The Price We Pay Read online

  The Price We Pay

  M.H. Lee

  Contents

  The Price We Pay

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This story is dedicated to the memory of my father. And to my mother who didn't want to read it, but did because I asked her to.

  The Price We Pay

  Clark lay in bed, eyes squeezed tight.

  "God, give me the strength to face another day," he prayed, steeling himself.

  He wondered what it must be like for other people to wake up—how did it feel to just live instead of having to claw back every single hour from the hands of the Reaper? He believed in God, but Death was like a close personal friend who had come to crash on the couch for a few days and never left.

  He moved carefully as he rose, trying not to wince at the sharp stabs of pain that shot through his shoulder where the bones were slowly decaying—long-term victims of the disease that had already stolen his kidneys.

  Molly was still asleep, one arm thrown above her head, long hair sprawled on the pillow.

  He stood there, slightly hunched, frail in his white underwear, and wondered what he'd done to deserve such a remarkable woman.

  And whether he'd be able to keep her.

  They'd had two kids and fifteen years together already. But they'd also spent countless nights in the hospital and too many days worrying whether they'd have enough social credits for the next dialysis treatment.

  How much could love overcome? When would she finally say enough and leave him?

  He wouldn't blame her if she did.

  Sometimes he secretly hoped she would.

  He'd die if she left—inside if not outside—but he hated how their love kept her here, suffering along with him.

  He'd wanted to give her the world once.

  Instead he'd given her this cramped existence—constantly on the brink of failure, never able to just live.

  She woke and saw him watching her.

  "Come back to bed. You can be a few hours late, can't you?" Her voice was soft and low, still fuzzy with sleep.

  He wanted to so badly, but, no. He couldn't be late again. His boss would surely fire him this time.

  "I can't."

  "At least give me a kiss." She smiled, the familiar fire burning in her eyes.

  He shook his head. If he gave her one kiss it would become two and then he would be a few hours late. And if he lost this job…

  No. He had plans. Simple ones, but ones that mattered. Like taking the family to the mountains for a week.

  He'd have enough if he could just keep this job another two months, which was easier said than done. It was his third job so far this year. He tried to keep his head down and do what he was told, but it was hard when he could so easily see what his bosses couldn’t.

  But he'd do it this time. For Molly and the kids.

  It would be worth it to see the smile on Molly's face when he surprised her with the trip.

  For now, though…The light in Molly's eyes died and she turned away, burying her face in the pillow.

  Clark paused a moment, wanting to comfort her, but he didn’t have time. He never did.

  He turned towards the bathroom, promising himself he'd buy her a rose on the way home from work. That much he could afford, at least.

  Clark tried not to look in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. Tried not to register the gaunt frame and loose skin where once there'd been taut flesh and muscle.

  At least the worst scar was in the back—the jagged line along his shoulder blade where they'd removed his lung after the second and final failed kidney transplant.

  That one had almost cost him his life. The Reaper had decided to not just crash on the couch and play video games, but had slept in his bed, worn his clothes, and eaten all his food.

  Three months he'd been in the hospital. He'd spent endless days with green and black infection spewing from his mouth; weeks of fighting until they finally acknowledged that it was no good to save the kidney if the patient was dead.

  He’d spent those months tethered to a hospital bed watching Molly hide her tears, pretending for his sake that everything was fine.

  He'd done the same for her—not let her see how close Death was and how much just opening his eyes every morning was a struggle.

  He would have never made it without her love to light the way.

  And every day they’d had to wonder if this would be the day the hospital stopped treatment. The day he finally ran out of social credits and they decided he was no longer valuable enough to society to save and shut down the machines keeping him alive.

  Every morning he'd wondered if that would be the last time he’d look into Molly's warm brown eyes.

  It had taken him three long years to save enough credits for that surgery. Hundreds of hours keeping his head down, doing what he was told, keeping silent lest he be fired. And when he wasn't working, he was volunteering. He'd tutored students, cleaned-up parks, done taxes for seniors—anything to earn another credit.

  Three years of sacrifice so he could finally live a normal life.

  He and Molly had lain together at night whispering about what they could do when he was healthy again—travel anywhere they wanted for as long as they wanted, stay in bed all day on a Saturday instead of rushing off to dialysis.

  Eat a banana split together.

  Three years they’d spent dreaming about what it would be like after.

  After.

  It was all they'd lived for.

  Not that they would have ever been completely free.

  Clark would have always been on anti-rejection medicines. Not to mention that if he'd ever rejected the kidney he'd have needed enough social credits for the surgery to remove the failed kidney and go back on dialysis.

  But it would have been a better life. A more normal life.

  Especially better than the years when he'd been so low on credits that Molly had been forced to dialyze him at home using that old brown monstrosity that barely functioned.

  After, he'd told her as he stroked her hair. After the transplant, it will all be better.

