Page 4 of The Don’s Omega

“Yeah. It’s not a good thing.” I swallow hard. “But it’s fixable. There’s a surgery for your condition.”

Relief fills his eyes. “Are we talking, like, a big surgery?”

I nod. “Open heart.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute. He just looks at the ceiling and I can see him processing everything. He’s always been like that. Even as a kid. When I told him Mom and Dad weren’t coming home, he didn’t scream or cry. He just went very quiet. The tears came much later in the night.

“Can we afford it?” he asks. “Open-heart surgery, that… that can’t be cheap.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I say firmly.

“Elio.”

“I said don’t worry about it. That’s my department. Your department is resting and not making ramen unsupervised anymore.”

He almost laughs. Almost. Then he squeezes my hand and says, “I’m sorry.”

“For what? For having a heart condition? That’s a weird thing to apologize for.”

“For being expensive,” he says quietly. “You’d be better off financially if you hadn’t had to take care of me all these years.”

“Shut up, Fabio,” I growl. “Don’t you ever say that again, do you hear me?” My anger washes over him and he nods, looking guilty.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay, just, don’t say shit like that.” My eyes burn. “I’d be lost without you. You’re the best fucking thing in my life, okay? You’re not a burden. You’re my everything.” My voice breaks with emotion.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” He squeezes my fingers. “I just know you’re already so stressed and now this has to happen?”

His words make my chest hurt. He’s such a good kid. He never complains. He always just tries his best to make things easier on me. He’s never grumbled that he has to wear secondhand clothes because we’re always broke. He’s spent his entire life trying not to cause any problems because he knows how hard I work to keep us above water. And now this happens and he thinks he needs to apologize for the crime of being sick.

“You listen to me.” I lean in close enough that he has to look at me. “You are not a burden. You are my brother and I love you. I’d sell every organ in my body on the black market before I let anything happen to you. Do you understand me?”

“I understand.” He smiles, although it’s small and tired. “I just don’t want you to do anything crazy. You’re too protective sometimes. You worry me. Keep all your organs, please. They’re very useful. You need them and I need you.”

“I won’t do anything too crazy.” I smile wryly.

Truth is, I’ll do whatever it takes. Period.

I hold his hand until he falls asleep. It doesn’t take long. The medications they’ve given him pull him under and his grip loosens in mine. I listen the monitor bleeping steadily and zone out. I let myself think about nothing for a few minutes because the alternative is thinking about everything. I can’t handle that right now.

When I’m sure he’s out, I slip my hand free and step into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind me. The hallway is quiet. It’s late now, well past midnight. The fluorescent lights above me flicker every few seconds. An exhausted-looking nurse passes pushing a cart and she doesn’t glance at me. An old man in a wheelchair rolls himself slowly past, appearing lost in thought. His expression is grim. I get that. I understand that emotion very well.

I lean against the wall and then slowly slide down it until I’m sitting on the cold hospital floor. I pull my knees to my chest, gripping my phone. I open the calculator app and start running numbers I already know the answer to.

I study my checking account, wondering if I could borrow money from my boss Hank. God, I wouldn’t know how to even ask. What might a personal loan look like with my credit score? My score is not great. I’ve been living on the edge of broke since I was Fabio’s age. Credit scores are cruel for people like me. It’s an arbitrary number that tells the world how valuable you are or aren’t in a specific, quantifiable way. It’s depressing that a living, breathing person’s worth is reduced to that little number. As if nothing else about the person is important.

But that’s the way things are. No point in crying about it.

I need to figure out a way to come up with some money fast. I could sell my car. That’s maybe three thousand on a good day. But I need the car to get to work and to grocery shop. What if I have to drive Fabio to the hospital in an emergency? I think I have to keep the car. But let’s say I do sell the car, it’s still only going to bring me three grand at best.

If I sell everything in the apartment I’d get, what, another five hundred? I could pick up double shifts for the next two months straight and if I didn’t eat or pay rent or keep the lights on, I could maybe save another four thousand. That’s seventy thousand short. Roughly. And who’s to say the insurance will even cover half of the procedure? We don’t have great insurance to begin with and insurance companies aren’t known for their generosity.

I close the calculator app and put my phone face down on the floor. I press my palms against my eyes until I see spots and I breathe, slow and deliberate. I’ve been scared of something like this happening for nine years. Since Mom and Dad died. I’ve done my best to keep Fabio and me afloat, but we’ve been sinking for a while now.

Part of the reason we’ve been in financial trouble was because our parents were sinking when they died. There was no life insurance. We ended up homeless when the bank foreclosed on the house. At nineteen, I didn’t have a lot of job skills. I still don’t. I wasn’t able to get a job that paid enough to keep the house. Dreams of going to college evaporated when my parents died. I had to start doing whatever I could to keep Fabio safe. That meant shit jobs and shit hours.

I’m still in shock that Fabio has an actual heart condition. I knew he wasn’t the strongest kid. I knew physically, he was always smaller than his peers and he got winded easily. But after our parents died, I had so many other problems to worry about, I guess I missed the danger signs. Now we’re at a point where it can no longer be ignored. Either he has this surgery, or he’ll die. That’s the cold hard truth. And I’m not going to let him die.