"The moment you think of giving up, think of the reason why you held on so long" - Natsu Dragneel
..
The fluorescent lights of Saint Mary's Hospital hummed overhead, casting their sterile glow across the waiting room where John sat hunched forward, his elbows resting on his knees. His hands trembled slightly as he stared at the worn linoleum floor, counting the scuff marks he'd memorized over the past three weeks. Twenty-seven. Always twenty-seven.
At twenty-eight, John looked older than his years. The stress of the past months had carved deep lines around his eyes and turned his brown hair prematurely gray at the temples. His clothes, a wrinkled polo shirt and jeans that had seen better days, hung loose on his frame. He'd lost weight, though he couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten a proper meal.
"Mr. Mitchell?"
John's head snapped up at the sound of Dr. Patel's voice. The oncologist's expression was carefully neutral, the kind of practiced calm that doctors wore when delivering news that would shatter someone's world.
"How is she?" John stood up too quickly, his vision swimming from exhaustion and poor nutrition.
Dr. Patel gestured toward a quieter corner of the waiting room, away from the other families clutching their own desperate hopes. "Mr. Mitchell, I need to speak with you about your mother's condition."
They sat in uncomfortable plastic chairs, the kind designed to discourage long stays. Dr. Patel pulled out a tablet, swiping through medical charts that might as well have been written in hieroglyphics for all John could understand them.
"The cancer has progressed more rapidly than we initially anticipated," Dr. Patel began, his voice gentle but direct. "The tumors in her liver and lungs have grown significantly. Without immediate surgical intervention, followed by an aggressive chemotherapy regimen..."
The words seemed to echo from a great distance. John heard them, but they felt disconnected from reality, like dialogue from a movie he was watching rather than his own life unfolding.
"Surgery," John repeated, the word feeling foreign on his tongue. "What kind of surgery?"
"A complex procedure. We'd need to remove portions of the affected organs, then begin immediate chemotherapy. The surgery alone would cost approximately sixty thousand dollars, not including the follow-up treatments, which could run another forty thousand over the next six months."
One hundred thousand dollars. The number hit John like a physical blow. He made thirty-five thousand a year as a warehouse supervisor, and most of that went to his mother's current medical bills and their modest apartment rent. His savings account had been emptied months ago.
"Insurance?" John asked, though he already knew the answer.
"Your mother's policy has a lifetime cap, which she reached last month. I'm sorry, Mr. Mitchell. I know this is difficult."
John stared at his hands. They were calloused from years of manual labor, stained with ink from inventory sheets, and now they shook with a tremor he couldn't control. "What about payment plans? Charity care?"
Dr. Patel's expression softened further, if that were possible. "We've already applied for every assistance program available. Your income, while modest, puts you just above the threshold for most charitable organizations. As for payment plans..." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "The hospital requires a significant down payment for a surgery of this magnitude. At least thirty thousand upfront."
Thirty thousand dollars. John might as well have been asked to produce thirty million.
"Is there family who might be able to help?" Dr. Patel asked gently. "A father, siblings, relatives?"
John shook his head slowly. "It's just me and Mom. Always has been." He thought of his father, who had walked out when John was seven, leaving behind nothing but empty promises and unpaid bills. He thought of his mother's sister, who had cut off contact twenty years ago over some long-forgotten argument. He thought of the coworkers who had their own families, their own struggles.
"No one," he said finally.
Dr. Patel was quiet for a long moment, studying John with the kind of compassion that came from delivering this news too many times before. "Mr. Mitchell, I have to be frank with you. Without this surgery, your mother has perhaps three days, maybe a week at most. The cancer is aggressive, and her body is already weakened from the previous treatments."
Three days. The words echoed in John's mind like a countdown timer. Tick, tick, tick.
"I understand this is overwhelming," Dr. Patel continued. "But if you're going to find a way to make this happen, time is critical. I'll give you some privacy to think, but I need to know by tomorrow morning whether we're proceeding with the surgery."
After Dr. Patel left, John sat alone in the waiting room as the evening shift change brought new faces, new hopes, new desperation. He watched families embrace in joy at good news, saw others crumble under the weight of loss. The hospital was a microcosm of human experience, compressed into sterile hallways and flickering fluorescent lights.
