Bound by Design

One

Nadia's POV

The bill arrived on a Tuesday.

I was eating instant noodles when I heard the mail slot pop open.

I convinced myself it would be a pizza coupon or a flyer, something I could just trash. But, of course, that was never really me. I went and picked it up off the hallway floor anyway.

The envelope was white with Manhattan General Hospital printed in small, neat lettering along the top left-hand side. My fingers trembled as I tore it open. They've sent me the same letter eight times over now, since mum's stage three kidney disease started controlling every single thing about my life. But I still couldn't bring myself to get used to receiving them.

The total bill was $47,000.

I sat down in my socks right there in the middle of the hallway and stared until the numbers became blurry.

Forty-seven thousand dollars for this month alone.

My mum's condition had gone downhill, faster than the doctors had thought it would. And though her insurance covered what it could and sustained her for the most part, it didn't cover the rest. It all fell to me as always with my family. I was the eldest; that was just the way things worked.

For months now, I had been working overtime at the design agency. Seven days a week, cancelling my gym membership because it was a luxury I just couldn't afford. Even sacrificing my precious weekend addiction, discount instant coffee. I had even sold the little rose velvet chair that had taken me two years to source. I remembered lugging it up 4 flights of stairs on my own one Sunday afternoon and falling completely in love with it. I sold it for two hundred dollars and saw it go down in a single trip down the elevator, where I wept silently, and then back up again to get it delivered.

But forty-seven thousand dollars can't really be 'chipped at'. It was a wall I couldn't see over.

My phone rang, sitting somewhere in the kitchen.

I got up, placed the bill carefully on the kitchen table and picked it up without checking the caller ID.

"Nadia," Lena's cautious, tightly controlled tone came through the line. "How are you?"

"Fine," I said. Out of habit.

"You don't sound fine."

"I'm eating."

"Nadia."

I slid into the kitchen chair opposite my noodles and pushed them to one side.

Lena is nineteen. He works three jobs to pay his tuition at the local community college. He still made sure to check up on me twice a day. He is the most genuinely kindhearted person I know. He apologises to furniture if he bumps into it, remembers every birthday, he actually asks how you are and genuinely wants to know. He should be worrying about typical 19-year-old things, like what he's going to do this weekend or whether he's getting enough hours in at work, not whether his mother is dying of kidney disease or if I am getting any sleep. It just hurt my heart.

"Another bill's come," I told him with a sigh. I couldn't pretend anymore. "A big one."

There was a pause and then: "How big?"

"Forty-seven thousand."

There was an even longer pause.

"Okay," I heard him say, and took a deep breath. "Okay Nadia, we'll get it sorted, we always do."

"Lena-"

"Don't," he interrupted. The steady, firm voice that was rapidly starting to sound too mature for its nineteen years was evident. "Don't give up on me, we aren't there yet, ok? Promise me."

"I'm not giving up," I said.

After I hung up, I stood in the kitchen for a while looking from the bill on the table to the now cold noodles and to the c***k above the oven I've meant to fix for about a year. I thought of the chair, I thought of the two hundred dollars.

I sat down, opened my laptop and looked at my emails.

One was from the design agency I work for. Its subject line: urgent—new client inquiry. I almost deleted it straight away.

I had three ongoing projects. My brain capacity for new ideas was non-existent as I was only getting five hours of sleep. I certainly couldn't afford any clients unless the coffee was top quality, which, since I'd switched to the cheapest brand known to man, was definitely out of the question.

Still, I clicked on the email as I would always have to try to open the door to see if I could get through it.

The email was short and to the point. It was describing a client who was seeking a designer to work on a major high-end residential renovation in a Manhattan penthouse.

The scale was huge, and they had already tried three different designers, all of whom had been dismissed. The project was time-sensitive and exceptionally well-paid.

The client was Kyle Sullivan. I knew of him.

Everyone in New York City knew of Kyle Sullivan, CEO of Sullivan Enterprises, a huge private investment firm he inherited from his father at 26 and never allowed to lose so much as one tenth of one percent value. Forbes featured him twice, and Page Six commented on his lifestyle at every available opportunity. Though little was printed about him due to the fact that he almost never granted a press or personal interview unless unavoidable.

What I had read however, from two designers who had both briefly worked for him, was more about the work itself. It sounded like they were "working for a wall with an opinion," and neither woman swore she would ever take a job from him again.

I stared at the email, then the bill, then the email again.

"Ok," I said out loud to my cold noodles, the cracked paint and my empty kitchen. "I'll take the job."

I replied before I could lose the courage again.

I didn't know that accepting the position would entirely change the course of my life, and not just for career or financial purposes but for every part of me that counted.