My mother’s response wasn’t horrified. She sounded embarrassed that he had said it aloud.
Then my father explained what apparently mattered more than keeping me alive. Megan was sixteen and preparing to apply to prestigious universities, and my parents had spent years building a $180,000 college fund for her.
“Megan is applying to colleges next year. Stanford, Harvard, maybe Yale.”
He continued without looking at me.
“We’ve saved since she was born. We have one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in her college fund, and we are not wiping out her future over this.”
I waited for my mother to remind him that I was his daughter too. I even waited for Megan to object, but she remained focused on her phone while Karen worried about what their neighbors might think if our family accepted financial assistance.
“We are not taking charity. What would people in our neighborhood think if they found out we were on welfare?”
Then my father asked whether surrendering me to the state would allow Medicaid to cover my treatment. He discussed giving up responsibility for his thirteen-year-old daughter with the detached practicality of someone trying to eliminate an inconvenient expense.