He eventually made his way to his mother's room. She was sleeping, her face gaunt and pale against the white pillows. The machines monitoring her vital signs beeped steadily, a mechanical lullaby that had become the soundtrack of their lives. John pulled a chair close to her bed and took her hand in his. Her skin was paper-thin, cool to the touch.
"I'm going to fix this, Mom," he whispered, though she couldn't hear him. "I promise I'm going to fix this."
The next morning, John stood outside the hospital entrance, the crisp October air cutting through his thin jacket. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a business card, its edges already worn from the dozen times he'd taken it out and put it back over the past week.
Marcus Chen - Financial Solutions was printed in simple black letters, followed by a phone number. Nothing more, nothing less. It was the kind of deliberately vague business card that existed in the gray areas of legitimate enterprise.
John had met Marcus completely by accident. He'd been leaving the hospital late one evening, exhausted and defeated after another meeting with financial counselors who had run out of options to offer. Marcus had been in the parking lot, apparently waiting for someone, and had overheard John's frustrated phone call to his bank about a loan denial.
"Tough break," Marcus had said, approaching with the easy confidence of someone accustomed to finding people at their lowest points. He was well-dressed, maybe forty years old, with an expensive watch and shoes that probably cost more than John made in a month.
"Family medical bills," John had replied, too tired to be suspicious of a stranger's interest.
"Those are the worst kind. Banks don't understand that kind of urgency." Marcus had handed him the card. "If you get desperate enough, give me a call. I help people when traditional methods don't work out."
Now, standing in the morning sunshine with his mother dying three floors above him, John was definitely desperate enough.
He dialed the number.
"Marcus Chen."
"This is John Mitchell. We met last week at the hospital. You gave me your card."
"Ah, John. The mother with cancer. I was wondering if I'd hear from you. Have you decided you need my services?"
"I need sixty thousand dollars," John said without preamble. "Today."
There was a pause, then Marcus chuckled softly. "Straight to the point. I like that. Sixty thousand is doable, John. But you understand this isn't a bank loan with friendly payment terms and customer service representatives."
"I understand."
"Do you? Because once we shake hands on this, there's no customer protection, no bankruptcy courts, no legal loopholes. You borrow sixty thousand from me, you pay back ninety thousand within six months. That's fifty percent interest, John. And if you default..." Marcus let the sentence hang in the air.
"What happens if I default?"
"Well, let's just say I've never had someone default twice."
John closed his eyes, feeling the weight of the decision pressing down on him like a physical force. In the rational part of his mind, he knew this was insane. Ninety thousand dollars in six months on his salary was impossible. But rationality was a luxury he couldn't afford with his mother dying upstairs.
"I need the money today," John repeated.
"You'll have it in two hours. Meet me at the coffee shop across from the hospital. Come alone, and John?"
"Yeah?"
"I hope your mother pulls through. I really do."
Two hours later, John sat across from Marcus in a corner booth of Café Luna, a manila envelope between them containing more cash than John had ever seen in one place. The money was real, crisp hundreds that smelled like possibility and damnation in equal measure.
"Ninety thousand, six months," Marcus repeated, sliding a simple contract across the table. "Monthly check-ins, just so we stay in touch. Sign here, here, and initial there."
John's hand trembled as he signed his name. Each letter felt like a small surrender, but he thought of his mother's face and pressed the pen to paper.
"Smart choice," Marcus said, pocketing the signed contract. "Your mother raised a good son."
The surgery was scheduled for that afternoon. John paid the hospital cashier with a mixture of relief and dread, watching as sixty thousand dollars in cash was counted, verified, and processed. The money that had taken him two minutes to sign for was gone in less than ten minutes of paperwork.
Dr. Patel seemed surprised but pleased by the sudden development. "I'm glad you found a way," he said. "We'll take good care of her."
The surgery lasted eight hours. John spent that time pacing the waiting room, alternating between hopeful prayers and panicked calculations of how he might possibly pay back ninety thousand dollars. He called in sick to work, burning one of his few remaining sick days, and survived on vending machine coffee and anxiety.
