Day after day I pushed through, and finally made it to the eve of the college entrance exam.
My mock exam score of over seven hundred was enough for a full scholarship to a top medical university.
By then, I could make Dad straighten the back that rebar and concrete had bent, and let Mom finally see a doctor at a real hospital.
And I could finally repay that debt—the one that had weighed on me for eighteen long years.
But I was about to die.
That debt would never be settled now.
Having decided to die, I returned to the hospital.
The doctor said without surgery, I had one month left. As my condition worsened, my body would swell, I'd stop urinating, until my heart simply gave out.
After a brief struggle, I decided to donate my organs.
Better to help others than die in a hospital bed with no dignity.
And I could leave my parents some money for food.
The doctor couldn't talk me out of it. He agreed to my request.
I signed papers to donate my corneas and part of my liver.
While they drew blood and searched for matches, the doctor handed me a meal voucher.
Starving, I traded it for a palm-sized cake.
Because tomorrow was my eighteenth birthday.