Dark Intentions, #1

by Charlotte Byrd

  "What are you talking about? Where are they?"

  I leave the kitchen and walk around the dining room. When I don’t find them there, I head to the console table behind the couch where we usually pile up all sorts of envelopes and papers, which I keep meaning to get to.

  Searching through everything, I find nothing. When I get back to the kitchen, my food is plated and she's holding a big thick envelope in her hand.

  "I'm going to show you this, but I want you to put it in perspective, Jacqueline."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The costs. I want you to consider the costs of all of this."

  My face falls. It was such a long shot for the doctor at the Mayo Clinic to even take on my mom as a patient for her breast cancer diagnosis. But I hadn't considered how much it would even cost or how we would pay for it.

  I grab the folder from her, rip into it, and scroll past the congratulations and all that welcome stuff to about the tenth page where they mention the costs.

  "$250,000," I say, looking up at her, "a quarter of a million."

  She nods.

  "Are they insane?"

  "There's a surgery involved and as you know, the cancer has spread somewhat."

  "But you already had chemotherapy and radiation and all that stuff."

  "Yes, exactly. And if you remember, I already owe about $150,000 in bills for all of that treatment."

  "Okay, so we pay for it and that's it. What's there to think about?"

  "Pay for it with what money, Jacqueline?" Mom asks, crossing her hands.

  I feel like she's talking to me like one of her third grade students.

  "I don't know, we put it on the credit cards like we did with the rest."

  "The rest of the treatments were pay as you go. I took out some additional Medical credit cards. We maxed out all the others. We took a loan against the house."

  I nod. I know all of this.

  Suddenly I feel incredibly guilty for the fact that I don't have a good paying job to help pay for all of these expenses.

  "Look, I'm not saying any of this to make you feel bad. This isn't your burden."

  "Of course it is, you're my mother."

  "All I'm saying is that we're pretty tapped out for all the medical bills that I have already paid, okay? And Michael's funeral, that set us back a good $10,000, so I just don't think this is in the cards for me."

  "So what are you going to do, just give up?"

  "I can do more chemotherapy or radiation here, but ..."

  "No, if the Mayo Clinic and the doctors there think that you have a chance ..."

  "Everything's experimental, okay? There are no guarantees."

  "I'm not just going to stand here and watch you die, Mom."

  "I don't think you have a choice. Eat your food,” she says and walks out, slamming the door to her room shut.

  I melt into the chair and I pick up the fork and stare at the food before me, trying to figure out what I’m going to do.

  10

  Jacqueline

  I can't sleep all night. I toss and turn and I try to figure out a way out of this mess. I take the packet to my room with me, read it over and over again looking for loopholes or options. They mention that they have their own financing, but financing requires credit reports, and both mine and Mom’s are pretty much tapped out.

  I could get a job, but I'd be lucky to find something that pays $40,000 a year, and that's not going to get us any closer to paying off this quarter of a million dollar bill.

  And the thing is that the paperwork here is convoluted as well, so they're dealing with terminally or almost terminally ill patients who will probably not be successful and will probably then not be able to pay the bill. Somebody else has to be the co-signer, and the majority of the money is paid upfront.

  I go online and check my credit limits on all my cards. I can probably get another one. Everything is almost tapped out because I had been helping my mom pay down her other medical bills.

  If she or I declare bankruptcy, these other bills will go away, but so will the credit cards for more money that can be borrowed.

  I'm stuck.

  I don't want to admit it, but she's right. We can't pay for this, and if we don't pay for this, then the chances of her living another six months are pretty grim.

  I get up and pace around the room. My legs feel tense but weak, and I slip on a pair of yoga pants and my lightest jacket and go for a run, mostly to get out of the claustrophobic atmosphere.

  I run down my street and around the corner past the diner that's just opening up for all those older people in the neighborhood who like to get their fresh bread and coffee at 5:00 a.m.

  This area still has a little bit of old New York to it. There's no suburban sprawl. The houses are small and at least thirty years old, and there's still a sense of community.

  There's a deli, a diner, a bar, and a pompom-and-pop grocery store, and a few clothing stores. There are a lot of elderly people who live here, because they can still take the bus or walk to get their groceries and their medications at the local pharmacy.

  I run past the bakery, and the smell of fresh bread knocks me back for a moment. I feel around in my jacket and notice that I have brought my wallet.

  I'll make a stop here on the way back, but for now I'll just continue to run. I run fast.

  I'm not a very good runner, and my side quickly begins to ache. I'm probably breathing all wrong, but my legs still feel good. I like the gust of wind that knocks itself into me, and I like watching my breath make little puffs all around me as I exhale.

  Finally, when my lungs feel like they're on fire, I stop, fold in half, and try to catch my breath.

  What am I going to do?

  Where am I going to get a quarter of a million dollars? I ask myself, shaking my head.

  I mean, that's the kind of money that ... Who the hell even has that kind of money?

