I Was Billed For Every Minute Of Their Love novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: Time's Up
My father didn't wait for the hallway to empty.
He walked past Eli and past me and out through the double doors into the waiting room.
At eleven past midnight it held nineteen people, most of them in coats, most of them holding children.
I followed him because I couldn't let him get there first.
He stopped at the triage desk and set a cream envelope on the counter.
"Nine thousand dollars," he said. "Early termination. Itemized on the back."
The nurse on triage stared at him.
"Sir, this is a hospital."
"I know exactly what it is." He turned to the man in the board lanyard. "Tell her whose name is on the pavilion."
The board chair cleared his throat and said nothing.
My father looked pleased with that.
"My daughter has signed a contract with me," he said, loudly enough for the whole room. "Eight years of tuition, twenty-two years of housing and meals. She seems to think she can leave it at a dinner."
"I never signed anything," I said.
"You signed it by living." He tapped the envelope. "By Friday I move the pavilion's night funding to the children's hospital downtown. Your unit's differential goes with it."
A mother in the second row pulled her son closer.
I had been quiet all my life, in rooms where my father spoke.
"No," I said.
It came out small, and then I said it again, louder.
"No, Dad. I'm not paying that."
"Then you'll pay in other ways."
"I keep a count too."
His eyebrows went up.
"What count?"
"Of everything you owe me. The recitals you left at the intermission. The Christmases you spent on a plane. I lay in a bed in this building at twelve, and Mom got ninety minutes, and you timed her from the door."
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