1 My father was dying. I called my sister, who was on vacation in Paris with her husband, and told her to come back to see him one last time. By some miracle, Dad pulled through. But my brother-in-law, Mark, died in a freak accident abroad. While sorting through his belongings, my sister, Chloe, found his journal. In it, he’d written that my father and I had pushed him away, that he never felt like he had a place in our family. From that day on, she cut us out of her life. For nine years, we didn’t speak. Then, on the tenth anniversary of her husband’s death, my sister set our house on fire and killed us all. I woke with a gasp, my eyes flying open. I was back. Back on the day my father was pronounced critical. The first thing I did was race to the hospital. Dad’s condition was severe. He was hooked up to a ventilator, the machine breathing for him, keeping his vitals stable. The only sound in the room was the rhythmic, relentless beeping of the monitors. A knock at the door broke the silence. The doctor ushered my mother and me into the hallway. “We need you to sign the critical condition paperwork,” he said, his voice gentle but firm. “Your husband has reached a critical stage. Whether he pulls through now is entirely up to him.” The pen trembled in my mother’s hand. The tip hovered over the signature line, unable to descend. Seeing her anguish, I took charge. I took the pen from her and signed my name. As the doctor left with the clipboard, he gave us one last piece of advice. “If there are any other close family members, you should call them now. He might not make it through the night.” That was it. My mother’s composure shattered. She broke down, sobbing like a child. When the tears finally subsided, she wiped her face and looked at me. “Logan,” she said, her voice raw. “Call your sister. Tell her to come home.” My immediate impulse was to refuse. In my last life, I had listened to her. I’d called Chloe, and she’d caught the first flight back from Egypt. The good news was that Dad, seeing her, rallied and made a full recovery. The bad news was that Mark, left alone abroad, was kidnapped. The next time anyone saw him, he was a cold, lifeless body. Chloe never blamed us outright, but she could never get over it. I didn’t want to remember the fire that had consumed us all. Hearing my mother’s words now, I shook my head. “Mom, she’s in another country. Even if we call now, she won’t make it in time. I’m here. I can take care of everything. We don’t need to trouble her.” My mother didn’t understand. I was the one who always deferred to my older sister, who called her for everything. Why, now, in our darkest hour, was I suddenly insisting on handling it all myself? “Logan, I understand you want to step up, but if your sister doesn’t get to see your father one last time, she will hate you for it!” But Mom, don’t you see? If I call her, Mark will die, and she’ll hate more than just me. I couldn’t say those words. Instead, I took her hand, my grip firm. “Mom,” I said, looking her straight in the eye. “Trust me. Dad is going to pull through.” She stared at me for a long moment, then sighed and put her phone away. Just then, my phone buzzed. A notification from our family group chat: “The Happy Family.” I opened it. It was Chloe, picking a fight from halfway across the world. “I know you all have a bad impression of Mark, but we’ve been gone for days and not a single one of you has checked in. Is that so hard?” “For other people, family is a safe harbor. For me, it’s like I’m invisible.” “Logan, say something. Are you dead?” I didn’t have to guess. Mark had fed her those lines. He was a man with a massive ego and a petty soul, always looking for a slight. The ego of a king with the work ethic of a servant; he couldn't earn a dime himself but dreamed of living like a millionaire. But this wasn't the time to point that out. As I waited for Dad to wake up, I sighed and typed a message into the chat. “Hey Chloe, Mark. Did you guys arrive safely? Hope you’re having a great time. Things are a little crazy at home right now, Mom and Dad are swamped.” That night, luck was on our side. Dad’s condition stabilized enough for surgery. “If he can open his eyes on his own after this,” the doctor told us, “he should be out of the woods.” My mother was overcome with gratitude, thanking the doctor again and again. As we waited outside the operating room, a nurse from billing approached us. “Hello, who’s the family of Robert Vance?” My mother and I raised our hands. “His medical bill is due. There will be additional charges for the surgery as well.” Dad had been in the ICU for three days. There was one surgery when he was admitted, and this was the second. All told, the bill was a staggering two hundred and forty thousand dollars. 2 I had just graduated and started working; I had barely any savings. My parents were working-class people their whole lives. The hundred thousand or so they’d managed to put away was the fruit of a lifetime of hard labor. We pooled everything we had, called in every small favor, and we were still fifty thousand dollars short. Left with no other choice, I dialed my sister’s number. “Chloe? Hey, something’s come up at home. Is there any way you could lend me fifty thousand dollars?” Her response was a torrent of abuse. “Logan, have you no shame? Mark and I are on vacation, trying to be careful with our money, and you have the nerve to ask for fifty grand? Do you think money just grows on trees for me?” “No, Chloe, it’s not for me,” I tried to explain. “Something happened at home, it’s an emergency…” She scoffed, her voice dripping with disdain. “Something happened? What could it be? You probably got yourself into online gambling debt, right? Mark saw right through you from the start. He told me I needed to set you straight, and I defended you. I said you weren’t that kind of person, but I guess…” I opened my mouth to explain, but she wouldn’t listen. “Let me tell you something. Mark and I are having a wonderful time here in Paris, and you’d better not call again and ruin our mood. Logan, our family doesn’t need a disgusting leech like you!” She hung up. When I tried to call back, it went straight to voicemail. Desperate, I texted her. “Chloe, this is really, really urgent. Please, I’ll sign an IOU, whatever you want.” Her response was to block my number. Seeing my distress, my