I used to believe there was nothing a mother couldn't forgive if she loved her child enough.
I was wrong.
I just didn't know how wrong I was until I stood outside my son's hospital room with a winning lottery ticket in my purse and heard him laughing about my suffering.
My name is Abigail Riley.
I was standing outside room twelve at St. Jude Community Hospital in Savannah, Georgia, when I heard Spencer say something I would spend the rest of my life trying to forget.
“If Mom believes I'm getting worse, she'll give me everything she has.”
I stopped breathing for a moment.
Not because I didn't understand the words.
Because I understood them perfectly.
My hand was already raised to knock on the door. I had even practiced what I was going to say during the drive to the hospital.
I was going to smile.
I was going to sit beside his bed, take his hand, and tell him that things were finally going to be different.
I was going to tell my son that he would never have to worry about money again.
Instead, I stood in the hallway and listened.
The door to room twelve wasn't completely closed. A narrow opening remained between the door and its frame, just wide enough for me to hear the conversation inside.
Spencer was talking to someone on his phone.
He had the call on speaker.
I could hear another woman's voice coming from the small device.
"Doesn't it bother you to do that to your own mother?"
There was a pause.
Then Spencer laughed.
Not loudly.
Not nervously.
It was the kind of laugh someone gave when they thought a situation was too easy to take seriously.
"Sometimes," he said.
I stared at the little silver number twelve attached to the door.
My fingers began to tighten around the strap of my handbag.
"But she wants to feel needed," Spencer continued. "I barely have to explain anything. I tell her I'm having a hard time, and she figures out how to get me money."
The woman didn't answer immediately.
I waited for Spencer to sound ashamed.
I waited for him to say he was joking.
I waited for him to correct himself, to admit that he had gone too far, or to explain that the woman on the phone had misunderstood him.
I waited for anything that might give me a reason to open that door and pretend I hadn't heard a thing.
Nothing came.
I was still standing there when the first memory hit me.
The jewelry box.
It had belonged to my mother.
There wasn't much inside it by the time Spencer's medical expenses began piling up, but I had kept the box for years because it was one of the few things she had left me.
I sold the gold earrings first.
Then a bracelet.
Then the little ring I had worn for so long that the skin beneath it was lighter than the rest of my finger.
I remembered placing each piece on a counter and watching a stranger examine it beneath a bright white light.
I remembered the amount I received.
I remembered telling myself that jewelry could be replaced.
My son couldn't.
That was how I had explained it to myself every time another bill arrived.
And I had believed every word.
A few months earlier, Spencer's condition had worsened again.
I had spent days making calls, asking questions, and trying to find specialists who might be able to help him.
Every new appointment seemed to lead to another test.
Every test seemed to lead to another expense.
The hospital bills came in envelopes that I opened at the kitchen table, one after another, while the coffee in my cup went cold.
I learned to recognize the sound of a bill sliding out of its envelope.
I learned which companies would let me make payments.
I learned how long I could wait before answering a call from someone asking when I intended to pay what I owed.
And I learned how easily a person could become embarrassed about being poor when someone they loved was sick.
I had never been wealthy.
I had worked for what I had, saved what I could, and tried not to ask other people for help.
But when it came to Spencer, all those rules disappeared.
I borrowed money.
I sold things I had promised myself I would never sell.
I even pawned my mother's old sewing machine, the one she had used for years before her hands became too stiff to work comfortably.
I remembered carrying it into the shop.
It was heavier than I expected.
The man behind the counter asked whether I was sure I wanted to part with it.
I told him I was.
Then I walked outside and cried in my car.
I didn't cry because of the machine.
I cried because I wondered what else I could possibly give up if Spencer needed more help.
And now I was standing outside his hospital room, discovering that my sacrifices had become something he could use against me.
The lottery ticket pressed against the inside of my handbag.
I could feel its stiff paper through the thin material.
Twenty million dollars.
That morning, I had checked the numbers again.
And again.
And again.
I had checked them so many times that I knew the sequence by heart, yet I kept looking because I was afraid that one careless glance had made me imagine the whole thing.
The first time I realized the ticket had won, I sat down at my kitchen table.
I didn't scream.
I didn't call anyone.
I simply placed the ticket beside my coffee cup and stared at it until the numbers stopped looking like numbers and started looking like a way out.
For months, I had been afraid to answer the telephone.
I had been afraid to open the mail.
I had been afraid that one more medical expense would leave me with nothing at all.
Now, suddenly, there was a chance that none of those things would matter anymore.
I could pay the outstanding bills.
I could afford the treatment Spencer needed.
I could make sure he had a safe place to recover without wondering whether I could afford the next prescription.
I could stop selling the few things that remained from my mother.
I could stop borrowing money from people who had already helped me more than once.
Most of all, I could stop telling my son that I would find a way when I wasn't sure there was one.
That was what I had wanted to give him.
Peace.
I had pictured the moment in my mind while driving to the hospital.
I would walk into his room with a smile I couldn't quite control.
He would ask what had happened.
I would sit down beside him and take his hand.
Then I would tell him that everything was going to be all right.
I had even imagined him crying.
I thought he might cover his face with his hands, or shake his head in disbelief, or tell me that he didn't know how he could ever repay me.
I hadn't expected repayment.
I was his mother.
That was enough.
At least, it had always been enough for me.
Inside the room, the woman spoke again.
"You really think she'll give you all that money?"
Spencer answered so quickly that I wondered whether he had been waiting for someone to ask.
"She always does."
Those three words hurt more than the rest.
She always does.
Not because he needed help.
Not because he was frightened.
Not because he was grateful.
Because, in his mind, I was predictable.
I was a door that opened whenever he pushed.
I was a purse he could reach into whenever he needed something.
I was a woman who had spent so much of her life trying to protect her child that she had forgotten to ask whether he was protecting her in return.
I lowered my hand.
My knuckles had begun to ache from holding it in the air.
For a moment, I considered walking away.
I could have gone downstairs.
I could have sat in the parking lot and waited until the conversation ended.
I could have returned home, placed the ticket in a drawer, and pretended I had never heard those words.
Spencer would have seen me eventually.
I would have smiled at him.
He would have smiled back.
We would have carried on as though nothing had changed.
But something had changed.
I had heard my son describe my love as a way to obtain money.
And I couldn't make myself believe I had misunderstood him.
I looked down at my handbag.
The winning ticket was still inside.
For the first time that morning, it didn't feel like a miracle.
It felt like a question.
What was I supposed to do with twenty million dollars when the person I had planned to save was using my fear to get what he wanted?
I had no answer.
Not then.
I only knew that I couldn't walk into that room with the same smile I had practiced in the car.
So I stepped back from the door.
And for the first time since Spencer had become sick, I wasn't thinking about what I could do for him.
I was trying to understand who he had become while I was busy trying to save him.
Click here to continue reading: PART 2: I Had Spent Months Finding Money for His Treatment, Never Realizing My Son Might Have Learned Exactly Which Words Made Me Give In
I Thought Twenty Million Dollars Would Finally Give My Son His Life Back, Until I Heard the Conversation Behind His Hospital Door
Part 1 of 20
