Three Days Cost 500,000, Yet No Cheap Noodles

Three days after my right leg was shattered, I gritted my teeth against the pain, picked up my phone, and tried to order a ten-dollar bowl of plain noodles.

The payment screen flashed back: Insufficient balance.

I stared at it, then opened my bank account.

Twenty-five cents. That was all that was left.

...

Three days earlier, a workplace accident had put me in the ER, and my parents came rushing over with my brother.

They looked so frantic that I handed over the debit card I'd spent years scraping together and told them the PIN.

"Dad, Mom, use this to pay my hospital bill."

My mother's face crumpled with concern. "Katie, don't you worry. We'll go take care of it."

But now a nurse walked into the room holding an overdue notice.

"Bed 32, your account's in arrears and your medication's been cut off. When are your family coming to pay?"

I looked around the empty room, then back at the post my brother had just put up.

He was gripping the wheel of the newest Porsche, captioned:

"Thanks Mom and Dad for the coming-of-age gift, paid in full."

In that moment, the agony in my leg wasn't a fraction of what tore through my chest.

I finally saw this family for what it was. A pack of leeches.

"Let me call my family and ask. I'm sorry to trouble you."

The nurse sighed and turned to go.

I stared, hopeless, at the "0.25" on my screen.

That card had held the full $520,000 I'd killed myself with overtime to save over ten years.

It wasn't just the surgery money that would save my life.

It was the down payment I'd scrimped and starved to put aside for a home of my own.

And now it was all gone.

The pain pump that should have been refilled had been shut off.

Now the slightest shift of my right leg drove a spike straight through me.

Cold sweat soaked through my hospital gown.

Hands shaking, I dialed my mother.

It rang a long time before someone finally, lazily, picked up.

Right away I heard my brother whooping with excitement, and the roar of a car engine underneath it.

Teeth clenched against the pain in my leg, I forced out the question, my voice raw.

"Mom, why hasn't my hospital bill been paid?"

"And where did the $520,000 in my account go? How is there only 25 cents left?!"

The line went quiet for a beat.

Then my mother's voice came back, not the least bit ashamed.

"What kind of way is that to talk to your mother? Shouting like I'm some thief!"

"Your brother came up a little short on his car, so your dad and I talked it over and borrowed from it for now."

My eyes went wide in disbelief, my whole body trembling with rage.

"A little short? The post says he bought a Porsche outright!"

"You took every cent I spent years saving and bought him a car with it?!"

"What are you yelling for!"

On the other end, my father started laying into me, furious.

"Your brother's wanted a car for a year now. You've got all that money sitting in your card, so what's the problem with letting him use it first? The three of us came all that way to see you, and travel costs money, you know. Not an ounce of gratitude in you!"

Hearing that, something in me still cracked.

To get away from the family I was born into, I'd cut off all contact and hidden away in this city for four whole years.

Three days ago the serious injury landed me in the ER, and my company managed to track them down.

They'd stood at my bedside and cried until their faces streamed.

My parents even slapped themselves a few times, saying they'd wronged me all those years and this time they'd truly stay and look after me.

I thought they'd finally found some shred of a parent's conscience.

Turns out it was all an act.

On the phone, my father kept scolding.

"You're a girl. What's the point of you hoarding all that money? You'll marry off sooner or later, so what, you want to carry the Finch family's money off into some other family?"

"Besides, your brother's dating a city girl. Without a decent car to make a good impression, do you think her side is going to accept him? All of this is for the good of this family."

"We're just keeping it safe for you! So some wild man out there doesn't con you out of it later!"

The same lines again.

"For your own good." "Keeping it safe for you." I'd heard them countless times growing up.

Back then I'd tested into a top-ranked university with one of the ten best scores in the whole city, and tuition was only five thousand a year.

The day the acceptance letter came, I was too happy to sleep.

But my mother said, "Silly child, let Mom keep it safe for you, in case you lose it."

The next day I found my acceptance letter torn to pieces and thrown into the outhouse pit.

I went on a hunger strike in protest, and my mother wiped her eyes and took my hand.

"Katie, you're flesh of my flesh. Seeing you like this breaks my heart!"

"Mom doesn't want you going off somewhere far. I want to keep you close, get you a job at the factory, so later you can help out the family and not have to wear yourself out somewhere far away."

"Anyway, what good does all that schooling do a girl? You'll just marry and have children in the end. Mom's doing this for your own good."

Yet for my brother, who scored a 200 on his college entrance test, they scraped together thirty thousand from every corner so he could go to a private junior college.

