Chapter One: Helpless
As Isla Marchetti walked down the hallway to her apartment, the look on her face dampened. The eviction notice glared angrily at her from where it was pasted on her door, looking like whoever put it there wanted it to be the first thing she saw when she got back. “Oh s**t! God no…” she gasped as her eyes caught the last line of the letter.Final notice. Seven days.She pushed the door open, headed straight for the phone book on the kitchen counter and dialled the landlord's number.The hold music clicked off. "Marchetti, unit 4B, this is your final—""I know what it is," Isla said. "But, please can I get a couple more days after the deadline, my salary would be paid by Friday next week.""Ma'am, this notice was your extension and we extended you twice this year already. I hope you remember that?""Yes, I do and I know…" Her voice cracked on the second word, and she hated it, hated how fast her composure was cracking when it was just her and a complete stranger on the phone."Okay, please, just give me three days. I've never once actually missed a payment, I've just been late — there's a difference—"The line clicked dead, leaving behind the dead silence of a conversation whose conclusion had already been drawn long ago.Isla stood in her tiny kitchen, the phone still pressed to her ear, listening to nothing as she remembered her mother...She needed to talk to her, tell her that everything had been handled, even if it wasn't — she just needed to tell some small, protective lie, a skill she'd perfected over the years since her father died, something to make the both of them sleep peacefully at night.It was when her phone pinged with a text that she knew she was cooked!Unknown number.Second notice. Balance now $14,200 — up from $11,000 last week. Your father's debt doesn't die just because he did. Pay by Friday or we come collect in person.Her father had been dead three months. She hadn't even known the debt existed until the first message like this one landed out of nowhere with his name attached to money he'd borrowed two years before he died and never once mentioned, gambling, she'd later pieced together from arguments she remembered overhearing. Now, he was gone. And the people he owed clearly didn't care.She wiped the tears threatening to drop from her eyes and padded down the small hall, quietly pushing open her mother's door, in case she was already asleep.She was asleep.But that wasn't the problem.The problem was the thin, laboured raspy sound she was making, each breath she took felt painfully dragged, her chest rising too fast and falling too slow, screaming danger in every way.The hallway light caught her mother's face, and even in sleep, pain had carved itself into the lines around her eyes, her jaw was clenched tight and fingers dug into the blanket like she wasn't so desperately hard to hang onto reality ."Mom?" Isla's voice came out small.There was no response, just that same ragged, fighting breath."Mom." she called even louder now, crossing the room fast, hand on her mother's shoulder, shaking gently, then harder when nothing happened. "Mom, wake up, come on—"Her mother's eyes didn't open. Her breathing didn't change. Isla's own heart was slamming so hard she could feel it in her throat as she fumbled for her phone.She didn't remember calling the ambulance.All she could recall was the operator's voice asking questions she could barely answer, while she sat on the floor of her mother's bedroom holding her hand and saying stay with me, stay with me to a woman who couldn't hear her. ***************************************The air in the waiting area of the emergency room smelled like antiseptic and coffee, and Isla had been sitting in the same plastic chair for the past three hours that night when a woman in blue scrubs finally called her into a small office with a box of tissues on the desk angled toward the visitor's chair."Ms. Marchetti." The woman behind the desk was kind-eyed and clearly exhausted, sliding a folder across the desk without quite meeting her gaze. "I need to go over your mother's account before the attending physician comes to speak with you.""Her account?""Yes. Your mother's outstanding debt currently stands at eighty-one thousand dollars." She said gently like she was delivering a diagnosis. "And seeing tonight's admission, plus respiratory treatment, it will add significantly to that. I understand there's already a payment plan in place, but I'm required to indicate that the account is substantially past the threshold where—""I don't care about the debt right now." Isla's voice cracked, raw. "I really don’t. Will my mother be okay? Nobody wants to say a word to me."The woman's expression softened slightly. "Please calm down, the attending physician will speak with you shortly. He should be here any—"The door opened before she finished.A tired-eyed man in a white coat stepped in with a clipboard under one arm and closed the door behind him."Ms. Marchetti. I'm Dr. Alvarez, I've been treating your mother tonight." He didn't sit. "Her condition has progressed further than her last scans showed. The respiratory failure she experienced tonight wasn't an isolated event — it's as a result of a significant deterioration in lung function. I believe we're looking at further episodes and if we don't operate on her, any more episodes she gets would be dangerous than the last."Isla's whole body went cold. "By operate, you mean surgery?""Yes. As soon as possible — ideally it should be done within the next two weeks." He said, meeting her eyes, and whatever he saw there made his voice gentle."I understand that you have financial complications and I'm sorry I’m not able to make those easier for you. But I’ll be very honest with you, Ms. Marchetti, without this surgery, I don't think your mother has very much time left at all."
