My father didn’t even glance up from the model yacht when he told me my leg wasn’t worth saving. The leather sofa beneath me released a small, protesting squeak every time I shifted my weight, trying desperately to find a position where the throbbing in my right ankle didn’t make my vision blur at the edges. White gauze wrapped around my leg like a clumsy cast, already stained rust-red where blood had seeped through despite the emergency room nurse’s careful wrapping.
I clutched the hospital bill in my hand so tightly the paper had begun to crumple, the numbers swimming together through a film of tears I refused to let fall. Four thousand five hundred dollars. That was the number printed in stark black ink at the bottom of the page, the amount standing between me and a future where I could walk without grinding pain, where I wouldn’t develop arthritis by thirty-five, where I could run or dance or simply climb stairs without my leg giving out beneath me.
“Dad,” I said, and my voice sounded thin even to my own ears, stretched tight like wire pulled too far. “The doctor said if I don’t have the surgery this week, the damage could be permanent. The ligaments are torn completely through.
Without repair, they won’t heal properly—”
“We already put the deposit down on the boat, Jordan.”
He said it the way someone might comment on the weather—mild, factual, completely devoid of conflict or concern. His fingers moved in slow, methodical circles along the painted hull of the miniature yacht sitting on the glass coffee table, the microfiber cloth catching the warm afternoon light streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He was so focused on removing an imaginary speck of dust from the tiny railing that I wasn’t entirely sure he’d registered that I was there at all.
“It’s non-refundable,” he added, almost absently, as if this explained everything. “Twenty-five thousand dollars. You understand how these commitments work.”
“It’s my leg,” I whispered, the words barely making it past my throat.
He leaned closer to the model, examining something on the miniature deck that only he could see. The grandfather clock in the hallway ticked steadily, marking seconds that felt like they were being carved into my bones. Across from him, my mother sat in an armchair upholstered in cream fabric that probably cost more than my monthly rent, a glossy interior design magazine spread across her lap.
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