Later I worked myself to the bone, holding down a job while studying for my degree on my own, and finally landed decent, well-paying work.

Then they said, "Young people just blow their money," and every month forced me to hand over more than half my salary.

Supposedly they were saving it as my dowry. In reality it all turned into designer clothes and the latest phones for my brother.

Five years ago, long stretches of overtime gave me a perforated stomach, and I was rushed to the ER.

The doctors said a family member had to sign and pay before they could operate. I made dozens of calls begging them to come.

"Dad, the money I had you all save, I need it now for surgery. Come to the hospital and help me pay and sign, please."

But on the phone my father couldn't have sounded more put out.

"What money? Your brother got in a fight today and he's in a mood. Can't you just sign for yourself? We're doing this to build up your independence, you know. You can't always be counting on us."

In the end I signed the critical-condition form myself, propping myself up through it, and borrowed money from a coworker to get the surgery done.

The memory brought the tears flooding out, and I broke and screamed into the phone.

"But my leg is broken now!"

"The doctor said if I don't pay and get the surgery in the next two days, I'll be crippled for life!"

"You spent every cent of it. Are you trying to let me die of the pain in this hospital?"

My mother jumped in at once.

"Oh, Katie, it's not that serious! Doctors just say those things to squeeze more money out of you."

"You're young, you've got a strong body. Just lie in the hospital a few days and rest, and the bone will knit itself back together on its own."

Hearing that, I nearly passed out.

Just then my brother's irritated complaint came through the phone.

"Mom, I just picked up my new car and Sis is over there wailing like it's a funeral. Talk about bad luck!"

My father heard it and hurried to soothe Hubert Finch in the gentlest voice.

"Hubert, don't be upset. You're the root of this family. Daddy wants you happy every minute of every day."

Then he turned right back to me and gave his orders.

"Enough! Quit making a scene. Lie there a couple of days, then hurry up and check yourself out and come home. Stop burning money in that hospital! Phone calls aren't cheap. I'm hanging up!"

The nurse kept pushing me for an answer. I clenched my fists so hard I bit my lip open.

"I'm not going through with the treatment. Please help me check out."

The nurse froze, her eyes full of disbelief.

"You have a shattered leg! If you leave now and the bone slips out of place and gets infected, this leg is finished for good!"

I lowered my eyes and said, hollow with despair,

"Thank you, but I have no money left. I have to go home and get some."

The nurse shook her head. "Fine, miss."

Then I peeled off the hospital gown and put on my own clothes.

Every movement of getting dressed came with a pain that bored straight through me.

I signed the papers, finished the discharge, and could only drag my casted leg along, one hand against the wall, inching my way out of the room.

No wheelchair. No crutches. No family arm to lean on.

The other patients and their families in the corridor turned to look at me, startled and pitying.

"How is that girl leaving like this?"

"Mom, where's her family? She looks so pitiful."

"Ah, whose daughter is this..."

I kept my head down, listening to all of it, fighting to keep the tears from falling.

By the time I finally made it out through the hospital lobby, the sky had opened up into heavy, feathering snow.

The cold shot straight to the marrow in an instant.

My rented place, an old crumbling walk-up, was a full three miles from here.

Three miles. For a normal person, barely half an hour on foot.

But for me right now, it was like climbing over a mountain.

Then my foot slipped.

With a heavy thud, I crashed down onto the snow.

"Ahh"

The wound on my right leg struck the edge of the curb, and the pain drove through me so sharply I screamed.

I nearly blacked out from it.

Snow mixed with mud poured into my mouth, cold and bitter.

I lay sprawled on the ground, gasping in ragged breaths, without even the strength to get up.

In that haze, my mind went back to the year I was twelve.

That day, the snow had come down just like this.

My eight-year-old brother had been building a snowman in the yard when he took a spill, scraping a layer of skin off his knee, a thin line of blood welling up.

He bawled his eyes out.

My mother was scared out of her wits. She rushed over and scooped him up.

"Hubert! My precious baby, don't do this to Mommy!"

Her voice went raw from crying.

My father's eyes went red with panic too. He shoved me aside from where I stood in the doorway and snarled, "Get out of the way, you worthless girl! Can't you see your brother's badly hurt?"

That night, they paid a steep two hundred for an unlicensed car and rushed my brother across town to the best hospital, in the dead of night.

The doctor told them, helplessly, that a moment later and the scrape would have closed on its own. A skinned knee was perfectly normal for a child.

But they still weren't reassured. They insisted on admitting him for three days, three days of IV drips.

And that night, I was burning with a fever of a hundred and two.