When Dr. Patel finally emerged from the surgical wing, his scrubs were rumpled and his face was drawn with exhaustion. John rose from his chair, searching the doctor's expression for any hint of good news.
"Mr. Mitchell, please sit down."
The world tilted sideways. John remained standing, his body refusing to obey the gentle command.
"The surgery went as well as we could have hoped," Dr. Patel began, and for a moment, John's heart soared. "We were able to remove the tumors from her liver, and the lung resection went smoothly. But..."
That single word, but, contained all the devastation that followed.
"During the procedure, your mother suffered complications. Her heart, weakened by months of chemotherapy and the cancer itself, couldn't handle the stress of the surgery. We did everything we could, but she went into cardiac arrest on the table. We weren't able to revive her. I'm so very sorry."
The words reached John through what felt like deep water. He heard them, understood them intellectually, but emotionally they felt impossible. His mother was supposed to wake up. She was supposed to recover. She was supposed to justify the deal he'd made with the devil.
"She didn't suffer," Dr. Patel continued. "She was under anesthesia the entire time. Her last conscious moment was telling me to take good care of her boy."
John sat down heavily in the plastic chair, his legs no longer capable of supporting him. The money, the contract, the impossible debt, none of it had mattered. His mother was gone, and he was left with nothing but grief and a ticking financial time bomb.
The funeral was small, attended by a handful of his mother's former coworkers and neighbors who had known her as the kind woman who always had a smile and a plate of cookies for anyone who needed them. John sat in the front row of the chapel, staring at the closed casket and wondering how his life had become such a complete disaster in the span of a single week.
The funeral director, a soft-spoken man named Mr. Hendricks, had been understanding about John's financial situation. "We can work out a payment plan," he'd said gently. "Your mother was a good woman. She deserves a proper goodbye."
Another payment plan. Another debt. John signed the papers mechanically, adding four thousand dollars to his growing mountain of obligations.
After the funeral, John returned to his apartment. Their apartment, though it would always be theirs in his mind, and for the first time in months, he had nothing to do. No hospital visits to make, no insurance forms to fill out, no doctors to call. The silence was deafening.
He sat on the couch and looked around the small living space that had been their world. His mother's reading glasses were still on the coffee table next to a paperback romance novel, bookmarked three-quarters of the way through. Her knitting basket sat beside her favorite chair, a half-finished scarf spilling out in cheerful yellow yarn. The kitchen still smelled faintly of the soup she'd made the day before her final hospital admission.
John couldn't bring himself to touch any of it.
Days blended together in a haze of grief and practical necessities. He returned to work, going through the motions of inventory management and shipping schedules while his mind remained elsewhere. His coworkers offered condolences and casseroles, but John felt disconnected from their kindness, like he was watching his life through someone else's eyes.
A week after the funeral, John was lying on his mother's bed—he couldn't bear to sleep in his own room anymore—when he heard heavy footsteps in the hallway outside his apartment. Multiple sets of footsteps, moving with purpose.
The knock on his door was firm and businesslike.
"John? It's Marcus. I think we need to talk."
John's blood turned cold. He'd known this moment would come, but he'd been too lost in grief to prepare for it. He shuffled to the door in pajamas and a bathrobe, his appearance as disheveled as his life had become.
Marcus stood in the hallway with two other men. They were large, well-dressed, and radiated the kind of quiet menace that didn't need to be verbalized. Marcus himself looked exactly as he had a week ago—expensive, confident, and entirely unsympathetic to John's current state.
"You look terrible," Marcus said, pushing past John into the apartment. His associates followed, closing the door behind them with a soft click that sounded like a coffin lid falling shut.
"I'm sorry about your mother," Marcus continued, though his tone suggested this was merely a social nicety. "But life goes on, and business is business. We had an agreement."
John stood in the middle of his living room, swaying slightly on his feet. He hadn't eaten in two days, hadn't showered in three, and existed primarily on a diet of coffee and numbness.
"I don't have the money," he said simply. The words came out as a whisper, barely audible.
