I laid the documents on my desk—deed, mortgage statements, two years of property tax records, title insurance, the appraisal I’d gotten six months ago when I was considering refinancing.
$385,000.
“I’m scared,” I admitted.
“You should be,” Sandra said. “They’re dangerous, but you’re not powerless. You have information now. You have time. Use both.”
We talked for another hour. She made me promise to find a lawyer by the end of the week. Made me promise to check my credit report. Made me promise to stop defending them even in my own head.
When I hung up, I looked at the folder on my desk: House sale emergency.
Two years ago, I never would have imagined needing something like that. Now it felt like a lifeline.
Sandra didn’t say, “I told you so.”
She said, “Let’s fix this.”
And for the first time since I’d opened that insurance statement, I felt like maybe I could.
The health scare happened ten months ago. I was fifty-four then. Chest pain at work, shortness of breath—the kind that makes you stop mid-sentence and grab the edge of your desk.
My assistant called 911.
They rushed me to our own ER, the same emergency department I’d been overseeing for fifteen years. I knew every nurse, every doctor. They knew me.
Tests. EKG. Blood work. Chest X-ray. CT scan to rule out pulmonary embolism. Everything came back normal.
“Stress,” Dr. Patel said. “Anxiety. Your blood pressure is elevated, but that could be white coat syndrome. Have you been under unusual stress lately?”
I thought about Amber and Brandon. About the rent they weren’t paying. About the groceries I was buying for three people. About Brandon’s “business meetings” that never seemed to result in income.
“Maybe,” I said.
Dr. Patel prescribed a low-dose anxiety medication and told me to follow up with my primary care physician. Told me to consider therapy. Told me to reduce my hours if possible.
I didn’t fill the prescription. I didn’t reduce my hours. I needed the income.
Amber came to pick me up from the ER. She seemed annoyed that I’d scared her. She kept checking her phone while the discharge nurse went over instructions.
“Mom, can we go? I have plans tonight.”
Brandon was waiting in the car. When I climbed into the back seat, he turned around and looked at me.
“Really?” he said—like he was doing math in his head. “You okay, Dorothy?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just stress.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Scary, though. Heart stuff runs in families, right?”
I didn’t answer. I was too tired.
That night, I went to bed early and took two melatonin tablets from the bottle in my bathroom. I’d been having trouble sleeping—worrying about money, about Amber, about whether I was being a bad mother for resenting my own daughter.
I woke at 2:00 in the morning dizzy, heart racing, room spinning. I stumbled to the bathroom, threw up, sat on the floor with my head between my knees until the dizziness passed.
The next morning, the melatonin bottle was in a different spot. I’d left it on the left side of the sink. Now it was on the right.
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