They Borrowed My Surgery Fund To Leave Me Behind novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Memorial Slide

Ezra shows Mara the pitch video that buried her alive, and the next morning the hospital says a stranger has paid her deposit in full.

I did not let a stranger into my apartment at midnight.

I took my coat and walked him across the street to the Neil Avenue diner, where I had worked for three years.

The night cook waved a spatula at me through the pass window.

"Booth by the door, Mara," he called. "Same as always."

Ezra Vogel sat down across from me and put his phone flat on the table between us.

"I'm an investor," he said. "On Tuesday my firm wired one point eight million dollars to a company called Halyard Labs."

My stomach dropped.

"I know the company," I said.

"Then you know the founder who pitched us." He tapped the screen. "I want you to watch this, and I'm sorry in advance."

The video began with Tripp standing at a podium in a gray quarter-zip, his voice soft.

"I want to tell you why I build things," he said. "Her name was Mara."

My own face filled the screen.

It was the hallway clip from last spring, me in my cardigan, smiling because he had asked me to.

"Mara had a heart condition since she was nine," Tripp said. "She was funny and stubborn and she never complained."

I had not complained. I had saved.

"She died in March, three weeks before her surgery date. She ran out of time. Halyard is built so nobody else does."

The screen went black.

The cook set two mugs of coffee on the table and walked away very fast.

I looked at Ezra.

He was watching my hands, which were flat on the table and not shaking, because I had gone somewhere past shaking.

"March," I said.

"The fourteenth."

"I was at work on the fourteenth. I covered a double."

"I know. I looked for an obituary," he said. "There wasn't one. Then I found a picture of you on a campus lawn last month, in a cap and gown."

He turned his phone and showed me.

I had not posted that picture. A classmate had.

"I came to see if you were a cousin," he said. "Or a sister. Anyone who might be alive and angry."

"I'm the girl in the video," I said.

"I can see that."

I took out my phone and showed him the photo with the candle on the plate.

I showed him the transfers, one by one, with the dates.

He read them slowly.

When he reached the seventy-two thousand, he put the phone down very gently.

"That was your surgery fund," he said.

"Yes."

"They told me the founder-capital line was personal savings from the team."

"Seventy-two," I said. "And nine thousand four hundred more from three people who've known me since third grade."

He closed his eyes for a moment.

Then he opened them and looked straight at me, and he did not look away.

"I'm going to hold the rest of my wire," he said. "There's a second payment due Friday. Nine hundred thousand. I can stop it tonight."

"Don't."

He frowned.

"If you stop it, they'll know someone saw," I said. "They'll come home and clean it up and hold a funeral that never happened."

"What do you want?"

I had not known the answer until I said it.

"I want them standing in front of everyone they lied to. I want them to say it out loud, with the investors and the town watching. And I want my money back to the penny."

He was quiet.

"Then I can't tell anyone you're alive," he said.

"No."

"And I send Friday's payment as if nothing is wrong?"

"Yes." I held his gaze. "Don't say a word to Tripp. Don't say a word to anyone on your side."

He thought about it for a long time.

"I'll do it," he said finally. "On one condition."

"I don't take conditions from a man I met ten minutes ago."

"Then it's a request." He stood up and put a twenty on the table for the coffee. "Go to your doctor tomorrow. Whatever she says, do it."

"I'm doing it with or without you," I said.

"I believe you."

He went out into the cold.

I watched his taillights turn the corner.

At nine the next morning I sat in the hospital financial office with my folder and my four hundred twelve dollars.

The counselor typed for a long moment and frowned at her screen.

"Ms. Ostrow, I'm not sure how to say this," she said. "Your surgery deposit has been paid in full."

"I haven't paid it."

"It was received at eight this morning. The name on the payment is E. Vogel."

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