Marcus tilted his head, as if he hadn't heard correctly. "I'm sorry, what was that?"
"I don't have the money," John repeated, louder this time. "I can't pay you back."
One of Marcus's associates, a man with scarred knuckles and dead eyes, stepped forward. Marcus held up a hand, stopping him.
"John, John, John," Marcus said, shaking his head sadly. "We talked about this. I was very clear about the terms of our arrangement. You borrowed sixty thousand dollars. The repayment is ninety thousand over six months. That's fifteen thousand per month, starting now."
"My mother died on the operating table," John said, his voice growing stronger with something that might have been anger or might have been the last stage of grief. "The money didn't save her. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered."
Marcus's expression didn't change. "I'm sorry for your loss, truly. But your mother's medical outcome doesn't change our financial arrangement. You received the money, you signed the contract. Now you pay it back."
John laughed, a sound entirely devoid of humor. "With what? I make thirty-five thousand a year before taxes. Even if I gave you every penny I earn, it wouldn't be enough."
"Then you should have thought of that before you signed on the dotted line," Marcus replied, his voice hardening. "I don't make loans to people who can't pay them back, John. I make loans to people who will pay them back, one way or another."
The scarred man stepped forward again, cracking his knuckles. The sound was like small bones breaking.
"Please," John said, though he wasn't sure what he was asking for. Mercy? Time? A miracle?
Marcus studied John for a long moment, taking in his disheveled appearance, the cluttered apartment, the general aura of a man who had given up on life.
"You know what I think, John? I think you're suffering from depression. Grief can do that to a person. Makes them stop caring about consequences, about the future. But I'm going to help you remember why you should care."
Marcus nodded to his associates. They moved toward John with the practiced efficiency of men who had done this many times before.
The first punch landed in John's stomach, doubling him over and driving all the air from his lungs. He collapsed to his knees, gasping, and the second blow caught him across the jaw, sending him sprawling across his mother's reading glasses. The lenses cracked under his weight with a small, sharp sound.
"Where's my money, John?" Marcus asked conversationally, as if he were inquiring about the weather.
John tried to answer, but his mouth was full of blood. He spat, leaving red droplets on the carpet his mother had vacuumed just days before her final hospital stay.
"I don't have it," he managed to say.
Another punch, this one to his ribs. John heard something crack and wondered distantly if it was bone or cartilage.
"Wrong answer," Marcus said. "Try again. Where's my money?"
The beating continued methodically, professionally. These men knew how to hurt someone without causing permanent damage, how to inflict maximum pain while keeping their victim conscious and responsive. John curled into a ball on the floor, trying to protect his vital organs while absorbing blow after blow.
"I don't have it," he repeated, over and over, like a mantra. "I don't have it."
At some point, the physical pain began to fade into a strange sort of detachment. John's consciousness started to drift, floating above the scene like a spectator watching someone else's beating. He thought about his mother, lying peacefully in her hospital bed before the surgery. He thought about the yellow scarf she'd been knitting, half-finished and forgotten. He thought about the romance novel she'd never finish reading.
"John," Marcus was saying from what seemed like a great distance. "John, stay with me. We're not done here."
But John was done. He was done with the pain, done with the debt, done with the grief that felt like a weight on his chest every morning when he woke up and remembered all over again that his mother was gone. He was done with a world where good people died and bad people prospered, where love wasn't enough and money was everything.
His vision started to fade around the edges, darkness creeping in like gentle fingers. The last thing he saw was his mother's yellow scarf, bright and cheerful and forever unfinished.
And then, mercifully, John Mitchell saw nothing at all.
In the growing darkness, there was a moment of perfect peace. No pain, no grief, no debt, no regret. Just silence and the fading echo of a life that had tried its best and fallen short.
But even in that silence, something stirred. A warmth that had nothing to do with his cooling body, a light that had nothing to do with the flickering fluorescent bulb in his apartment hallway.
Somewhere, in a place between places, a soul prepares for its next journey. And in a distant world where reputation and power walked hand in hand, where hidden societies of awakened humans wield extraordinary powers. A new life was about to begin.
The yellow scarf would remain forever half-finished, but the story was far from over.