  I try to think of everyone I know. Allison is at the top of the list. The most that I could probably borrow from her is $10,000, but it would be from her credit line and she'd need it back at a high interest rate, mostly because she has a tendency to forget to make payments, and her credit is shot.

  If not Allison, then who? I run names in my head as if I'm going through a Rolodex one after the other.

  Unfortunately, when you're poor, you happen to only know other poor people, and even if I were to meet a rich person, what would I do? Ask them if I can borrow this money just out of the blue?

  What about charities? I say to myself. There are charities that help people. Well, unfortunately as a journalist, I've reported on some for school projects and I discovered that charities have a lot of overhead to pay their employees, however meagerly, so that seems like an unlikely option.

  The few medical charities that I have heard about and read about will do things like pay for hospice care and a nurse just in the last months of someone's life, not invest a quarter of a million dollars into an experimental treatment that may or may not work.

  I run back home and on the way, stop at the bakery. I buy two loaves of French bread along with some muffins and a bag of bagels. Food has always been the place I turn to when I am in pain.

  When Dad was gambling, we lost all of our money and a moving truck came to repossess our furniture.

  When Michael died.

  Almost every time I've had any sort of breakup.

  Unlike my mom, I don't turn to exercise naturally.

  I'm more self-destructive than that.

  That probably explains why I've been going to Redemption.

  When I get back home, I put the baked goods on the dining table and make myself a strong cup of coffee.

  I've slept maybe two hours the whole night, and whatever energy jolt I experienced earlier has all but disappeared. Now, I feel like I'm completely drained.

  "Oh, wow. Look at all this," Mom says, coming into the kitchen, waking me up.

  I raise my head up and feel a strong crick i
n my neck that suddenly spasms. It's a few hours later because the sun is now streaming in through the window, and I realize that I must have fallen asleep on my arms right here while I was waiting for the coffee to heat up.

  "When did you get all this?"

  "Oh, I went on a run earlier. Stopped by the bakery."

  I move my neck from side to side, trying to work out the pain, but it just gets worse.

  A moment later, my neck has completely stiffened and I have to move my whole body around just to turn and look behind me.

  "Come here.” She points and sets me down in the chair and begins to rub my neck gently.

  After a few minutes, the spasm relaxes.

  Her massage gets more intense and my neck starts to feel infinitely better.

  "Thanks for getting all of this, but you know how I am with white flour. It's not good for me,” she says sweetly.

  I nod.

  She’s wearing the same robe and the silk pajamas from last night, along with some sort of mask on her face that's blue in color and yogurt-like in consistency.

  Suddenly, I want to cry. She has always been so good about taking care of herself, making sure that she drinks enough water and she eats only healthy food, and that's why her face looks like she is at least fifteen years younger than she is without any fillers or Botox.

  And yet she's the one who is sick.

  She's the one that has been sick for as long as I can remember.

  First, it was the chronic disease, the mold, and then the cancer diagnosis. It went into remission and then was back again, back in remission, and now it's more aggressive than ever.

  "You have to get this treatment," I say. "I don't care if I have to rob a bank, but we're going to do this."

  She's surprised by my tenacity and the determination in my face.

  "Okay," she says after a brief pause.

  "I'm going to figure it out, and I'll tell you what happens, but you fill out this paperwork and you tell them that we have the money and that we're going through with it as soon as possible."

  She reaches over, grabs me, wrapping her arms tightly around my shoulders.

  Suddenly she begins to sob.

  I think she needed this. I think she needed for me to step up to the plate and not always be her child, but to take action for once.

  I hold her as tears roll down my cheeks, and we both sob and I try to figure out how the hell I'm going to make this happen.

  11

  Jacqueline

  I can't believe that this is actually happening. I put my head on the steering wheel resting briefly. When the light turns green, I continue to stare straight ahead even when the asshole behind me leans into his horn.

  “I'm going. I'm going, okay?” I roll down the window to gesture to him but he already drives around my used Toyota Corolla with a dented front side and flips me off.

  I don't care. I'm upset, not about him, but something else. I can't believe this is happening.

  I press on the accelerator and drive and get onto the first exit going onto the highway. I do this sometimes to clear my head.

  I drive nowhere, in particular, just to be alone with my thoughts.

  I turn on the radio going through the channels and nothing strikes and keeps my interest. When I pass a few exits, I flip on my phone and start to blast 90s, No Doubt.

  This is the music that I grew up with and this is what I listened to long after it was no longer popular. I thrash around and sing along at the top of my lungs. And then I put on Aerosmith’s “Cryin’”, also from the 90s, and then some earlier stuff from the 70s.

  I feel a little bit better, a bit more empowered, but the cracks quickly begin to show when I pull off the exit and head into a gas station for snacks.

  I'm just wasting time. I'm just trying to make sense of something that makes no sense at all before I have to go back home and deal with life there.

  How did this happen?

  How did my life get so fucked up so quickly?

