The doctor called my parents to tell them I could d.i.e that night, but they chose to celebrate my sister’s promotion instead… when they finally went to see me, I was gone, and the note I left destroyed the life they forced me to maintain…

The doctor later told me he had paused before saying it, as if the words needed to be placed carefully so a mother would not fall apart on the other end of the line. What he did not know was that my mother did not fall apart over things like that.

She adjusted herself more comfortably in her chair at the restaurant, probably glanced at the wine glass in front of her, the elegant table setting, the balloons they had put up for my younger sister’s promotion, and answered in a calm, icy voice:

“We’re at lunch celebrating Chloe’s promotion. Don’t bother us with that right now.”

That.

That was what she called the possibility that I might die.

I did not hear it then. I almost wish I had. Maybe it would have saved me from two more weeks of stupid hope, the kind that lingers from childhood, when you still believe that no matter how much your parents overlook you, if something truly terrible happens, they will come running. But they didn’t. I was unconscious while the doctor called. I was intubated, full of medication, fighting to breathe, while my mother decided my life was not important enough to interrupt Chloe’s celebration.