Chapter 2

The next day on the shop floor, Supervisor Cooper called me into his office and slid a sheet of paper across the desk.

It was a transfer order—six months on-site at an out-of-state posting.

“Mike, the new base out of state needs a technical backbone who actually knows what he’s doing.” Old Cooper sighed and pointed at the landline on his desk. “Six months. The allowance doubles. And you can also… dodge those collection calls that keep coming into the plant.”

I didn’t say much. I folded the paper in half and pressed it into the very bottom of my toolbox.

I still hadn’t decided whether I’d go.

Then an ER notice slammed into me in the hospital corridor.

My father-in-law had collapsed in the bathroom, his face purple from not getting enough air. The ambulance brought him in with sirens the whole way. It wasn’t some sudden disease—he’d run out of his medication.

Under the harsh, bleached light, a young nurse handed me a thin slip of paper. Printed on it was a number that didn’t allow for argument—$2,400.

Emily stood across the hall, eyes reddened with almost surgical precision. She looked at my hand tightening around the bill, her voice still gentle, like she was running a charity fundraiser. “Honey, Dad’s life is hanging on this payment. Go take care of the paperwork—don’t delay.”

How righteous that mercy was. This “community angel” who sent eight thousand dollars a month to strangers down to the last cent—when her own father was on the edge of suffocating, her only move was to redden her eyes and urge her husband to empty his pockets.

I looked at her flawless face and didn’t even feel like arguing. I turned and headed for the cashier window.

When I slid that scuffed plastic card through the reader, I knew the available credit on it was nearly gone. Last week the bank system had already granted me a temporary limit increase. Those bloodsucking capitalists were probably tracking how I walked the cliff edge of bankruptcy every month like it was my commute.

The machine spit out the receipt. My face was still water as I signed my name. This wasn’t just twenty-four hundred dollars—this was the last lock I was fastening onto the parasite cage that surrounded me.

After we got the old man out of the ER and back home, the pressure in the living room dropped to freezing.

My father-in-law sagged on the couch with oxygen, his gray-white face under the plastic mask and tube like an old fish pulled from water. My mother-in-law sat beside him, wiping at dry eyes, muttering nonstop. “At his age, how can your dad take this kind of ordeal…”

And who made him go through it?

I leaned against the wall and watched their performance like it was a cheap play. No one mentioned who’d let him go three days without his meds—as if that near-fatal incident had fallen from the sky, and they were all innocent victims.

“We need to renew his prescription right away.” My mother-in-law suddenly stopped complaining and looked up at me, as if issuing an order to a hired errand boy.

I straightened, meeting her gaze. “What brand? What dosage?”

She froze, stammered for a long time, and finally forced out, dry as dust, “It’s just… the blue one he usually takes.”

I turned to ask Emily. This premium woman who could memorize the names of a hundred poor children for a project briefing didn’t even look up from her computer screen as she adjusted fonts. “I don’t understand medical supplies. Aren’t you the careful one? You’ve always handled it.”

An extreme sense of absurd superiority detonated in my chest.

Look at these people—sitting high as if they ruled the world. They hated my work clothes, looked down on my paycheck. But what was the truth? Without me—the “ATM and caregiver” at the bottom of the ladder—these so-called respectable people didn’t even know what the medicine keeping their closest relative alive looked like. They didn’t even have the basic ability to survive independently in modern society for a week.

Without a word, I walked into the kitchen and dug the crushed old medication box out of the deepest part of the trash. I brushed off the grime, followed the letters printed on it, and went to the corner pharmacy to buy six hundred dollars’ worth of the drug.

Two days later, at dusk after work—

Outside the front door, with the brass key just pulled from my pocket, a sound from inside slipped out through the door that hadn’t been shut all the way.

My mother-in-law was on the phone in the living room. She kept her voice lowered on purpose, but in the empty hallway every word was crystal clear.

“Oh, our Mike? He doesn’t earn much, but he’s honest. It’s just that… deep down he’s not very ambitious. Every day it’s just fixing machines.”

Whatever the neighbor said on the other end must have been flattering, because my mother-in-law covered her mouth and chuckled a few times, her tone dripping with undisguised vanity. “Yeah. If we’re talking conditions, of course he can’t compare to those other sons-in-law who work on Wall Street. Whatever—making do is fine.”

My ankle stopped in midair. The work boot with its lace half undone hung there on top of my foot.

A week ago, I would’ve kicked the door open, slammed the stack of overdraft bills I’d earned with my life onto her picky old face, and demanded to know what right she had to eat from my bowl and then curse me the moment she set it down.

But this time, my insides were dead-still. I only found it funny.

These parasites who couldn’t even maintain their own existence without me borrowing money left and right—these idiots honestly believed they stood on the peak of the social hierarchy. They had no idea they were sitting comfortably atop a tower I held up with my blood and sweat, and they were still stupidly smashing its foundation.

Silently, I lowered my foot, set my boot straight, and pushed open the half-latched wooden door.

In the living room, the woman who’d just finished her call had already gone back to her room to lie down.

In the study, Emily kept typing, drafting a great and noble plan for her foundation.

The two kids sprawled on the carpet, scribbling.

There was no scent of food in the air. The stovetop was spotless—so cold it might as well have been sterile. Even the aluminum kettle used to boil water felt like ice.

No one asked about my ten-hour stretch of heavy labor, and no one cared whether I was hungry.

I walked into the kitchen and opened the freezer. A pale, white breath of cold air hit my face. Inside were only a few boxes of dried-out leftovers and a bag of cheap toast close to its expiration date.

I took out the bread, tore off a rough-edged piece, and—no water, no heating—shoved it straight into my mouth. My teeth crushed it and I forced it down. The dry wheat scraped hard along my throat, and a burning sting flared at the back of my mouth.

The pain was sharp, immediate, punching straight through my nerves.

The moment I swallowed the last crumbs, my gaze turned clean and decisive.

Tomorrow morning, I’d go to Cooper’s office and sign that transfer order—neatly and for good.