After My Terminal Diagnosis, I Heard My Boyfriend's Family Wishing Me Dead

The day I was diagnosed with late-stage stomach cancer, my boyfriend knelt in the hospital hallway holding me, saying he'd trade his life to give me one more day.

The next second, his mouth didn't move, yet I heard his voice, vicious to the core.

Three months is still too long. If Garry Pruitt dies before her, dividing up the estate means one more layer of paperwork.

I thought death had frightened me into hearing things, until his mother came in wearing the designer evening gown my late mother had left behind, carrying a bowl of soup laced with something, urging me through her tears to drink it down.

Wearing her mom's clothes really is comfortable. The fabric beats those rags in the shops. Once this dead girl stops breathing, everything in this house is mine.

So the terminal illness was fake, the devotion was fake, and even the "Pruitts" they kept invoking were nothing to them but a prize that would sooner or later change its name to James.

But they didn't know the only daughter of the Pruitt family wasn't a lamb waiting to die.

They wanted to put on a show of deep love and loyalty. I would let them perform it all the way to prison.

When they handed me the diagnosis, I sat outside the exam room a long time without moving.

Black on white, it read late-stage stomach cancer, immediate hospitalization advised. The doctor put it gently, and still, at the end, added quietly that the family should prepare themselves.

The sun was bright outside. A child ran past in the hallway, his mother chasing after him, telling him to slow down.

I stared at the scene, and the tears just fell.

I was only twenty-eight.

I hadn't taken my father to see the snow-capped mountains he'd talked about for over a decade, hadn't pulled the Pruitts out of the slump of these past two years, hadn't even taken the time to love myself properly, not once.

The first person I thought of was Joshua James.

Seven years ago he'd confessed to me on the college field, so nervous he forgot every word he'd prepared and just shoved an ice-cold soda into my hand.

Later, when my mother died and I went three days without sleep in the funeral hall, he was the one who stayed beside me. When my father collapsed for the first time, he was the one who kept watch through the night in my place.

Countless times I'd counted myself lucky. However hard things got, I still had Joshua.

So I didn't tell him right away.

I was afraid it would break him, afraid that the moment he heard the words "late-stage," his tears would fall before mine.

But I'd barely reached the hospital lobby when he came running from across the room, his forehead soaked with sweat.

"Marty, what did the doctor want with you? Why do you look so pale?"

He snatched the folder from my hand, his movements frantic, as if he were truly afraid.

I wanted to stop him but had no strength left.

The diagnosis slipped out, and his eyes landed on those few words, and he went rigid where he stood.

The next second, Joshua pulled me into his arms, his shoulders shaking hard.

"No. It has to be a misdiagnosis. We'll switch hospitals, get the best doctors."

His tears struck the side of my neck, hot enough to make my chest ache.

I was about to comfort him when a low voice sounded in my ear.

About done crying? Don't get my clothes dirty. She's at her most fragile right now, better get her to sign the authorization while she's still raw.

I shoved him away hard.

Joshua's lips were pressed shut, and the tear tracks on his face weren't faked in the slightest.

"What's wrong?" He touched my face, panicked. "Does something hurt?"

She couldn't have figured anything out, could she? No way. Stupid as she is, what could she possibly know?

My heart clenched all at once.

This is a hallucination, I told myself.

A person handed a death sentence, it's no surprise the mind slips.

But Joshua held me all the way to the car, and as he gently buckled my seatbelt, the voice went on.

Three months. That's plenty. Keep her steady first, and someone has to keep eyes on Garry Pruitt too.

I looked at my own pale reflection in the car window and suddenly felt so cold I was shaking.

Joshua reached over to turn on the heat, but I shrank away to the side.

"Marty?"

"It's nothing." I lowered my head. "I'm just a little scared."

He gripped my hand at once, his voice choked.

"Don't be scared. I'm here."

I used to believe that line more than anything.

But today, for the first time, I wished he weren't.

When I got back to the Pruitt mansion, the James family was already sitting in the living room, waiting for me.

Will James had one of my father's cigars, the ones he'd collected for years, clamped in his mouth, his feet up on the rosewood coffee table my mother had left behind, ash flicked all over the tabletop.

