I nodded, turned around, and walked back down the steps without a single argument to entertain them.
I didn’t slam a door. I didn’t threaten. I didn’t beg for explanations.
I got into my rental car and drove to a cheap motel off the highway—the kind with thin walls and a vending machine that sells sadness. I sat on the edge of the bed and opened my laptop. Then I did it again.
I didn’t argue. I built a case. Over the years, I’d kept everything.
Not because I planned revenge, but because I was the kind of person who filed receipts the way some people fold laundry: automatically, methodically, believing one day it would matter. That habit—boring, unromantic—turned out to be the backbone of my freedom. I pulled bank statements going back two decades.
I made a spreadsheet that looked like a heartbeat monitor: $5,000, $5,000, $5,000—sometimes more, when there was a “new stage,” a “complication,” a “trial medication insurance wouldn’t cover.” I totaled it. The number sat on my screen like an accusation: $1.2 million. I cross-referenced every “expert” invoice with licensing registries.
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