  How wrong he’d been.

  Clark shoved thoughts of what could have been to the back of his mind. Dwelling on the past did nothing for his present.

  He opened the blister pack of his morning medications and swallowed the fifteen pills one at a time, hating each one as he washed it down with a sip of tepid tap water. He had to take half of them just to counteract the side effects of the others. It was a never-ending death spiral that he’d lose some day. Only question was when.

  Sometimes he wished he weren't a thinking man. That he could just walk through life like some mindless drone, oblivious to what was happening around and to him.

  But he wasn’t. He saw it all. The unfairness, the futility.

  When it all became too much he did multiplication tables in his head—32 x 43, 45 x 87, 921 x 435. Anything to distract himself from the reality of his life and the anger at those who put such a low value on their fellow man.

  Otherwise he’d start calculating how he could steal enough supplies to treat himself for a year. And wonder what it would take to overthrow a government that only allowed him medical treatment after he’d proven his continued value to society.

  Such a joke.

  They wanted him to prove his value but at the same time they chained him with their requirements.

  If they had just given him the care he needed to survive, he'd have given them everything. Who knows where the world would be now if he’d been able to finish his PhD in nuclear physics? But no. He'd had to drop out when he turned twenty-five and they started demanding credits for his treatment.

  He could have accomplished so much…

  Instead
he was stuck working part-time jobs, scrabbling and scratching just to get by.

  He flung the blister pack at the trash can. He didn't have time for this shit.

  Dwelling on the injustices of the world wasn't going to get him to work on time or keep the spark in Molly's eyes. Leave that to some idealist with good health and money in the bank. Someone with the time and energy to save the world. He didn’t have either.

  He glared at the broken man in the mirror and forced his shoulders back and lifted his chin. Time to face another day.

  * * *

  Clark paused in the doorway to the dining room, watching his daughter and son eat their breakfast, one fair, one dark, both intent on last-minute homework as they ate the nutritional slop provided by the local foodbank.

  They were what made it all worthwhile. They were why he could swallow his pride every morning and do what had to be done.

  "Daddy!" Bella ran over to him, her hair shining white under the glare of the lights. "Can I come to work with you today?"

  "No, Munchkin, sorry. You have to go to school." He ruffled her hair.

  She pouted, big brown eyes pleading with him.

  "And I'm in the office all day. You know you can't come into the office with me."

  Her shoulders slumped and she shuffled back to the table. “Fine.”

  Seven years old and he already worried about her. So feisty and independent. How would a girl like her survive in a world that determined whether she could live based upon some narrow pre-conceived notion of social value much less thrive?

  He was afraid someday she'd be standing at the front of a mob screaming for change, unable to bow her head the way he had all these years. Maybe that was a good thing…The world needed to change. But did it have to do so on the back of a young girl?

  As he sat down, he turned to Drake who was hunched over his food, his dark hair flopped over his eyes. He was so angry these days—twelve years old and he’d finally started to understand how the world really worked—you either had enough money and could do whatever you wanted or you spent your days playing their game, racking up social credits against your inevitable need.

  "How're you doing, Buddy? Ready for the game this weekend?"

  Drake shrugged. "I guess. Probably won't start."

  "Well, you'll still earn participation points even if you don't."

  "I don't care about participation points! I didn't go out for the stupid team for participation points. I went out because I wanted to play." Drake glared into his bowl.

  "I know. But participation points matter, so it's good that you're earning them."

  Some weeks the few credits Clark received from his kids’ participation points made the difference between receiving treatment and not.

  Clark's vision went white.

  He fought the urge to hit something. No point in hating the world for the way it was. It didn't hate him back. It just was.

  "Maybe we can go to the court this weekend and work on your hook shot. What do you say?" Clark watched his son, wishing Drake would look at him.

  Drake glared into his bowl. "You'll probably be too tired."

  Clark winced. He was often tired on the weekends. Dialysis took it out of him. And that on top of work and volunteering and trying to be a good husband and father.

  He tried, but each year he lost a little more ground to the Reaper.

  "No. I won’t. We'll go on Sunday. After church."

  Drake rolled his eyes, but was too smart to say anything against going to church.

  Bella moved the gray sludge around in her bowl, lower lip thrust out and tears lurking in the corners of her eyes.

  "You want to come with us this weekend, Munchkin?"

  She bobbed her head. "Yes! And, Daddy?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Can I go to dialysis with you tomorrow?"

  He'd been planning on banking some more social credits while he dialyzed—completing some government questionnaire or other—but he couldn't say no to her twice. He'd just have to find some other time to answer the questionnaire.

  "Of course, Munchkin."

  "Thank you, Daddy." She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek before running to her room to get ready for school.

  He watched her go, fighting the urge to give up and go back to bed right then. Some days it was all just too much.

