Sorry.
The word landed hollow. Useless.
I swallowed. "What are our options?"
Her expression shifted. Gentler now. Pitying.
"There aren't many."
The silence stretched.
She waited. Let me absorb it. Let the devastation settle into my bones before continuing.
"We can discuss payment plans with the billing department. There are emergency aid programs—applications take time. Waiting lists for subsidized care facilities."
"How much time?"
"Months. Sometimes longer."
Months.
I thought about my father on the floor. Gray-faced. Gasping. The terrible flutter of his pulse beneath my fingers.
"We don't have months."
"I know."
I pressed my palms against my thighs. Focused on the pressure. The physical sensation grounding me before I floated away entirely.
"There has to be something else."
A social worker appeared—young, kind-faced, carrying a folder thick with paperwork. She sat beside me. Explained programs I'd never heard of. Forms that required documentation I didn't have. Waiting lists that stretched into next year.
Her voice stayed gentle. Her words stayed brutal.
Applications pending.
Approval timelines.
Eligibility requirements.
She talked about community resources. Charity care. Fundraising options.
Every solution required time.
Every solution required luck.
Every solution required things we didn't have.
I signed forms. Took pamphlets. Nodded at explanations I wasn't really hearing.
When they finally left, I sat alone in the hallway.
Fluorescent lights hummed overhead.
Somewhere a machine beeped its steady rhythm.
My father slept—medicated, monitored, blissfully unaware. He didn't know the number. Didn't know how bad it had gotten. Didn't know that while he slept, our world had narrowed to a single impossible question: How do you save someone when you can't afford to?