  I grab a pack of M&M's and a bottle of water and get back in my car, into my fortress of solitude. This is where the world isn't loud and obnoxious, but quiet. This car is over six years old and I'm its third or fourth owner but it's all mine, with the loan paid off and everything, which means that I'm not likely to lose it unless someone crashes into me.

  I pop a chocolate into my mouth, letting it settle on my tongue, allowing the sugar to melt slowly, not usually something I have much patience for. I feel just a little bit better and I guess that's kind of the point of guilty pleasures like this. It takes your mind away, off of everything I should be thinking about or maybe have thought about too much.

  I glance over at myself in the mirror, just a little bit of eyeliner and brow liner to make my over-plucked eyebrows not look so haggard. My hair has been seriously starting to get curly and frizzy over the last couple of years and now I have to rely on the flat iron more than I want to just look decent.

  Why does this kind of stuff keep happening? Everything was so good for so long. Why did that have to change?

  Later today, I meet up with Allison, completely distraught. I insist that she see me for lunch, even though she has a meeting right at 1:00. She manages to squeeze me in, and that's why we've been friends for so long.

  I tell her what's going on, and she puts her hand around me and sits down on my side of the booth. The waitress comes over with our drink order.

  "I don't think I want to eat anything," I announce.

  The waitress looks mildly annoyed.

  "We'll both have the salmon and the salads." Allison takes charge.

  "I'm just not sure how this is going to work out," I say. “I don't know what I can do, but I can't lose her."

  "You're not going to," she insists, but we both know that she's lying, or rather, maybe just wishfully thinking for something to be true that can't possibly be true.

  "How will this even work out? How can I come up with the money?"

  "I have no idea," Allison says, playing with her fork.

  "Do you know anyone? Do you know anyone that I can borrow this from? Do you know anything?"

  She shakes her head no.

  "What about your boss?"

  "I can't ask my boss."

  "I know, but I was thinking maybe, with you working in marketing, I can set up a GoFundMe page and raise some money that way if you do a story on her. I mean, she was an elementary school teacher and now she has a chance to get this treatment and she can't afford it."

  "I can ask around, but those kinds of stories usually are kept for little kids with cancer. You know that."

  I nod. Yeah, and they're usually situations that are a lot more dire. It just feels like you need this perfect story in order to have anyone pay attention, and by perfect I mean perfectly tragic.

  "That's pretty much true.” She nods. "Otherwise, no one's going to care. If you set up a GoFundMe, you'll probably be able to raise some money."

  "I doubt that it'd be more than $10,000," I say. "I mean, it's something, but it's not a solution. I sent back the materials today and they..."

  "What do you mean, you sent back the materials?" she asks.

  "That's exactly what I mean. I told them that I had the money. I told them to go ahead and we'll be there at the end of the month or whenever they give us a date. She'll be on the first flight out."

  "And how are you going to pay for it? I mean, don't they expect the money to be deposited?"

  "Yeah, for $75,000. They want it there before they start anything."

  "And how are you going to do that? How are you going to get the money?"

  "That's what I'm here for. I need to talk to you about any ideas that you could possibly have.”

  "Well, I don't have any."

  "What if I were to set up a webcam and do that OnlyFans thing?” I ask.

  She shakes her head no.

  "Come on, I mean, there’re a lot of webcam girls and they show their booty, their assets. They get paid."

&n
bsp; "They don't get paid as much as you'd think, mainly because there are so many women willing to flash and show what they have on camera."

  "Really?" I ask.

  She nods. "They used to get paid a lot more back when doing pornography was kind of taboo, but now anyone with a cell phone and a boyfriend pretty much can shoot whatever they want, so it's all about content, developing your brand, just like pretty much any other business, and you won't be able to do it in a couple of weeks. That's not to say that you won't make some money, but it's not going to solve your problem."

  I exhale loudly. I put my head down on the table. Our food arrives, and she's back on the other side of the booth.

  "I really wish that there were something I could do," Allison says, "but, really, I have no idea. You know that I don't really come from a wealthy family, and, I mean, I don't know how wealthy you have to be to have that kind of money laying around."

  "Yeah, I agree," I say, lifting my head up and taking a bite of my food.

  As we sit there, I chew loudly, and that's all I hear inside my head. I wish that the headache would go away and the pounding would disappear, but it doesn't.

  It just gets louder.

  The walls start to feel like they're closing in on me. I take a few deep breaths, exhaling extra slowly in order to calm myself down. The anxiety is building, starting to feel like a panic attack.

  I'm never good enough, nothing's ever going to work out, and my mom is just going to show up there and get turned away from the one thing that she's ever asked the of world.

  No, that's not going to happen. Not after I lost Michael. Too much bad stuff has already happened. Now I'm going to stand up for what's right, no matter what I have to do.

  We talk the rest of lunch. We talk about her job and her boyfriend and nothing in particular, and she pays the bill and wishes me good luck.

  She tells me not to worry and that something will work out, but we both know that's not true. I'm not sure how anything could work out without me putting actual effort into it, but effort into what exactly?

  12