Dying to Protect My Mother's Perfect Life

I spent fifteen years taking beatings in the Bronx hellhole — beatings meant for my mother.

She's a Manhattan heiress now. Chanel suits, a daughter on her arm, and eyes full of disgust whenever they land on my hollowed-out frame.

"You're just like your disgusting father. A sewer rat. You've always reeked of something rotten."

What she doesn't know: on that rainy night fifteen years ago, I wrapped my arms around that man's legs and let him kick me half to death, so she could run.

What she also doesn't know: the tumor in my stomach has spread. I won't survive the winter.

I'd made my peace with dying alone, quietly, so I wouldn't disturb the perfect life she'd built. I swallowed the blood rising in my throat and started walking toward the dark.

Then came the dinner party, a few months later. Her daughter shoved me off a second-floor balcony.

I hit the ground at her feet like a broken doll. Dark red blood flooded across her white heels.

I watched the color drain from her face. With the last breath I had, I apologized.

"Don't be scared. This piece of garbage won't dirty your eyes anymore."

Fifteen years of grinding through hell, and I still couldn't make it out the other side.

If Leonard Pierce hadn't pulled strings to get me an emergency scan, I wouldn't even have the right to stand in the hallway of a VIP medical ward.

He was an attending surgeon at this hospital now — the same man I'd walked away from three years ago, when I decided someone like me had no business dragging him down with her.

I was curled in a cold metal chair, both hands pressed hard against my stomach, cold sweat soaking through my faded sweater.

"Hazel." He held the CT report, and his hands were shaking.

"Your spleen has sustained irreversible damage. Combined with severe malnutrition and the gastric cancer..." He stopped. Started again. "You need to be admitted. Today. If you wait any longer, the pain alone will kill you."

I didn't answer. I was too busy swallowing the taste of blood at the back of my throat.

It hurt that much. Years ago, my father Frank had shattered three of my ribs with a baseball bat. No money to fix them. They'd rotted into cancer inside me.

"Just write me a prescription for painkillers." My voice came out like gravel.

"Are you out of your mind?" He shot to his feet.

The elevator at the end of the hall chimed.

Heels struck marble. Clean, precise, unhurried.

I looked up without thinking.

The pain in my stomach seemed to go still.

Eleanor Vance.

My mother.

She wore a Chanel suit, her wine-red hair pinned without a single strand out of place. The slums had left nothing on her. Bodyguards and assistants formed a loose orbit around her, intercepting anything that might cause her inconvenience.

On her arm was a girl of about seventeen in a current-season Prada dress, her smile easy and unguarded.

"Mommy, this checkup center is so boring. Can we go straight to Fifth Avenue after?" The girl's voice floated through the empty corridor.

"Of course, Becky. Whatever you want." Eleanor's tone was soft in a way I'd never heard directed at me. Bottomless.

Something tightened in my chest.

Mommy.

I hadn't called anyone that in fifteen years.

That rainy night in the Bronx, I'd locked both arms around Frank's legs while his boots came down on me again and again.

My mouth full of blood, I'd screamed at the woman climbing the chain-link fence: "Run. Don't look back."

She ran. Back to Manhattan. Back to the life she was born for. And I stayed behind in her place.

She must have felt my eyes on her. Eleanor turned.

The moment our eyes met, the warmth on her face collapsed.

Her pupils contracted. Something moved through her expression — shock, then revulsion, undisguised and physical.

She pulled Becky behind her without thinking, as though a single step in my direction might be contagious.

She recognized me.

Even hollowed out, even gray with illness, she knew me immediately. I have three of Frank's features. She's never been able to forget that.

"Ms. Vance?" The hospital director materialized at her elbow, fawning.

Eleanor ignored him. She crossed the corridor toward me, each step deliberate, and stopped close enough that I could see the set of her jaw.

"Why are you here?" She looked down at me the way you look at something that has no business being there.

"I—" I opened my mouth. Blood pooled at the back of my throat. I forced it down. "I just—"

Leonard stepped in front of me, cutting off her line of sight.

"She is my patient," his voice flat and cold. "Step back."

Eleanor's mouth curved. She looked past his shoulder and found me anyway.

"I warned you, Hazel." Her voice dropped, low enough that only the three of us could hear. "Stay out of my life. You're exactly like your father. A sewer rat. You've always reeked."

I dug my nails into my palm. The pain kept me present.

"A girl who crawled out of the gutter." Her gaze moved over my clothes and her lip curled. "You can actually afford care here? Or did Frank finally die and you came looking for a handout?"

"Excuse me." Leonard's voice cut in, sharp and cold. "Show some respect—"

I caught his sleeve.

"Leonard." I looked down. "Leave it."

I couldn't defend myself. If she knew I was dying — if she knew what the last fifteen years had actually cost — her perfect life would fracture. She'd feel responsible.

I'd rather she hated me.

"I was just..." I pressed one hand against the wall and pushed myself upright, slowly, every movement costing something. "Passing through. I'm sorry to have bothered you, Ms. Vance."

I turned and walked toward the far end of the corridor, one foot in front of the other.

Behind me, Becky's voice rang out, bright and careless: "Mommy, who was that woman? She looked scary."

"Nobody." Eleanor's voice was flat. "Trash. Forget her."

I closed my eyes. The tears came without a sound, dropping onto the cold tile floor.