Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 157162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
“Acute lymphocytic leukemia,” His voice became deadened, all joy leached from it.
I felt guilty. For returning him to the place where he lived underneath all the easy smiles— constantly consumed by pain, agony and worry for someone he obviously loved with all of his being.
Although I wasn’t a soft and cuddly aunt, I loved my nieces and nephews with every millimeter of my shriveled heart, and the thought of anything happening to them made my chest hurt. I would go to the ends of the earth to locate any kind of demon or devil to sell my soul to in order to keep them safe.
You know, if I hadn’t already sold it to make myself rich and powerful.
“How is she?” I was still unable to inject any empathy into my tone, although I felt it radiating to my bones.
Elliot clenched and unclenched his fist on the bar. “She’s a fighter.” He smiled, but the smile was so sad and full of pain that it made my eyes fill with tears I would’ve readily shed if I was weaker or a woman capable of feeling more. Though maybe it was my rejection of feelings that made me weaker.
“But without a bone marrow transplant, it doesn’t look good.” Elliot spoke over my shoulder, his eyes wide, unseeing.
It felt like my throat was lined with thorns. Unable to keep looking at him, my eyes went back to the bar, to the bottles behind it, anywhere but on the man who was obviously in a kind of pain that superseded any kind of petty bullshit I was involved in.
“None of us are matches,” he continued. “My brother, me, my father.”
I forced myself to look at him, to witness the defeat in his words. I didn’t know this man from Adam, but I knew men like him, like my brother. All they wanted to do was protect those they loved. My brother would’ve given all of his bones, his organs, his lifeblood in an instant to save his children. And not being able to do that when it might’ve been the only thing to keep them on this earth would haunt him for eternity.
Powerlessness. That’s what I was witnessing. Powerlessness, not defeat. I saw that he had not accepted, would not accept, that there was no treatment, yet I also felt hopelessness creeping in.
“We’re on a list,” he sighed.
I sucked my teeth. I had a cynical view of our healthcare system because it was inherently fucked. Sure, she might have had a chance to get a donor, but the chance was small. People bought their way to the top of those lists all the fucking time.
I was the person who made them the money required to do so.
My lunch swirled in my stomach.
“Where’s her mother?” I demanded.
Elliot’s face scrunched up with fury that looked unfamiliar yet embedded. “She left,” he bit out. “When she was three months old.”
I gaped at him. “Three months old?”
I thought of my nieces, how tiny they were then. How helpless. How reliant on the woman who birthed them for safety, comfort. Even me, the self-professed callous bitch, found it impossible to understand leaving something that small and sacred.
He nodded once, curtly. “She’s an immensely selfish woman. We tried to warn him, but he was in love. She was his whole world until he held his daughter. Then nothing mattered but her, and his wife didn’t like that. She was jealous.” He spat the sentences out like tacks, nothing like the free-flowing words of before. My earlier assumption that nothing could rile this man was proved wrong. When it came to his family, he was a different beast entirely.
We had that in common.
Jealous. Of her husband doting on her daughter. I shook my head.
“Yeah, piece of work,” he agreed at my head shaking. “We’re better off without her. Though we could use some of her bone marrow.”
Though this entire subject was infinitely sad, I perked up at this. “She’s a match?”
Elliot shrugged. I knew he was going for nonchalance, but I registered the way his entire body tensed, his eyes hardening, and his mouth flattened as if he was gritting his teeth. “We can’t be sure, but the closer the family, the better.”
Powerlessness. I could feel it. In him.
But powerlessness was not something I accepted. So even as he spoke, a plan formed in my head.
“I better go.” I straightened my shoulders, finally able to properly look him in the eye now that I had a plan. Now that I could control something.
His expression changed as he took in what could only be viewed as an abrupt and careless end to a horrible conversation that required softness, empathy.
Good. Maybe he’d rightly ascertain that I was heartless and stay far away from me.
“Keep the check, Elliot.” I tapped the envelope.
Then I turned my back and walked out because I couldn’t stand the look on his face.