35. Elyse
Elyse
Karma must be the snuggliest of kittens because in the twenty minutes that it took me to slip out of the house the other day with a Tupperware of still-hot apple muffins for Glo and Reggie, Sinclair Voss came to my door and was both yelled at and sent packing by my sister and my dad.
How’s that for timing?
I can’t believe I missed him. It’s so lucky.
If I had answered the door to him, God knows what I would have done.
I would have started shaking, probably. I definitely couldn’t have handled seeing his face.
I think it would have killed me. I already see it all the time in my head, this heartbreaking movie from happier times of him smiling at me, and kissing me, and just staring at me as if he wanted to memorize me forever.
And I don’t want to examine what it means that he came all the way to Jersey and showed up at my door.
It could come over as romantic, I guess.
Equally, it could just be the actions of a guy who likes to have the last word.
But speaking of missing him…
I miss him.
And, ugh, that makes me so angry. Angry at myself for being pathetic and angry at him for falling short, for not having my back behind closed doors, and for making it impossible for me to stay with him.
Why, oh why, did he have to be such a total asshole underneath it all?
And how can it still hurt, in a confusing, complex way, whenever I make myself a mug of the fancy French tea he left for me?
Lime blossom.
Le tilleul.
The only way I know how to deal with it is to keep busy and to stick as close to my family as possible.
Right now, I need as much real love as I can get from people who genuinely have my back.
The keeping-busy part is easy, too—there’s a ton to do on all fronts.
I’ve picked up an extra shift at Alchemy, comforted by the knowledge that Sinclair can’t reach me there.
I double down on housework and push Olivia for more and more casting calls.
Vanessa has already texted to set up a meeting with the person who took over her role at Bellamy, which is insane.
That’s set up for after Thanksgiving, so maybe it’ll yield something. Who knows?
When the mail drops through the mailbox around noon, I pick it up and sort through it.
There are a couple of bills for Dad that I kind of wish I could hide from him and an envelope addressed to Sylvie with a cheery logo that says Unburdened in blue over a yellow sun.
I frisbee it to her across the kitchen table, where she’s working.
She squints at it and picks it up. “What’s this?”
“No clue,” I say with a shrug. “Direct marketing, probably?” It’s insane, the kind of shit she gets targeted with since her accident. Top-of-the-range electric wheelchairs and live-in carers and hydrotherapy. Someone is selling the shit out of her medical data.
She rips it open, and I sit back down so I can keep working on my Costco shopping list. Dad and I are due our monthly trip this weekend.
Toilet paper. Always toilet paper. And we’ll stock up for Thanksgiving there, too: everything except the turkey, which we’ll have to buy fresh next week.
Who has room in their deep freeze for a turkey?
Not the Wards, that’s for sure. I add marshmallows to the list, knowing Fleur will lose her mind when we come home with a wholesale-sized drum of them.
“Lees,” Sylvie says, her voice faint, “I don’t understand. Take a look.”
She holds out a single sheet of paper. I take it and start to read.
UNBURDENED
Relieving medical debt. Restoring peace of mind.
Case reference: 11023078
Dear Sylvie Ward
We have good news: you no longer owe this debt.
Unburdened is a nonprofit organization that uses donations to purchase and forgive medical debt for families across the country. Thanks to the generosity of our donors, we recently acquired a portfolio of medical debt held by providers in Hudson County, NJ, which included your accounts.
The following balances have been forgiven in full:
Jersey City Medical Center and affiliated providers: $366,143.50
This isn’t a scam, and there’s no catch. You don’t need to do anything. This debt won’t appear in collections any longer, and the IRS doesn’t consider our forgiveness of it taxable income to you.
Medical debt isn’t a personal failing. It happens to millions of hardworking Americans through no fault of their own, and we believe no one’s future should be defined by the cost of their care.
We wish you and your family health, happiness, and a lighter road ahead.
With warmth,
The Unburdened team
Forgiven with support of donors nationwide
I begin to shake. I can barely see straight.
“It has to be a scam, right?” Sylvie asks, a note of hope quavering in her voice. That little wobble slays me.
“Yeah,” I say, still scanning the letter. “Pretty fucked up that they know how much we owe, though.”
“Right?”
This is the number that keeps me awake at night. It’s also the number I try super hard not to think about, because it’s a sum so large that it could cut you off at the knees if you fixated on it too much.
