I used to believe there was nothing a mother couldn't forgive if she loved her child enough.<\/p>\n
I was wrong.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
My name is Abigail Riley.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Mom believes I'm getting worse, she'll give me everything she has.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stopped breathing for a moment.<\/p>\n
Not because I didn't understand the words.<\/p>\n
Because I understood them perfectly.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I was going to smile.<\/p>\n
I was going to sit beside his bed, take his hand, and tell him that things were finally going to be different.<\/p>\n
I was going to tell my son that he would never have to worry about money again.<\/p>\n
Instead, I stood in the hallway and listened.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Spencer was talking to someone on his phone.<\/p>\n
He had the call on speaker.<\/p>\n
I could hear another woman's voice coming from the small device.<\/p>\n
"Doesn't it bother you to do that to your own mother?"<\/p>\n
There was a pause.<\/p>\n
Then Spencer laughed.<\/p>\n
Not loudly.<\/p>\n
Not nervously.<\/p>\n
It was the kind of laugh someone gave when they thought a situation was too easy to take seriously.<\/p>\n
"Sometimes," he said.<\/p>\n
I stared at the little silver number twelve attached to the door.<\/p>\n
My fingers began to tighten around the strap of my handbag.<\/p>\n
"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."<\/p>\n
The woman didn't answer immediately.<\/p>\n
I waited for Spencer to sound ashamed.<\/p>\n
I waited for him to say he was joking.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I waited for anything that might give me a reason to open that door and pretend I hadn't heard a thing.<\/p>\n
Nothing came.<\/p>\n
I was still standing there when the first memory hit me.<\/p>\n
The jewelry box.<\/p>\n
It had belonged to my mother.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I sold the gold earrings first.<\/p>\n
Then a bracelet.<\/p>\n
Then the little ring I had worn for so long that the skin beneath it was lighter than the rest of my finger.<\/p>\n
I remembered placing each piece on a counter and watching a stranger examine it beneath a bright white light.<\/p>\n
I remembered the amount I received.<\/p>\n
I remembered telling myself that jewelry could be replaced.<\/p>\n
My son couldn't.<\/p>\n
That was how I had explained it to myself every time another bill arrived.<\/p>\n
And I had believed every word.<\/p>\n
A few months earlier, Spencer's condition had worsened again.<\/p>\n
I had spent days making calls, asking questions, and trying to find specialists who might be able to help him.<\/p>\n
Every new appointment seemed to lead to another test.<\/p>\n
Every test seemed to lead to another expense.<\/p>\n
The hospital bills came in envelopes that I opened at the kitchen table, one after another, while the coffee in my cup went cold.<\/p>\n
I learned to recognize the sound of a bill sliding out of its envelope.<\/p>\n
I learned which companies would let me make payments.<\/p>\n
I learned how long I could wait before answering a call from someone asking when I intended to pay what I owed.<\/p>\n
And I learned how easily a person could become embarrassed about being poor when someone they loved was sick.<\/p>\n
I had never been wealthy.<\/p>\n
I had worked for what I had, saved what I could, and tried not to ask other people for help.<\/p>\n
But when it came to Spencer, all those rules disappeared.<\/p>\n
I borrowed money.<\/p>\n
I sold things I had promised myself I would never sell.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I remembered carrying it into the shop.<\/p>\n
It was heavier than I expected.<\/p>\n
The man behind the counter asked whether I was sure I wanted to part with it.<\/p>\n
I told him I was.<\/p>\n
Then I walked outside and cried in my car.<\/p>\n
I didn't cry because of the machine.<\/p>\n
I cried because I wondered what else I could possibly give up if Spencer needed more help.<\/p>\n
And now I was standing outside his hospital room, discovering that my sacrifices had become something he could use against me.<\/p>\n
The lottery ticket pressed against the inside of my handbag.<\/p>\n
I could feel its stiff paper through the thin material.<\/p>\n
Twenty million dollars.<\/p>\n
That morning, I had checked the numbers again.<\/p>\n
And again.<\/p>\n
And again.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The first time I realized the ticket had won, I sat down at my kitchen table.<\/p>\n
I didn't scream.<\/p>\n
I didn't call anyone.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
For months, I had been afraid to answer the telephone.<\/p>\n
I had been afraid to open the mail.<\/p>\n
I had been afraid that one more medical expense would leave me with nothing at all.<\/p>\n
Now, suddenly, there was a chance that none of those things would matter anymore.<\/p>\n
I could pay the outstanding bills.<\/p>\n
I could afford the treatment Spencer needed.<\/p>\n
I could make sure he had a safe place to recover without wondering whether I could afford the next prescription.<\/p>\n
I could stop selling the few things that remained from my mother.<\/p>\n
I could stop borrowing money from people who had already helped me more than once.<\/p>\n
Most of all, I could stop telling my son that I would find a way when I wasn't sure there was one.<\/p>\n
That was what I had wanted to give him.<\/p>\n
Peace.<\/p>\n
I had pictured the moment in my mind while driving to the hospital.<\/p>\n
I would walk into his room with a smile I couldn't quite control.<\/p>\n
He would ask what had happened.<\/p>\n
I would sit down beside him and take his hand.<\/p>\n
Then I would tell him that everything was going to be all right.<\/p>\n
I had even imagined him crying.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I hadn't expected repayment.<\/p>\n
I was his mother.<\/p>\n
That was enough.<\/p>\n
At least, it had always been enough for me.<\/p>\n
Inside the room, the woman spoke again.<\/p>\n
"You really think she'll give you all that money?"<\/p>\n
Spencer answered so quickly that I wondered whether he had been waiting for someone to ask.<\/p>\n
"She always does."<\/p>\n
Those three words hurt more than the rest.<\/p>\n
She always does.<\/p>\n
Not because he needed help.<\/p>\n
Not because he was frightened.<\/p>\n
Not because he was grateful.<\/p>\n
Because, in his mind, I was predictable.<\/p>\n
I was a door that opened whenever he pushed.<\/p>\n
I was a purse he could reach into whenever he needed something.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I lowered my hand.<\/p>\n
My knuckles had begun to ache from holding it in the air.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I considered walking away.<\/p>\n
I could have gone downstairs.<\/p>\n
I could have sat in the parking lot and waited until the conversation ended.<\/p>\n
I could have returned home, placed the ticket in a drawer, and pretended I had never heard those words.<\/p>\n
Spencer would have seen me eventually.<\/p>\n
I would have smiled at him.<\/p>\n
He would have smiled back.<\/p>\n
We would have carried on as though nothing had changed.<\/p>\n
But something had changed.<\/p>\n
I had heard my son describe my love as a way to obtain money.<\/p>\n
And I couldn't make myself believe I had misunderstood him.<\/p>\n
I looked down at my handbag.<\/p>\n
The winning ticket was still inside.<\/p>\n
For the first time that morning, it didn't feel like a miracle.<\/p>\n
It felt like a question.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
I had no answer.<\/p>\n
Not then.<\/p>\n
I only knew that I couldn't walk into that room with the same smile I had practiced in the car.<\/p>\n
So I stepped back from the door.<\/p>\n
And for the first time since Spencer had become sick, I wasn't thinking about what I could do for him.<\/p>\n
I was trying to understand who he had become while I was busy trying to save him.<\/p>\n
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 … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40964,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40944\/revisions\/40964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}