Chapter 5

She slid a bank card across the table toward me.

"Eighty-three thousand, six hundred dollars."

"This is what I saved. Selling grain, raising chickens, folding boxes for the factory in town. The PIN is your birthday."

She looked at me.

"If it comes to surgery, we don't ask Ethan for anything. I have money. I'm not taking anything from him."

Eighty-three thousand, six hundred.

One week ago, the local clinic had recommended an urgent contrast CT and tumor markers panel for my mother. It came up eight thousand short.

I called Ethan and asked if we could transfer eight thousand from our joint account.

You know what he said?

"Don't rush into every test. The standard process is enough. Hospital resources aren't for wasting."

Eight thousand dollars and he acted like it was too much to ask.

But last night, when I'd gone home to get some documents, I'd checked the joint account transaction history on my way out.

The very next day after he said it was wasteful, three hundred thousand dollars had been transferred out.

Recipient: Hospital Finance.

Note: Special care unit deposit and pre-surgery assessment — Mrs. Hayes.

I pushed the card back to my mother.

"Mom, keep it. Your treatment is my responsibility."

After I settled her into a budget hotel to rest, I went back to the apartment.

Ethan had just gotten off his shift. He shrugged off his jacket and headed to the study without even glancing at me.

"Did your mom get her appointment sorted? I looked at a few three-centimeter films today. Almost all benign. Stop scaring yourself."

I followed him into the study and slapped the printed transaction records on his desk.

"My mom. Three centimeters. Eight thousand short for an urgent test. You told me to use the regular process."

"Sophie's mom. 1.2 centimeters. You wired three hundred thousand for a private suite."

"Ethan. What am I to you? What is my mother to you?"

He looked at the printout. Something shifted in his expression for just a moment. Then he leaned back in his chair.

"Mrs. Hayes has severe anxiety. A 1.2-centimeter finding is a huge psychological burden for her. Sophie couldn't handle it alone. I was just helping stabilize the situation."

He met my eyes.

"The three hundred thousand is just a deposit. It'll be refunded when she's discharged. Are you really going to fight with me over a deposit?"

"And my mother? She sat in a hospital corridor all night. She couldn't even get an urgent test done. You don't think she was scared?"

Ethan picked up his glass and took a slow sip.

"Your mother grew up hard. She's used to it. She's tougher than you think."

"That wasn't the right setting to make exceptions. If you're going to hold your mother's minor condition over my head like some kind of leverage, then I really don't know what to say to you."

I looked at the man I had been married to for five years. The neat shirt. The thin-framed glasses. The fluent medical vocabulary wrapped around what passed for principles.

Rotten to the core underneath all of it.

"Minor condition."

I nodded once.

No shouting. No asking why anymore.

I turned and walked out of the study and closed the door behind me.

There was no point reasoning with someone like that. That was my mistake.

I didn't go home that night.

I sat on the hotel bed until morning, photographing all of my mother's imaging files with my phone and sending them through the online consultation portal at a hospital in New York.

The consultation fee plus express surcharge came to twelve hundred dollars. I put it on my credit card.

Three days later, the specialist called.

"Is this the family of Susan Jones?"

A pause.

"I've reviewed the scans."

Another pause.

"The nodule is three centimeters, with pronounced spiculated margins and pleural traction. The probability is strongly in favor of malignancy, with early signs of peripheral infiltration."

I went rigid on the edge of the bed.

"We recommend surgery as soon as possible. No delays. When can you get here?"

"Tomorrow. First thing tomorrow morning."

I hung up and went straight home for my mother's ID.

I stepped out of the elevator and found the front door wide open. Moving men were hauling things inside.