Lost in the dark

Just six months

The cost of the surgery was written on paper.

Black ink. Clean numbers. No mercy.

I stared at it for a long time, hoping it would change if I blinked enough times. Hoping it would suddenly make sense. Hoping it would become something I could afford.

But it didn’t.

I had no money.

Not even close.

Everything I owned—my small shop, my savings, my effort, my years of struggle—could not touch the amount required. It was too big. Too far. Too impossible.

Then the doctor said it.

“You have about six months,” he told me gently. “Without a transplant, your body will keep failing.”

Six months.

The words followed me home. They sat beside me. They lay next to me at night. They whispered to me when I tried to sleep.

Six months to live.

I thought of Dora.

Her morning laughter.

Her school u