But the transfers never stopped. $2,400 on the first. $800 on the fifteenth. I kept a spreadsheet. Maybe the scientist in me needed proof. The total was staggering. Over eight years: approximately $320,000. I never wanted applause. I never demanded gratitude. But I never imagined that the people I had carried for a decade would call me a “burden.”
The reckoning was inevitable. I just didn’t know how close it already was. The crash happened on a rain-soaked Tuesday. I was driving home after a sixteen-hour shift. My eyes burned with exhaustion, heavy but focused. The traffic light turned green. I entered the intersection. I never saw the truck.
It blasted through the red light at fifty miles per hour. The impact obliterated my driver’s-side door. Glass detonated like shrapnel. Metal shrieked. The world spun into a blur of gray and red—then went dark.
I came to inside the ambulance, a white-hot spear of pain ripping through my abdomen. A familiar face hovered above me, pale and tense. “Myra. Myra, stay with me.” It was Dr. Marcus Smith, an ER physician from my hospital.
“Marcus?” My voice came out wet and broken. “What…?”
“You were T-boned. We’re five minutes out. Possible splenic rupture. You need surgery—now.” Surgery. The word landed harder than the truck.
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