“We need to speak with a responsible adult.”
“There isn’t one,” Lily said.
The man sighed.
“If the bill isn’t paid by noon… we’ll have to transfer your mother.”
Lily didn’t fully understand.
But she understood enough.
“You’re taking her away?”
Silence.
Emma stood up.
“But she’s still sick.”
“I know,” the nurse said softly. “But those are the rules.”
Rules.
A clean word…
used by people who don’t suffer them.
“What if we don’t have money?” Lily asked.
The man looked down.
“Then we have to move her.”
Emma didn’t cry.
She didn’t scream.
She just asked:
“What if she dies there?”
No one answered.
At 7:05 a.m., Ethan made a decision.
“I want to see them.”
Fifteen minutes later, weak and in a wheelchair, he was rolled into a modest hospital room.
The door was slightly open.
Inside—
the girls were gently “combing” their mother’s hair with their fingers.