Alone at home, I lay there a full day and night, without so much as a cup of warm water.

Sprawled in that freezing pit of snow, I finally broke and sobbed.

I don't know how long I lay there in the snow.

Only that it was long enough for my right leg to go numb with pain, long enough that the blood in my body felt frozen solid.

I wiped at my tears. No. I couldn't die here.

I still had a savings book hidden in an iron box under my bed, one that only I knew about.

It was long after dark by the time I finally dragged myself home.

I had barely shoved the door open and collapsed onto the bed when the phone in my pocket started buzzing.

The screen lit up with one word: Mom.

I took a deep breath and pressed answer.

"Katie, sweetie, why do you have to be so stubborn?"

My mother's voice came through the line, sounding frantic.

"I just called the hospital, and the nurse said you checked yourself out? What exactly did the doctor say? Is the leg any better? Why did you go home so fast?"

Hearing all that worry in her voice, my nose stung, sharp and sudden.

But before I could get a word out, my father's voice came from the other end, deliberately lowered.

"All right, quit asking all that useless stuff."

"She's been out in the big city four years. If she could save up over half a million, she's definitely got other accounts too."

"Feel her out, and quick. Hubert's still got no wedding money lined up. Get her to cough up some more."

Hubert's voice was mixed in there too.

"Yeah, Mom, that's right. She broke her leg, the company's bound to pay her a big settlement. You've got to get your hands on it fast, before she goes and spends it all in secret."

The last thread of hope inside me was ground to dust.

My fingertips dug into my palm, and I was just about to hang up.

Then a key turned in the lock outside the door.

With a click, the door swung open.

My parents walked in trailing the cold air, faces stretched into big smiles.

I froze. How did they have a key to my rented apartment?

"Katie, look at you. Your leg's like that and you're still running all over the place. You scared me half to death!"

My mother hung up her phone at once, hurried to the bedside, and reached out to touch my face, her whole expression aching with concern.

I turned my head away on instinct, then spoke coldly.

"How did you two even know the address of my apartment?"

Her hand froze in midair, but she didn't get angry. She just turned naturally and started tidying my bed.

"Your coworkers told us, of course. Silly girl."

My father set the insulated food container he was carrying down on the table.

"Katie, your dad was worried you weren't eating right these few days in the hospital, so I borrowed the kitchen at the little diner downstairs and made your favorite, pepper steak stir-fry."

"Eat it while it's hot. Build your strength back up."

Looking at the food steaming on the table, and at my mother folding my scattered clothes into the wardrobe.

If I hadn't just heard those words on the phone.

I might have almost believed they really loved me.

So it turned out they had only just noticed I'd grown up and could make money now.

"You always were careless when you're out here on your own, girl."

My mother nattered on as she folded my clothes.

"Look how pale your face is. And I talk to you and you won't even answer."

She sighed, and a note of complaint crept into her voice.

"Katie, I don't mean to lecture, but that temperament of yours really does need to change."

"You barely talked as a child, and now you go around every day with that miserable face. It's not the least bit likable."

"Look at how good your brother is with people. Sweet-talks everyone, and who doesn't praise him for it? You, now. If you were even half as likable as Hubert, I wouldn't have to worry about you like this."

My heart felt like it had been packed with shards of ice, cold enough to hurt.

"Likable?"

I stared at her, my voice shaking.

"My whole life, every good thing to eat, every good thing to wear, it always went to Hubert first."

"He made a mistake, I got the beating. He wanted a toy, my meal money got cut."

"I was always the one being cut short, the one sacrificed. How am I supposed to be likable? How could I ever manage to smile?"

My mother's hands stopped. A flicker of awkwardness crossed her face, but she quickly put on a wounded expression.

"Why do you keep dragging up old business, girl? I'm old, I've forgotten it all. Besides, aren't I taking good care of you right now?"

"Taking care of me?"

I pointed at that swollen, casted, ruined leg of mine, and the tears broke loose.

"This is how you take care of me? You couldn't even leave my lifesaving money alone?"

"The five hundred and twenty thousand in my paycheck account, that was money I traded my life for, all those late nights and overtime!"

"Why did you take every cent of it without a word to buy Hubert a car?"

"Did you know that was my surgery money? If I don't pay, I'm going to end up crippled!"

Faced with my sharp questions, my father turned his head away guiltily and pretended to wipe the table.

My mother hurried to sit on the edge of the bed, grabbed my hand, and her eyes went red in an instant.

"Katie, don't talk like that. Four years with no contact, do you have any idea how much your mother missed you in her heart?"

