“Mom, you have to have this surgery.”

“We’ve already talked about this, Tiffany.”

“No, you’ve tried talking about it through your pain. But now it’s time for me to talk,” I said. “You’ve waited long enough and your back has finally given out. You need to get yourself into surgery.”

“And I have no way to pay for it,” she said.

“Well I do. I have a job, remember?”

“I have no health insurance. You’ll be saddled with thousands of dollars of debt.”

“Medicare will help with some of that, Mom. And I have a decent savings account.”

“No, that’s the money for your business. You aren’t using that to pay for-”

My mother hissed in pain as her hand fumbled around for the morphine drip button. Her hands were shaking and tears were rising to her eyes. It slipped off the edge of her hospital bed and I caught it in the palm of my hand. I pressed the button until the light turned red, then grabbed a wet washcloth. I dabbed at the sweat on my mother’s brow, trying to keep my own emotions at bay. Seeing her like this-- in the kind of pain she was experiencing-- was too much for me.

She couldn’t go on like this.

Even if it meant sacrificing my business to do so.

“You’re going to have this surgery,” I said.

“That isn’t your-”

“Yes, it is. I pay half of the bills and I’m the one with the job. You’re no good to anyone in the kind of pain you’re in, and you heard the doctors. There’s nowhere else to go. Your back will never heal from something like this and there’s no outpatient pain medication on the market that will keep your pain at bay any longer. You have no other choice.”

“You are not throwing your life away for me.”

“I’m not doing anything of the sort,” I said. “You’re my mother. And I love you. This is happening, whether you want it to or not. We don’t have any other choice.”

“Please don’t do that, Tiffany. Don’t… don’t do-”

I watched her fight through another wave of pain. It was like a punch to my gut every time it happened. I sat down and took her hand, my eyes glancing down at the morphine button. It was still red, and she was still in pain.

The morphine wasn’t even helping her any longer.

Her Medicare coverage wouldn’t touch most of the surgery. Maybe ten percent of it, if we were lucky. I’d submitted all of the paperwork necessary to prove that I took care of my mother to the insurance company, but they had yet to get back to me on whether or not my mother was covered. So as far as I knew, this surgery would cost us thousands upon thousands of dollars. The bulk of her medical coverage would go towards her hospital stay, very little of it would touch the surgery, and then recuperation would be out of our hands. She would need an in-home nurse, and all of that would have to come out-of-pocket.

My entire savings account would have to be drained for it. And even then, I’d have to set up a monthly payment plan to pay the rest back.

Which meant I would need a job.

I sat there until the pain finally took my mother under. A tear streaked my cheek as I looked up towards the door of her room. That man was still looming out there. One of many that kept interchanging every six hours. The heavy medication was no longer working and the doctors kept talking to me about convincing my mother to do the surgery. But if I told them I was paying for it-- that I was the sole caretaker of my mother-- then the decision fell on my shoulders. I could override her wants if it was necessary.

But I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to force my mother into something she didn’t agree with.

She’d been through enough.

We’d all been through enough.

I held my mother’s hand while she slept. Even if she didn’t have the surgery, the hospital wouldn’t be able to keep us much longer. After three days in the hospital, her coverage would be used up. The bill would fall into our lap if a choice wasn’t made soon. I was lost. Floating adrift in a raging sea with a storm that tried to swallow me whole. I wished my father was with us. Alive to weigh in on this situation. He would know what to do. He would know what to tell Mom. He understood her in a way I never would, and he always had a way of making her go along with things, even when she was hesitant about them.

I needed him more than ever, and knowing he would never come broke my heart.

I looked down at my phone in my lap and saw it light up. It silently rang as Kenneth’s name scrolled across the screen. My heart slammed against my chest. I watched one of my tears fall onto the screen. The call stopped ringing and the words ‘four missed calls’ popped up instead.

Four missed phone calls.

All from Kenneth.

I looked up at my mother and watched her sleep soundly. Something flashed at the corner of my eye, and I whipped my head over to see what it was. The morphine drip button had flashed from red to green, and I slipped my hand from hers so I could press it. I shoved it as hard as I could until the button turned red, then my eyes fell back to my lap.

To the four missed calls I had from my boss.

Against my better judgment, I opened up my phone. I dialed his number and pressed the receiver to my ear, holding my breath as I did so. I knew what I had to do. I knew what I had to convince Kenneth to do. I needed a job if I was going to pay for my mother’s surgery. There was no other answer. I had to step in and override her decision, but only after I had secured a way to pay for it.

And the only way I could pay for it was to convince Kenneth to let me keep my job.

That meant I would have to suffer through the ridicule. Through the nasty letters and the nicknames and the stares as I walked through the office. I would have to endure years of mocking glances and teasing snickers every time I entered an elevator. But I’d deal with is as long as I possibly could because my mother needed me to. She needed this surgery and there was no other way out for us.

For her.

She deserved a better quality of life than this.