I wired my parents five thousand dollars a month for twenty years to save my sister’s life. One thousand month-ends. Two hundred and forty transfers. A million two hundred thousand dollars sent to people who taught me that family was everything, that sacrifice was love, that asking questions meant you didn’t care enough.
By day I analyzed data for a logistics firm, finding patterns in shipping routes and delivery times, optimizing systems to save companies pennies that added up to millions. By night I loaded pallets at a warehouse, my back screaming while I mentally calculated how many boxes equaled one more month of Marlene’s treatment. My wife Joanna worked double shifts as an ER nurse, learning to sleep in her car between rotations, coming home smelling like antiseptic and exhaustion.
We postponed our honeymoon—just until things stabilized, we told ourselves. Then we postponed kids—maybe when Marlene recovers. Then we postponed the version of ourselves that didn’t check the thermostat like it owed us money, that didn’t buy generic everything, that didn’t turn date nights into walks through free parks because a movie ticket felt like abandoning my sister.
“Another transfer went through,” Joanna would whisper on the first of each month, and I’d close our decade-old laptop like I was tucking in a lie we were both feeding, both believing, both too exhausted to examine too closely.
Marlene had been diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder when I was twenty-three and she was nineteen. Or so they told me. The disease had a long Latin name that my parents pronounced with the gravity of a death sentence. “The treatments are experimental,” my father had explained over a phone call that changed my life. “Insurance won’t cover it. The clinic is private, in Ohio near us. It’s expensive, but it’s her only chance.”
“How expensive?” I’d asked, my hand already reaching for my checkbook, my first real job barely three months old.
“Five thousand a month. Maybe more as treatment progresses. We’re contributing what we can, but your mother and I are on fixed income. You’re doing so well in Chicago, and Marlene looks up to you. She’s your baby sister.”
She was. I remembered teaching her to ride a bike, helping with her algebra homework, promising at her high school graduation that I’d always be there for her. So when the ask came, wrapped in medical terminology and parental tears, I didn’t hesitate.
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