Chapter 4

They came back before long, hands full of designer shopping bags.

I slammed the medicine bottle down on the table, my voice trembling beyond my control.

"Edwina, you switched out his blood pressure medicine?! And you sold it off too?!"

Edwina's face flickered, but she quickly regained her composure.

"So what if I switched it? Why can't he take the domestic generic?"

"That medicine costs nearly ten thousand a year! How can such a minor ailment be so precious?"

"A minor ailment?" My hand shook as I pointed at her.

"Do you have any idea his blood pressure spiked past two hundred?!"

"You're going to kill him!"

Off to the side, my son grew impatient.

"Mom, who are you trying to scare?"

"Plenty of people have high blood pressure. You don't see them just dropping dead all the time."

"Dad's perfectly fine, isn't he? Stop making a mountain out of a molehill."

I was about to open my mouth when Edwina started shouting from the side.

"You two just spend money and don't earn any. You should count yourselves lucky you've got any medicine at all!"

"Plenty of people keep working after they retire, and here you two sit at home taking it easy every day and still aren't satisfied?"

"Exactly!" my son chimed in.

"Dad's high blood pressure, to put it plainly, is from being too idle and eating too well."

"Go out and do some work every day, eat plain simple food, and he'd have nothing wrong with him at all."

"You—" I took a step back, unable to get out a single word.

Walter sat on the sofa, saying nothing, but his face grew paler and paler.

He pressed a hand to his temple, his brow tightly knit.

"Walter? Walter, what's wrong?" I rushed over.

"My head hurts... it hurts so much..." Walter's voice came in broken pieces.

Suddenly his body tilted, and he slid off the sofa and collapsed onto the floor.

"Walter! Walter!" I threw myself down beside him, patting his face.

He didn't respond.

His lips were turning purple, his eyes half open, his pupils looking blown.

Frantic, I grabbed my phone to call 911.

My son blocked me. "Mom, wait a second!"

"Dad'll probably be fine if he just lies down for a while."

"Every old person has something wrong with them. Nobody runs to the hospital over every little thing!"

I shoved him off, and then Edwina rushed over to snatch at my phone.

"Mom, why are you calling an ambulance? Do you know you have to pay for that out of pocket? It's hundreds of dollars a trip!"

"If it's really that bad, just have Thaddeus drive him, that works, doesn't it?"

I was shaking all over, not knowing if it was from anger or fear.

"Do you people have no conscience, or no common sense?!"

"You drive him yourself in a state like this—the bumps on the road, no emergency equipment—it could kill him!"

I shoved Edwina to the floor like a woman possessed, and after that not one of them dared stop me.

I finally got through to 911.

At the hospital, the ER doctor examined him quickly, then called me aside with a grim expression.

"The patient has a hypertensive brain hemorrhage. The bleeding is substantial. His condition is very serious."

"Thankfully you called 911 in time and there was no delay on the way, or he definitely wouldn't have made it."

My legs went weak, and I braced myself against the wall.

"But it's still very dangerous now," the doctor went on.

"We need to operate immediately and do everything we can to save him."

"It's just that at his age, with this much bleeding..."

"There's a risk of death. As his family, you need to be prepared."

My son and Edwina crowded in beside us.

"Doctor, how much will the treatment cost?" my son asked.

The doctor glanced at him. "This is a brain hemorrhage. The cost can range widely."

"Given the patient's condition, surgery plus follow-up ICU care, you're looking at several hundred thousand."

Hearing that, my son frowned and fell silent for a few seconds.

Then he asked a question I will never forget for the rest of my life—

"So... not treating it... that's not an option?"

I whipped my head around, staring at him in disbelief.

I knew he had no conscience, but I never imagined he could be this cold-blooded.

My son avoided my eyes, but he kept talking.

"Mom, didn't you hear the doctor? This surgery might not even save him."

"What if... then that money's just thrown away, isn't it?"

"Hundreds of thousands! How am I supposed to manage after that?"

Edwina leaned in too, her voice dropping low. "That's right, Mom."

"Even if he pulls through, the doctor said it himself, a lot of people end up paralyzed after surgery, even in a vegetative state."

"Then Dad's the one suffering, and you're the one worn ragged."

"Think about it. Could you really handle caring for a paralyzed patient all on your own?"

"Wouldn't it be better to..."

"Better to what?" I turned my head and fixed my eyes on her.

"Wouldn't it be better to..." Edwina said, head bowed.

"Let Dad suffer less."

I looked at them, and suddenly I laughed.

I laughed for a long time, laughed until the two of them started to feel uneasy.

Then I went calm again and spoke without a trace of emotion.

"Your father made a will long ago, and it's notarized."

"When he dies, every asset in his name—the house, the savings, the investments—all of it goes to charity."

"Not one cent will be left to you."

"What?!"

My son and Edwina went pale at the very same instant.

I looked them in the eyes and said it slowly, one word at a time.

"If you still want to see so much as a single cent—"

"then you'd better pray your father survives and walks out of this hospital conscious!"

"If he lives, the will can be changed."

"If he dies, you get nothing."