  * * *

  Bella going to dialysis with him meant he needed to visit Joe today. She didn't need to see that. And she was getting old enough to put two and two together and he didn’t want to have that conversation with her just yet.

  Because Joe had decided he was done. No more dialysis. After spending every Saturday morning for the last decade strapped to a machines next to Clark, Joe had decided it was time to call it quits. To die.

  Most patients crammed into the public ward brought their own personal immersion units and spent the three hours lost in an alternate reality, but not Clark and Joe. They passed the time playing a game of chess or two on Clark's old wooden set. Or, more often than not, debating the latest psychology research. (Joe was a professor at the local university.)

  They were partners in tragedy. Clark had lost his kidneys to a perfectly preventable childhood illness that wasn't caught in time, but Joe's story was even more unfortunate. He'd donated a kidney to his sister when he was in his twenties and then lost the other to an infection picked up while traveling South America on an aid mission thirty years later. He’d refused to even consider a kidney transplant, saying it was too much hassle for too little return.

  And now, it seemed, he'd decided dialysis was too.

  * * *

  Clark made his way through the maze of long, beige hospital hallway to the wing dedicated to hopeless cases. "End Care" they called it. A place where they provided just enough pain medication to protect the living from a true view of what it was like to die.

  Not everyone in End Care was there because they wanted to be, but when your veins were full of morphine you didn’t have much left to fight back.

  He found it a bit ironic that the same system that wouldn't keep a man alive was willing to provide him such a comfortable end.

  Not too comfortable, of course. That wouldn't be cost effective.

  Joe was in a room with three other patients, their beds separated by thin privacy curtains with bright images of flowers just artificial enough to be disturbing—the petals too thin, the colors nothing seen in nature.

  The man next to Joe's bed was coughing—the sound loud and wet, as if he was trying to expel his insides through his mouth.

  The combined smells of decay and disinfectant made Clark miss a step, but he fought back his horror and made his way to Joe’s bed.

  Joe stared at the ceiling, his lips pressed tightly together, his hands clenched into fists.

  "Hey Joe, whadya know?" Clark sat down in the red plastic chair with faux wood armrests next to the bed.

  Joe turned towards him with a wince. "Clark. You didn't have to come."

  "Of course I did. You're my friend."

  "I would've understood if you didn't.” He rolled his eyes towards the man still coughing nearby. “But, thank you." He reached out a hand already swollen from the fluids pooling in his body.

  Clark took it, squeezing gently as he struggled to hold back the tears.

  He didn't cry often, but to see Joe give up like this—like he himself had imagined doing in his darkest hours—was too much.

  "Why?" Clark asked, unable to elaborate further.

  "I was tired. Tired of all of it." Joe stared at the ceiling once more. "But mostly tired of being alone."

  Clark winced. Joe's wife Celeste had died the year before and he hadn't been the same since.

  "You could've…"

  "What? Found someone? Gone online and met a great, caring woman to spend my days with?"

  Clark nodded.

  "Would you? If Molly left you? Would you do that to another woman knowing what you know now?"

  Clark looked away. "No.
" Given the chance to do it again, he’d turn and run. Molly’s love and their children were all that had made his life worth living. But to see his illness slowly break her down little by little, to watch the woman he loved try to bear a burden that no one should have to bear…

  No.

  He'd never ask that of another woman knowing what he did now.

  He'd been young and foolish when they met, unaware how much a terminal illness would weave itself through every waking moment of their lives. How it would carve away at what they shared, day after day, slowly eroding the strong foundation they’d built together.

  Even though he couldn’t bear the thought of losing Molly—they’d separated the year before and even though he knew he should let her go, he hadn’t been able to—he would never do that again. If he lost her, he’d die, alone and miserable before putting another woman he loved through that kind of hell.

  Not that he could imagine loving anyone but her.

  He shook his head and sat back, joining Joe in staring at the ceiling as the machines beeped and whirred around them and the smell of the place seeped into his very pores.

  He knew God didn't give you more than you could handle, but he sure came damned close sometimes.

  "How long?" He finally asked, desperate to fill the silence with something other than his thoughts.

  "I don't know." Joe pressed the button for more morphine. "A week maybe? Could be less. Could be more. I stayed home the first week, tidying up, until it got to be too much and I decided I wanted to be close to the good drugs."

  They laughed, the forced laughter of men who'd spent too many years relying on pills to regulate their bodies—veterans who had long since learned that pills could only do so much and even the good pills didn’t touch every kind of pain.

  Once again they lapsed into silence until Joe reached towards the nightstand. "Clark, I need to tell you something before I forget." He grunted in frustration as the tubes snaking out of his arm pulled him up short. "Can you get that folder for me?"

  Clark handed him a dark blue folder with the name of some law firm glinting in gold embossed letters under the fluorescent light.