“Google it,” I tell Sylvie. “Google Unburdened.”
She looks thrilled at the prospect of having a plan. “On it.” A moment later, she twists her laptop around so I can see the screen. “It’s legit.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the letter is,” I point out. “Could be phishing.” I push to my feet.
“Yeah.” Her shoulders drop. I hate it.
“Want me to call them?”
“Would you? I don’t think I can bear it.”
“Of course.” This is my role: to be strong when Sylvie cannot. When the sheer effort of rehabilitation and trauma and worrying about Fleur and the un-freaking-fairness of it all threaten to pull her under.
She recites the phone number straight off the official website, and I punch it into my cell with trembling fingers as I pace in a little circle.
“It’ll probably be a call center,” I say. “Or some automated service.”
It is neither. After a few rings, my call is answered by a woman whose energy levels match that of the letter.
“Good afternoon! You’ve reached Unburdened! This is Tracy. How may I help you today?”
“Hey, Tracy,” I say. “I—uh—my sister received a letter in the mail claiming that her medical debt has been paid off? And, uh, we’re not sure if it’s genuine.”
She chuckles warmly. “Oh, that’s wonderful! And I can tell you, this isn’t the first call I’ve gotten like this today. Whenever we do a mail-out, we get a lot of folk wondering the exact same.”
“Oh, really?” I ask. I raise my eyebrows at my sister, like This is actually encouraging. She raises hers right back, like What did she say?!
“Sure, honey. It can be a real shock. Tell me, did you get a case reference number on the top right of the correspondence?”
“Uh—yeah. Yes, we did.” I recite the eight-digit number slowly and wait.
“Let me see… Sylvie Ward, Hudson County?”
I’m shell-shocked. I don’t think I have really let myself think this could be legit until right this second. “That’s right.” I mouth OMG at Sylvie, whose face has gone bright red with tension.
“Excellent! Well, I’m delighted to say that your sister is now debt-free! Unburdened has forgiven all of her debt.”
Slowly, I sink back into my chair. I think I might faint. “But how can that even be? Why us?”
“It’s the best kind of lottery, honey. Unburdened uses donations to purchase debt in big bundles off all kinds of debt-holders.
Usually, we can actually buy the debt for far less than you owe.
We do it at a county level, all completely randomly, and I guess yours got swept up into our latest Hudson County bundle. And hey presto, the debt is forgiven.”
Forgiven strikes me as such an odd word—kind of religious, and sort of… not tangible. Like it could be reversed. “Forgiven?” I repeat, because I want to be super clear on what’s going on here before I get my sister’s hopes up.
“It’s a weird debt term,” Tracy says. “It means canceled or paid up, I guess. We have paid your creditors on your behalf, so there is no outstanding debt. We’ve cleared the balance.”
I put my hand over the microphone. They’ve cleared the balance, I mouth at Sylvie.
Her jaw drops. “What the fuck? How?”
“That’s amazing,” I say. “How did my sister get picked?”
“Like I said, it’s totally random,” Tracy explains.
“We’ve definitely gotten an increase in donations in the run-up to Thanksgiving.
From now through to the end of the year we usually get a really nice boost. But it seems like a big donation came through and it all got allocated to Hudson County. Your sister got… Huh.”
I pounce on that. “What’s wrong?” Was that huh, like It’s all a big error and you’re still hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt?
“It’s just funny,” she says. “I can see what percentage your sister’s debts make up of the entire bundle that was allocated, and it was exactly one percent. Isn’t that strange? Like, I’m looking at the percentage and it says one-point-zero-zero.”
I frown. “That is strange.”
“Anyways, don’t mind me. You ladies should go and celebrate! Although, if I might make one suggestion?”
“Please do,” I say, because it feels as though Tracy is the only grownup in this conversation. I’m a small, confused child.
“If you’re struggling to process this,” she says, “you can try calling your healthcare provider. Let’s see—you could call the Jersey City Medical Center and ask to speak to their credit department. They’ll be able to advise what balance they see on your account.”
“That’s a fantastic idea,” I say. I should have thought of that in the first place. Of course the hospital is the right place to start. I guess I’m just used to even the thought of its credit department making me feel sick with fear and dread.
After I have wished Tracy a very gushing and sincere, if still confused, goodbye, I hang up and blow out a huge breath.
Sylvie is staring at me, her hands white-knuckling the edge of the kitchen table. “Well?”