Prologue #3
“You listen to me.” I lean in close enough that he has to look at me. “You are not a burden. You are my brother and I love you. I’d sell every organ in my body on the black market before I let anything happen to you. Do you understand me?”
“I understand.” He smiles, although it’s small and tired. “I just don’t want you to do anything crazy. You’re too protective sometimes. You worry me. Keep all your organs, please. They’re very useful. You need them and I need you.”
“I won’t do anything too crazy.” I smile wryly.
Truth is, I’ll do whatever it takes. Period.
I hold his hand until he falls asleep. It doesn’t take long.
The medications they’ve given him pull him under and his grip loosens in mine.
I listen the monitor bleeping steadily and zone out.
I let myself think about nothing for a few minutes because the alternative is thinking about everything. I can’t handle that right now.
When I’m sure he’s out, I slip my hand free and step into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind me.
The hallway is quiet. It’s late now, well past midnight.
The fluorescent lights above me flicker every few seconds.
An exhausted-looking nurse passes pushing a cart and she doesn’t glance at me.
An old man in a wheelchair rolls himself slowly past, appearing lost in thought.
His expression is grim. I get that. I understand that emotion very well.
I lean against the wall and then slowly slide down it until I’m sitting on the cold hospital floor. I pull my knees to my chest, gripping my phone. I open the calculator app and start running numbers I already know the answer to.
I study my checking account, wondering if I could borrow money from my boss Hank.
God, I wouldn’t know how to even ask. What might a personal loan look like with my credit score?
My score is not great. I’ve been living on the edge of broke since I was Fabio’s age.
Credit scores are cruel for people like me.
It’s an arbitrary number that tells the world how valuable you are or aren’t in a specific, quantifiable way.
It’s depressing that a living, breathing person’s worth is reduced to that little number.
As if nothing else about the person is important.
But that’s the way things are. No point in crying about it.
I need to figure out a way to come up with some money fast. I could sell my car.
That’s maybe three thousand on a good day.
But I need the car to get to work and to grocery shop.
What if I have to drive Fabio to the hospital in an emergency?
I think I have to keep the car. But let’s say I do sell the car, it’s still only going to bring me three grand at best.
If I sell everything in the apartment I’d get, what, another five hundred?
I could pick up double shifts for the next two months straight and if I didn’t eat or pay rent or keep the lights on, I could maybe save another four thousand.
That’s seventy thousand short. Roughly. And who’s to say the insurance will even cover half of the procedure?
We don’t have great insurance to begin with and insurance companies aren’t known for their generosity.
I close the calculator app and put my phone face down on the floor.
I press my palms against my eyes until I see spots and I breathe, slow and deliberate.
I’ve been scared of something like this happening for nine years.
Since Mom and Dad died. I’ve done my best to keep Fabio and me afloat, but we’ve been sinking for a while now.
Part of the reason we’ve been in financial trouble was because our parents were sinking when they died.
There was no life insurance. We ended up homeless when the bank foreclosed on the house.
At nineteen, I didn’t have a lot of job skills.
I still don’t. I wasn’t able to get a job that paid enough to keep the house.
Dreams of going to college evaporated when my parents died.
I had to start doing whatever I could to keep Fabio safe. That meant shit jobs and shit hours.
I’m still in shock that Fabio has an actual heart condition.
I knew he wasn’t the strongest kid. I knew physically, he was always smaller than his peers and he got winded easily.
But after our parents died, I had so many other problems to worry about, I guess I missed the danger signs.
Now we’re at a point where it can no longer be ignored.
Either he has this surgery, or he’ll die.
That’s the cold hard truth. And I’m not going to let him die.
My eyes burn but I don’t cry. I stay where I am for a long time.
Long enough that my back hurts from the cold, my legs go stiff, and the flickering light above me becomes something I don’t notice anymore.
I stay until the math stops looping in my head, not because I’ve found an answer, but because my brain has finally accepted that there isn’t one.
Not one I can see.
But that isn’t acceptable.
So I start running through everything all over again.