the ‘security’ job, the other job you won’t tell me about—”
“There’s no other job.”
“Don’t lie to your mother.”
I freeze with my own mug halfway to my lips. She’s watching me with those sharp blue eyes—my eyes, everyone always says—and I can see her doing the math. Putting together the late nights and the cash payments and the expensive clothes I sometimes come home in.
“Whatever it is,” she says quietly, “I’m not asking you to explain. I just need you to know that I see you. I see what you’re doing, what you’re sacrificing. And I hate it.”
“Mum—”
“I hate that you’re breaking yourself to take care of me.
I hate that we lost everything because I believed a con man who promised he could fix me.
” Her voice cracks, just slightly, before she steadies it.
“I hate that every day I watch my son disappear a little more, and I can’t do anything to stop it. ”
The silence that follows is heavy. I stare into my tea, watching the steam curl upward, because I can’t look at her face right now. I can’t see the guilt there, the love, the helpless frustration, without wanting to collapse myself.
“And I hate that you’re only in this situation because of me,” I finally say.
“Oh, Saylor. For the millionth time. The accident—” She stops short.
My hand tightens on the mug. We don’t talk about the accident. That’s an unspoken rule between us—it has been since the day we left Sydney three years ago. But apparently today is a day for breaking rules.
“Callie told me about a surgeon, Mum—”
“No,” she declares.
“It’s legitimate. An experimental procedure—”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“We’re trying,” I tell her.
“Experimental, Saylor. Do you know what that means? Out. Of. Pocket. Out of our budget. You need to start saving to get a new place.”
“You’re right about that,” I answer before taking a short swig of my tea.
“Clearly the lift is never getting fixed and we need to be on the first floor somewhere. Actually, my friend Taio’s apartment is closer to your doctor’s office.
He’s traveling indefinitely now, so I could ask him about a sublet. ”
Mum blinks slowly, patiently waiting for her turn to speak.
“No, you, Saylor. You need to get your own place and leave me to deal with the stairs. I’m the parent. You’re my son. Not the other way around. You don’t owe me your life, honey.”
I stare into her big eyes, and despite the smile she’s wearing, they look so sad. “Don’t I though?”
“No parent wants to see their child like this. So busy surviving, you’ve forgotten how to live.”
I don’t have an answer for that. So I reach into my pocket and pull out the sticky note, smoothing it against my thigh. “We’re not giving up. End of story.”
“Fine. Email them,” she relents. “But Saylor? Whatever happens…whatever this costs, whatever false promises they try to sell us…promise me you won’t sell your soul for it. I’d rather live with the pain than watch you destroy yourself trying to fix me.”