Medical bills.

Complications.

Responsibilities.

Gone, all of it, with a fountain pen, in a hallway, while I lay dying forty feet away.

That is what he thought he had done.

I have forgiven myself for a great many things in the time since, but I have never quite forgiven the world for the fact that he very nearly got to be right.

Because that is the part that still wakes me some nights, and it has nothing to do with the money.