My mother had picked that table out herself, just before she died. She said the grain in the wood looked like a river, and that keeping it in the house would settle people's hearts.

I used to worry that Will's smoking would ruin it, but Joshua always said his father didn't understand these things and told me not to make an issue of it.

Today, though, I suddenly heard Will laughing to himself, deep inside.

A beat-up table, and she treats it like treasure. Once it's signed over, I wouldn't even want it holding down a corner of the yard.

Clara James came down the stairs.

She was wearing my mother's pale moon-white silk gown.

It had been my mother's favorite, with a small jade clasp at the collar. I'd kept it locked away in the very back of the master bedroom's closet, never able to bring myself to touch it.

Now Clara had it stretched tight across her body, a grease stain smeared on one cuff.

She saw me and smiled, as if nothing were wrong at all.

"Marty's home? I thought it was a shame to leave this hanging there, so I put it on. You don't mind, do you?"

Something closed off my throat.

For that instant I forgot I might be dying. All I felt was that someone had dragged my mother out of her grave and turned her into a rag for people to walk on.

Clara came over and took my hand, her eyes reddening fast.

"Joshua told me you're sick. It broke my heart to hear it."

Sick and dying, and she still gets the best clothes and the best house. Bad luck, the whole thing. If I weren't afraid she'd catch on, I'd have cleaned out that closet already.

My fingers went cold.

This wasn't something I was imagining.

One person's malice could be an act. But two, three, four people speaking the same secret at once couldn't just mean I'd lost my mind.

Christine James was lounging on the sofa scrolling on her phone, a row of shopping bags piled at her feet.

One of them held a limited-edition bag, bought with the money from pawning the jewelry my mother had left me on my birthday.

I looked at her, my voice rough.

"Christine, wasn't this the bag you said you were borrowing last month for a photo shoot?"

She looked up and curled her lip, annoyed.

"Sis, look at the state you're in, and you're still fussing over a bag?"

Joshua snapped at her at once. "Is that any way to talk to your brother's wife?"

Idiot. Would it kill you to hold out three months? Once she's dead, I can take as much as I want.

Christine rolled her eyes, but she came over right away and threw her arms around me.

"I just feel bad for you. Don't worry, while you rest and get better, I'll take good care of your father and this house for you."

Someone who's about to die, hogging a house this big. What a waste. Where does she keep the keys to that sports car?

I stood there among them, like I'd fallen into a pit of ice.

They lived in my house, spent my money, wore my mother's things, and treated my father as an obstacle they were waiting to see cleared away.

And for the past seven years, I'd been calling this parasitism "family."

At dinner, Clara ladled me a bowl of soup.

She set it down in front of me, her face as tender as a real mother's.

"Marty, I made this just for you. Drink it while it's hot."

Drink up. The harder you throw up, the more you'll believe you don't have long.

I stared into the bowl, my stomach churning.

Then I picked it up and went to the window, pretending to cough until I couldn't catch my breath.

While everyone crowded around me, I poured the soup into the sealed bag I'd tucked away.

Clara was still patting my back, her tone urgent.

"Why aren't you drinking it? This is good for you."

I turned to look at her, tears already falling.

She thought it was despair, and inside she was pleased with herself.

But I was crying for myself.

Crying for the Martha Pruitt who had once called them family a fool this whole time, and I never once saw it.

That night I locked myself in the bedroom and sat on the floor of my mother's dressing room.

Several sections of the rack stood empty.

I used to think the housekeeper had taken the pieces away to be cared for. Only later did I learn that Clara had helped herself long ago to my mother's cashmere coats, her watches, her pearl necklace.

She had even given away the jade earrings my mother wore at her wedding, handing them to Christine for some class reunion.

I ran my hand over the empty jewelry box, and tear after tear fell onto the velvet.

My mother died when I was seventeen.

The last time she was lucid, she took my hand and said, "Marty, I won't get to watch you grow up. Whatever you do from now on, don't let anyone wrong you. Don't just endure."

I nodded through my tears back then.

Yet now I had become the one who endured best of all.

Joshua said his parents came from a small town and weren't used to city life, so I let them move into the Pruitt mansion.

Christine said her classmates laughed at her for having no designer labels, so I got her one supplementary credit card after another.

