I was young, but I understood percentages.

I heard treatable. I heard survival. I looked to my mother, waiting for her to rush over and tell me we were going to fight this.

Karen sat by the window, her knuckles white around a designer purse. She didn’t move. She didn’t look at me. Her eyes stayed fixed on a smudge on the glass.

My father, Thomas, stood with his arms crossed over a tailored suit.

Beside him my sixteen-year-old sister, Megan, scrolled through her phone, her thumb swiping upward in a bored, repetitive motion, as if my diagnosis were an annoying delay in her social schedule.

“How much?” Thomas asked. The question hung there, cold and metallic.

Dr. Lawson’s brow furrowed. “The full protocol usually lasts two to three years,” he said, his tone cooling.

“With your deductible and copays, your out-of-pocket cost may land between sixty and a hundred thousand dollars. There are assistance programs—”

Thomas let out a sharp, breathless laugh — a terrible sound for a hospital room. “You’re telling me I have to drain a hundred grand because she got sick?”

“Thomas, please,” Karen whispered. She didn’t sound heartbroken. She sounded embarrassed.

“Megan’s applying to colleges next year,” Thomas snapped, gesturing at my sister, who finally looked up, annoyed.

“Stanford, Harvard, Yale. We’ve saved for over a decade — a hundred and eighty thousand dollars in her college fund — and I’m not wiping out her future for this.”