“You can move to the laundry room or leave,” my dad announced at Thanksgiving dinner.
“You understand, don’t you?” my brother smirked.
I walked out, but days later, Dad panicked. “Wait, Camila covered everything, even my medication.”
My name is Camila.
I’m 27 years old, and I’ve been living with my dad in Kansas City, Missouri, for the past five years. Most people would find that arrangement unusual for someone my age, but there was a reason I stayed. My dad had been diagnosed with diabetes and high blood pressure three years ago, and his medications were expensive.
Really expensive. Between his prescriptions, the house bills, groceries, and everything else, I’d been covering most of our living expenses while working as a dental hygienist at a clinic downtown.
My brother Jacob was 32 and had been living in Denver with his wife Stephanie for the past eight years. He rarely visited—maybe twice a year if we were lucky—and never offered to help financially, not once.
When Dad got sick, Jacob’s response was to send a fruit basket and a card that said, “Get well soon.” That was it. No phone calls asking how the treatment was going. No offers to split medication costs.
Nothing.
I didn’t mind taking care of Dad. Honestly, I didn’t. After Mom passed away when I was 19, Dad had been there for me through everything.
He’d helped me through nursing school, encouraged me when I switched to dental hygiene, and never once made me feel like a burden. So when he got sick, stepping up felt natural. It felt right.
But Jacob had different ideas about family responsibility.
The trouble started three weeks before Thanksgiving when Jacob called Dad out of nowhere. I was in the kitchen making dinner when I heard Dad’s voice get excited in the living room.
“Jacob, what a surprise. How are you?”
I couldn’t hear Jacob’s side of the conversation, but I watched Dad’s expression change from happy to concerned to something I couldn’t quite place.
When he hung up, he looked uncomfortable.
“Everything okay?” I asked, bringing him his evening pills with a glass of water.
“Jacob and Stephanie are having some trouble,” Dad said slowly. “Financial trouble. He didn’t give me all the details, but it sounds serious.
They might need to move back here for a while. Just temporarily,” he said. “Maybe a few months while they get back on their feet.”
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
TAP → NEXT PAGE → 👇
