The Billionaire's $500,000 baby

Liora

can't just toss her into a hallway because a computer program decided her heart is a 'pre-existing condition'!" Mrs. Gable didn't flinch. She leaned forward, her eyes as cold as the man's in the black car. "The world doesn't care about what's fair, Liora. It cares about what's paid. You have until 9:00 AM. After that, her bed in the ICU is assigned to a patient with a private-pay insurance plan." "Please," I sobbed, my pride finally breaking. I sank to my knees on the wet floor. "Please, don't move her. The public ward is overcrowded. The nurses are spread too thin. If she has another episode... she'll die alone." "Then I suggest you stop crying on my floor and go find fifty thousand dollars," she said, turning back to her monitor. "You're wasting the five hours you have left." I stood up, my legs shaking. I felt empty. Hollow. I turned away from the desk and walked toward the elevators. I needed to see her. The ICU was on the fourth floor. It was a place of soft beeps and hushed whispers. I scrubbed my hands until they were raw and put on a yellow plastic gown. When I reached my mother's room, I stopped at the glass. She looked so small. My mother was a woman who used to bake bread every Sunday and sing along to the radio. Now, she was buried under a mountain of white blankets and tangled in a web of plastic tubes. A machine whistled as it forced air into her lungs. The monitor above her head showed a jagged green line....her heart, struggling to keep a rhythm. I pressed my forehead against the glass. "I'm sorry, Mom," I whispered. "I'm so sorry I'm not enough." I watched her chest rise and fall, powered by a machine I couldn't afford to rent for another day. I thought about the man in the car. He probably spent fifty thousand dollars on a watch. He probably spent half a million on a dinner party. To him, this money was nothing. To me, it was the price of my mother's soul. I stayed there for an hour, watching the clock on the wall tick toward 9:00 AM. Every minute was a heartbeat lost. Every second was a step closer to the end. A nurse walked by, giving me a pitying look. "She's a fighter, Liora. But she needs that surgery.