mom took her own phone and called. “Chloe, why did you block Logan? He was just trying to borrow some money.” At the sound of my name, Chloe’s voice turned sharp with irritation. “Logan, Logan, that’s all you two care about! You don’t give a damn about your daughter who’s halfway across the world, do you?” My mom tried to placate her. “Honey, it’s not what you think. We’re at City Center Hospital. You know so many people, even if you can’t send money, maybe you could help us figure something out?” But Chloe had no intention of helping us. Or rather, of helping me. The mention of the hospital only made her colder. “When I was a kid and my stomach hurt, I begged you to take me to the doctor and you said it was nothing. But now Logan needs a hospital and you rush him right over? You only have him in your hearts. You never cared about me!” “Since I mean so little to you, let Logan take care of everything! Why are you even calling me?” It was like she’d been brainwashed. Her words were irrational, completely divorced from reality, and she refused to listen to a word of explanation. The only person in our family who could ever get through to her was our father, and he was lying unconscious in a hospital bed. My mother was lost. She couldn’t understand why her daughter was being so cruel, so reckless. “Did we do something to upset her? Why did she change so much the moment she left the country?” One name came to my mind: Mark. My brother-in-law. He always looked at my father and me with suspicion, as if he believed we were plotting against him. No one knew what we had ever done to offend him. Perhaps only he knew the answer to that. “Mom, forget it,” I said, trying to sound stronger than I felt. “If Chloe won’t help, we’ll figure something else out.” We had to. We couldn’t just give up. It was just money. I would swallow my pride and call our relatives. If that failed, I’d beg the doctors. But when I called my uncle, the response was not what I expected. “Logan? Is that you? Look, I’m not trying to be old-fashioned, but you’re a young man. How could you get a girl pregnant? And now you need money for an abortion and you come crawling to your family? Are you trying to disgrace us? Don’t you have any sense of shame?” I was stunned. “Uncle, what are you talking about? An abortion? I am trying to borrow money, but it’s not for…” He cut me off. “Your sister already gave us all a heads-up. She said it was time you learned a lesson, that you shouldn’t be so reckless. Look, I get it, you’re a young guy, you have… urges. But you have to be responsible!” He hung up before I could say another word. It hit me then. Chloe had anticipated this. She had known I would turn to our relatives and had systematically poisoned the well, cutting off my last resort. I made several more calls. The answers were all the same. In that moment, I understood the true meaning of helplessness. 3 How could my own sister be so ruthless? How much did she hate me? I must have annoyed my uncle with my repeated calls, because he drove down to the hospital to lecture me in person. “Logan, you’re not a kid anymore, but you’ve got no sense of responsibility! And you,” he said, turning to my mother, “you need to keep a better eye on him! Don’t just dote on my niece.” My uncle had always favored Chloe over me. He wasn’t here to help; he was here to gloat. I grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the billing office. “Uncle, please, just lend me the fifty thousand. I’m begging you. After this is over, you can yell at me, hit me, whatever you want!” He shoved me away, sending me sprawling to the floor. “You think money is that easy to come by? Fifty thousand just like that? You’ve got your head in the clouds.” He was about to launch into another tirade when a long, piercing sound cut through the hallway from Dad’s room. Beeeeeeeeeeeeep— The heart monitor. It had flatlined. “Dad!” My legs gave out. I collapsed to my knees, unable to stand. A deafening roar filled my ears, the flatline tone echoing inside my skull, chaotic and overwhelming. “Dad, you can’t die! You can’t die!” My uncle finally seemed to realize something was wrong. He pointed toward the room. “What’s going on? Who is that on the bed?” “That’s my father! Your brother-in-law! The man who is about to die because he can’t get surgery for fifty thousand dollars! Aren’t you going to pay it now? If my father dies, you’re a murderer! All of you are murderers!” But he still wore that same look of smug disbelief. “You think I’ve never seen a heart monitor before? If he were really dying, the hospital would be rushing to save him. I see what this is. You found someone who looks like your dad to try and scam us! Logan, you’ve got some nerve!” My legs were jelly, I couldn't move, but he still didn’t believe me. Nothing I said mattered. It was all a lie, a trick. I was powerless. What else could I do? What could I possibly do to prove I wasn’t lying? “Dad…” “Enough with the act. You’re coming home with me right now. You really think your uncle hasn’t been around the block? You think I don’t know how these hospitals work?” he sneered. “This kind of trick might work on your mother, but not on me. They’re not going to let a man die over money. They’d cover the costs first if it were a real emergency!” He looked down at me as if I were a cockroach in a sewer. “You thought you could use this man to cheat money out of me? You really underestimate me, Logan.” I was sobbing, my vision blurred with tears. He was right in one sense—the doctors and nurses were already rushing to stabilize my dad, even without the payment. It was basic humanity. But resuscitation wasn't the problem. The surgery was. They could bring him back from the brink for free, but they wouldn't perform a major operation on credit. “Uncle, please, yell at me later! Just give me the money. Once I pay the bill and Dad has his surgery, you can do whatever you want to me! You can beat me to death!” He remained unmoved. My mother, overwhelmed by her high blood pressure and the stress of it all, had been taken to an emergency room herself. But my uncle used that against me. “If your dad was really in trouble, where’s your mother? I see. You two are in on this together, trying to scam me!”
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "393257", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel