POV: Liora Hayes
The smell of the hospital always made me want to scream. It was a mixture of floor wax, bleach, and the metallic tang of sickness. Usually, I could handle it. Usually, I marched through these sliding doors with a smile plastered on my face, ready to tell my mother about the "great" tips I made at the diner.
Tonight, I was a ghost.
I was dripping wet. My shoes made a squelching sound with every step, leaving a trail of dirty rainwater on the pristine white tiles. The security guard at the front desk looked at me with disgust, but I didn't care. I didn't have room in my heart to feel embarrassed anymore.
I walked straight to the billing department. It was a glass-enclosed office that looked like a fortress. Behind the desk sat a woman with hair so tight it seemed to pull her eyes back. Her name tag read Mrs. Gable. To the patients, she was known as the Ice Queen.
I tapped on the glass. She didn't look up from her computer.
"Excuse me," I said, my voice cracking. "I'm Liora Hayes. I spoke to someone on the phone about my mother, Mara Hayes."
Mrs. Gable sighed, a long, dramatic sound, before finally meeting my eyes. She looked at my soaked uniform and my shivering frame like I was a stray dog that had wandered into a cathedral.
"The deposit is fifty thousand dollars, Miss Hayes," she said. No 'hello.' No 'I'm sorry for your news.' Just the number.
"I know," I whispered, leaning against the cold glass for support. "But it's four in the morning. Banks aren't even open. I just lost my job an hour ago. I need more time. Just forty-eight hours. I'll find the money. I'll take out a loan. I'll—"
"You have no collateral for a loan, Miss Hayes," she interrupted. She pulled up a file on her screen. "You are already three months behind on your own rent. Your credit score is non-existent. And your mother's condition is a 'high-resource' drain. We cannot extend charity to those who cannot even maintain a basic checking account."
"It's not charity! It's her life!" I hit the glass with the palm of my hand. The sound echoed in the quiet hallway. "She's been a teacher in this city for thirty years. She paid into her insurance her whole life. You can't just toss her into a hallway because a computer program decided her heart is a 'pre-existing condition'!"
Mrs. Gable didn't flinch. She leaned forward, her eyes as cold as the man's in the black car. "The world doesn't care about what's fair, Liora. It cares about what's paid. You have until 9:00 AM. After that, her bed in the ICU is assigned to a patient with a private-pay insurance plan."
"Please," I sobbed, my pride finally breaking. I sank to my knees on the wet floor. "Please, don't move her. The public ward is overcrowded. The nurses are spread too thin. If she has another episode... she'll die alone."
"Then I suggest you stop crying on my floor and go find fifty thousand dollars," she said, turning back to her monitor. "You're wasting the five hours you have left."
I stood up, my legs shaking. I felt empty. Hollow. I turned away from the desk and walked toward the elevators.
I needed to see her.
The ICU was on the fourth floor. It was a place of soft beeps and hushed whispers. I scrubbed my hands until they were raw and put on a yellow plastic gown.
When I reached my mother's room, I stopped at the glass.
She looked so small. My mother was a woman who used to bake bread every Sunday and sing along to the radio. Now, she was buried under a mountain of white blankets and tangled in a web of plastic tubes. A machine whistled as it forced air into her lungs. The monitor above her head showed a jagged green line….her heart, struggling to keep a rhythm.
I pressed my forehead against the glass.
"I'm sorry, Mom," I whispered. "I'm so sorry I'm not enough."
I watched her chest rise and fall, powered by a machine I couldn't afford to rent for another day. I thought about the man in the car. He probably spent fifty thousand dollars on a watch. He probably spent half a million on a dinner party.
To him, this money was nothing. To me, it was the price of my mother's soul.
I stayed there for an hour, watching the clock on the wall tick toward 9:00 AM. Every minute was a heartbeat lost. Every second was a step closer to the end.
A nurse walked by, giving me a pitying look. "She's a fighter, Liora. But she needs that surgery. The doctors say her valve is failing faster than we expected."
"I know," I said, my voice dead.
I left the ICU and went back downstairs. I had to try. I had to call people. I sat on a plastic chair in the waiting room and pulled out my cracked phone.
I called my Aunt Sarah.
Straight to voicemail.
I called my old roommate.
"Liora? Look, I'm really sorry about your mom, but I just put a down payment on a car. I literally have twenty dollars until Friday."
I called a payday loan office.
"We don't give loans to the unemployed, honey. Sorry."
With every "No," the walls of the hospital felt like they were closing in on me. The sun began to rise, casting a gray, gloomy light over the city. The 9:00 AM deadline was a guillotine hanging over my neck.
At 8:45 AM, I walked back to the billing desk. I hoped for a miracle. I hoped Mrs. Gable had found a heart in her chest.
She didn't even wait for me to speak. She didn't look up. She simply reached for a printer and pulled out a bright red sheet of paper.
She slid it through the slot in the glass.
"What is this?" I asked, my heart stopping.
"The Notice of Transfer," she said. "The order has been signed. The transport team will be in your mother's room in fifteen minutes to move her to the county facility. You'll need to clear out her personal belongings from the private suite immediately."
I stared at the red paper. It felt hot in my hands, like it was burning my skin.
"You're killing her," I whispered.
"No," Mrs. Gable said, finally looking at me with a shred of something that looked like pity, but felt like lead. "Your poverty is killing her. There's a difference."
I turned around, the red paper clutched in my hand, and saw a man standing in the middle of the lobby. He was wearing a sharp gray suit and holding a leather briefcase. He wasn't the man from the car, but he looked like he worked for him.
He was looking directly at me.
"Miss Liora Hayes?" he asked. His voice was smooth, like expensive whiskey.
I wiped a tear from my cheek. "Who are you?"
"My name is Xavier," he said, stepping closer. "And I think I have a solution to all of your problems. But first, we need to go for a drive."