Page 112 of Ghost Ribbon

II

Part 2

Loving me comes with loss.

The stars have already written my name among the dead —

sooner or later, they will come to collect me.

Chapter 27 - Marco

I was sick.

My heart was failing.

It had been wrong for as long as I could remember. My parents found out when I was three years old. I tried to think back that far sometimes, tried to imagine what I looked like from the outside - a tiny, dark-haired child with bruised-looking eyes and too-thin wrists, clutching stuffed animals in hospital waiting rooms while adults spoke in voices over my head. I didn’t remember all of it clearly. Some memories were only pieces. The smell of disinfectant. My mother’s hand shaking when she tied my shoes. My father standing very still beside a doctor, jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth might crack.

But I remembered enough.

Enough to know that before me, they were doing okay.

Not rich. But okay.

They had enough to buy little things without counting bills in their heads first. Enough to be tired in ordinary ways instead of the particular exhaustion that came from watching money vanish into test results, prescriptions, specialists, procedures, follow-up visits, emergency visits, second opinions, third opinions, hope, fear, and more hope after that, because what else were they supposed to spend their lives on if not trying to keep me alive?

I was the fracture line.

That was the truth no one ever said out loud.

My diagnosis dragged debt into our house. It soaked into everything. Into my mother’s smile, which stayed warm but became thinner around the edges. Into my father’s shoulders, which never quite relaxed again. Into meals made smaller, lights turned off earlier, shoes worn longer, every joy measured against cost.

They never blamed me.

That almost made it worse.

If they had blamed me, maybe I could have hated them and made something simple out of it. But they didn’t. They loved me through it. They loved me with frightening devotion.

By the time I was thirteen, things got better.

My health stabilized for a while. The appointments became less frequent. My parents, after years of scraping themselves against debt, managed to get back on their feet in small increments. Not easily. But they did it.

And I studied like my life depended on it, because in some indirect and humiliating way, it did.

I wanted to give them something back. I wanted to be worth the wreckage.

I read until my eyes blurred. I memorized things I didn’t care about. I earned a scholarship to America. Bloodburn.

My family moved here because of me.

Because I had “made it.” And this was supposed to mean something.

And for a while, things really were better. We had a house, even if it was modest. My father smiled more. I told myself it had been worth it. That maybe all the debt and pain and years spent waiting for bad news had finally passed.

Then my body started failing me again.

That was the worst part. It didn’t arrive like disaster. It arrived like nuisance. Dizziness. Fatigue. Pressure in my chest that came and went. A cough that lingered too long. The kind of symptoms you could explain away if you were motivated enough to lie to yourself.

And I was.