"We came all this way just to see you properly, to look after you."

She wiped at her tears, and her voice thickened.

"About the car, I'll be honest with you. Hubert met a girl from the big city a few days back."

"Her family's well-off. If we don't put together a decent wedding gift and a car, how could a girl like that ever look twice at Hubert?"

"You know how it is back home. You can work the land all year round and still barely scrape together any money."

She held my hand tight, her eyes full of pleading and something small and low.

"You've made something of yourself now. You can earn real money in the big city."

"We're family. Break a bone and the tendons still hold it together. What's wrong with helping your brother out?"

"Do you really have the heart to stand by and watch the Finch bloodline die out?"

Looking at my mother's face, I felt my stomach turn over and over.

Before I could get a word out, the phone she'd set on the nightstand buzzed.

It was a video call from my brother, Hubert.

She answered fast. He was lounging back in the leather seat of his brand-new Porsche, chewing tobacco, his whole face soured with impatience.

"Mom, did you get the money out of her or not?"

"I still have to get this car wrapped, redo the interior and the seats. All of it comes to tens of thousands more. My girl says if I don't get it done, she won't sign the papers with me!"

"My sister's leg is basically done for anyway. Might as well have her hand over whatever's left so I can cover this."

"She's not gonna just sit there and watch her own brother stay single his whole life, is she?"

Hearing all this, I shook with rage from head to toe.

This was the "adorable" good son they were always talking about.

My mother shot me an awkward glance and hurried to coax the screen.

"Hubert, don't get worked up, Mom's talking it over with your sister right now. She's your blood, how could she leave you hanging?"

She hung up, turned to me, and her eyes went red all over again.

"Katie, you heard him. Your brother's backed into a corner, he's got no other choice."

"We're family, we don't keep accounts against each other. You and Hubert both came out of my own body, back of the hand or palm, it's all my flesh. How could Mom not love you?"

"It's just, as the older sister, caring for your brother is your duty to begin with! Your company must have paid you some kind of settlement, right?"

That line, "caring for your brother is your duty," was the one I couldn't hold the anger down for anymore, and the tears came down in great heavy drops.

I screamed at her, out of control.

"What do you mean it's my duty to begin with?"

"My whole life you made me give way to him. But where exactly is Hubert the little one? He's only three months younger than me!"

"We're the same age, and just because he's a boy, you set him up like some ancestor to worship!"

"And me, your own daughter, I'm supposed to deserve getting every drop of blood sucked out of me?"

"My leg is nearly ruined, and you're still eyeing the settlement money?!"

I was so worked up that I jerked hard against the injury in my right leg.

Pain tore through the break in the bone.

I sucked in a sharp breath and clamped both hands over my right leg.

My whole body curled up on the bed in agony, cold sweat soaking through my back in an instant.

Watching me writhe like I wanted to die, my father fixed his stare on my broken, casted leg.

His eyes darted, and then he said to my mother, vicious.

"Woman, I say this dead girl's heart went wild a long time ago. She's turned against us, she'll never be tamed."

"She's definitely still got money on her, she just won't give it to Hubert."

"In that case, let's finish what we started and break her other leg too! Then we'll be able to squeeze the money out of her for sure."

My head snapped up. I couldn't believe those words came out of my own father.

He kept on to my mother.

"That'll stop her always wanting to run, always wanting to leave us!"

"Break her legs for good, and she'll never be able to leave us again. From now on she stays put in the hometown, washing our clothes and cooking our meals, looking after us into old age!"

"Then we find some old man willing to pay a big gift for her and marry her off, and there's Hubert's bride money sorted!"

The second he finished, he didn't hesitate at all. He turned, strode into the bathroom, and came out swinging a mop.

My mother jumped, and tugged at his sleeve.

"Oh, Clint, isn't this too hard on her? We did raise her, after all"

"Out of my way! You and your soft woman's heart! Today I'm going to cripple this ungrateful girl for good!"

He flung my mother off, raised the mop high, and brought it down hard on my good left leg.

"Bang! "

"Ahh!"

The crack of the mop and my scream went up at the same time, the fierce pain shooting through my whole body like a current.

"I'll teach you to run! I'll teach you to hide the settlement from your brother!"

My father roared, his face twisted, and lifted the mop again and again, smashing it down on me.

"Ahh! Help somebody help"

I rolled across the bed, screaming from the pain.

Just as my father's eyes went bloodshot and he raised the mop high, ready to throw everything he had into the ninth blow.

"Bang." The wooden door was kicked open from the outside.