“Her immune system is crashing. Don’t make this about you.”
Proof never came. Updates did—always urgent, always vague, always just enough to keep the fear alive.
Doubt would rise in me like bile, and then guilt would crush it back down. Because what kind of brother suspects a sick sister? What kind of son questions a mother crying on the phone?
The first time my doubts turned into a shape I could hold, it was something small and stupid: a bill for a “Cleveland expert” that listed a clinic address that led to an empty parking lot. I told myself it was a typo. Then there was the “logistics address for treatment,” which turned out to be a gated zip code where houses looked like magazines.
Then a name—one of the “experts”—that didn’t exist in any registry. Then my sister’s public posts, blurry and half-hidden behind privacy settings, because someone always forgets who can see what: a caption about a “much-needed spa day,” tagged at a resort. A photo of manicured hands holding a drink with an umbrella.
Continue reading…