Will used the Pruitt company's business partners as cover to wine and dine, even calling my family's driver to chauffeur him around, and I told myself he just liked to save face.

I gave them every out, every bit of dignity, everything I could give.

And they treated all of it as something I owed them.

My phone lit up. A message from Joshua.

"Baby, don't let your mind run wild. I'll always be here with you."

Right after that, his feed updated with a photo.

In it he was drinking with a few business partners out on the golf course, captioned: "Thanks to all of you gentlemen for looking after me. I hope you'll keep supporting the Pruitts going forward."

I stared at that line, my fingers shaking uncontrollably.

He hadn't been put in charge of anything at the Pruitt Group.

Yet here he was, brazenly using the Pruitt name to pave his own way in front of everyone.

I called my college roommate, Natalie Henson.

Natalie was a lawyer now, and she picked up fast.

"Marty, why so late?"

I opened my mouth, but my voice came out badly hoarse.

"Natalie, I think I've been deceived."

She didn't press for details. She only said, "Send me your address."

Half an hour later she was sitting in my room, reading the diagnosis, then taking the bag of soup from me.

When I told her about hearing people's inner thoughts, even I thought it sounded absurd.

Natalie didn't tell me I was crazy.

She just pushed tissues into my hand and said quietly, "Whether those voices are real or not, the soup can be tested, the diagnosis can be checked again, and the money and the documents can be looked into too."

"Don't rush to prove whether you're hearing things."

"Protect yourself first."

That was what finally broke me into sobbing.

I cried quietly, afraid of stirring the people outside the door, biting the back of my hand, not even daring to let my shoulders shake too hard.

Natalie held me and said nothing.

I didn't sleep that night.

I read through the messages Joshua had sent me over the years, again and again. All those "come home early," "don't wear yourself out," "it hurts me to see you like this" felt now like so many needles.

The part that hurt most wasn't that he didn't love me.

It was that even as he nearly had me killed, I was still crying and making excuses for him.

The next morning, first thing, I canceled every one of the James family's supplementary cards.

I made it very clear to the bank's account manager: no one was to have them reinstated, Joshua included.

Ten minutes later, Christine called.

She was at a counter in some department store, her voice shrill enough to split an eardrum.

"Martha, what is this? My card won't go through!"

I sat in the car, looking out the window, my tone level.

"The bank said cash flow was tight. I had them shut off for now."

"Who do you think you're fooling? Your family's loaded!"

"The Pruitts are wealthy," I said. "What does that have to do with you?"

There was silence on the line for a couple of seconds.

Then she dropped the act completely.

"My brother spent seven years with you! You got sick, and he's the one who stayed by your side. So what if you buy me one bag?"

I heard her inner voice, sharp and mean.

Once my brother takes over the Pruitts, the first thing he'll do is throw her out. When she comes crying and begging me, I won't even let her through the door.

I hung up on her.

At the office, my secretary Penelope Swanson's eyes were red when she saw me.

"Miss Pruitt, Manager James notified all the departments yesterday. He said you weren't well, and that from now on he'd be signing off on every project."

I stopped where I was.

Yesterday I was still in the hospital, being told I had "only three months left."

And he already couldn't wait, crowning himself inside my own company.

"Call all the directors in for a meeting," I said.

In the conference room, Joshua arrived fast.

He saw me in the head seat and froze for a beat, then came over with his brow furrowed.

"Marty, why are you at the office? You have to rest right now."

She shouldn't be here. Didn't Dr. Perry scare her off?

I looked at that face of his, still handsome, still gentle, and the last thread of hope in me died for good.

It wasn't something I'd imagined hearing.

He really did know the diagnosis was fake.

He really was waiting for me to die.

I slid a document across to him.

"Manager James, as of now, all of your approval authority is suspended. You'll be subject to an audit."

His expression changed.

"Why?"

"Because the Pruitt Group isn't a signboard you drag around out there to make yourself look good."

The room went silent in an instant.

I went on. "One more thing. Every private dinner you attended in the Pruitt name, every partnership you promised, every gift you accepted. I want it all listed out and handed back."

Joshua clenched his fist.

What the hell does this bitch know?

I looked up and gave a small laugh.

"I'm only sick."

"I'm not dead."