The Price of Survival

Avery

The shrill blast of the ringtone sliced straight through the room, sparing me from whatever half-baked lie was about to tumble out of my mouth. I nearly sagged against the mahogany desk in gratitude.

Declan tilted his head, his brow lifting an inch. "I believe that belongs to you."

Right. My phone. The wretched device was vibrating against my thigh, wailing inside my slacks like a blender chewing through sheet metal.

"Pardon me, Mr. Pierce. I am so sorry." My hands fumbled as I yanked the handset out, catching it by the edge just before it hit the carpet. I swiped the screen. "Hello?"

"Am I speaking with Avery Sutton?" The voice was brisk, clipped, and completely stripped of warmth.

"Yes. This is she."

"This is the emergency department at City Central Hospital. Your mother, Lydia Sutton, was admitted to our care roughly twenty minutes ago—"

The floor dropped out from under my heels. The floor-to-ceiling glass, the sprawling Manhattan horizon, the leather and gloss of Declan's executive corner—the whole room went flat and gray around me.

"What happened to her? Is she—"

"The team has her stabilized for the moment, but the attending physician requires you here on-site right away."

I bolted out of the chair, my knees locking straight. "I am on my way."

"Avery?" Declan's voice cut through the fog, sharp and commanding. "What is going on?"

"It's my mother. She's in the ER at City Central. I have to leave—right now." I made an erratic, desperate motion toward the door, already backing up.

"Arthur will drive you down."

"No, sir, please don't trouble yourself, I can just catch a cab—"

Declan was already holding his personal mobile to his ear, ignoring my protest entirely. "Arthur. Pull up to the front entrance immediately. Miss Sutton is coming down, and you are taking her straight to City Central."

"Mr. Pierce, seriously, I can find my own—"

"Move." The word struck with finality, brooking zero debate.

The elevator drop down forty floors dragged on forever. When the lobby doors parted, Arthur was already stationed outside by the idling black town car. He pulled the passenger door wide without speaking, his normally impassive jaw softening with quiet sympathy.

Midtown traffic was a stagnant nightmare. I sat on the leather bench, bouncing one heel against the mat and refreshing the blank screen of my phone every thirty seconds. In the glass above the dash, Arthur met my eyes.

"We will have you at the main doors in five minutes, Miss Sutton."

The reek of industrial disinfectant struck my nostrils the second the automatic sliders hissed shut behind me. I practically threw myself against the reception counter. "Lydia Sutton. She was brought in by ambulance—"

"Third floor, Room 304." The nurse pointed toward the bank of visitor elevators without glancing up from her monitor. "Dr. Harding is outside her door."

Mom looked frail beneath the rough white sheets, IV tubing taped down across the bruised skin of her inner arms. But her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. The green blip of the cardiac monitor became the sweetest rhythm I had ever heard in my life.

"Ms. Sutton?" A physician stepped quietly into the alcove, a metal chart tucked beneath his forearm. "Your mother suffered an acute secondary complication related to her underlying condition. We managed to counter the immediate crisis, but managing her baseline now requires a very specialized pharmaceutical regimen."

I nodded quickly, rubbing my palms against my trousers to stop the shaking. "Of course. Whatever keeps her out of this room."

"The protocol itself..." He paused, his gaze dropping to the floor tiles. "It carries substantial cost. The specialty infusions on their own—"

The estimate he stated emptied every breath from my lungs. It was an impossible figure, a clean line of zeros that mocked every single cent sitting in my checking account.

"Understood," I managed to say, forcing my vocal cords flat. "I'll take care of it."

Dr. Harding offered a brief nod and stepped back into the corridor, leaving me standing over Mom with a skull full of static. The number he had just spoken out loud was the price of a luxury import vehicle or an entire season's wardrobe from the boutiques Declan frequented.

That bill hung above my neck like an iron blade, suspended by thread. My emergency cushion wouldn't cover the opening month of treatment, and my credit cards were already near their limits from her prior hospital admission.

I dropped into the hard plastic chair stationed beside the mattress, built specifically to punish anyone who sat for more than twenty minutes. The administration probably figured physical torment would clear visitor rooms faster. Good luck to them, because I wasn't budging.

"Naturally, our department provides deferred financing schedules," the billing representative announced, her voice sickeningly cheerful for someone handling catastrophic financial news. The plastic badge pinned to her lapel identified her as Paula.

"Wonderful." I produced a stiff smile. "I'll certainly make use of that." Make use of it how? Stick up a convenience store? Liquidate a lung on an overseas exchange?

Paula slid a four-page legal packet across the laminate desk, her pink acrylic nails clacking against the paper. "Initials here, signature at the lower line, and once more on the rider." She highlighted the margins with all the breezy cheer of a travel agent booking a weekend cruise.

I dragged the ballpoint across the designated lines, trying to ignore the sickening realization that I was essentially pledging my future paychecks, my hypothetical firstborn, and possibly the rights to my own blood just to satisfy the co-pays.

"All set!" Paula beamed, gathering the copies into a neat folder. "Accounts receivable will reach out shortly to verify your schedule."

"Can hardly wait," I murmured under my breath as she bustled down the tiled hall in her quiet orthopedic flats. She probably had top-tier corporate medical benefits that paid for everything.

Mom shifted on the thin mattress, and I caught her limp fingers in mine. The monitor ticked off another second, each beat a tiny chime charging toward a balance I couldn't pay. At this rate, I'd have to hit the Powerball jackpot by Friday, which was fairly difficult considering I couldn't even justify buying the ticket.

By the time I unlocked my apartment door that evening, the rooms were dark and freezing. I had stayed at Mom's bedside until the charge nurse formally cleared the ward for night rounds, watching her sleep while I ran desperate calculations against my ceiling plaster.

The phone buzzed in my coat pocket. Piper's contact photo lit up the screen—an old snapshot of her laughing behind a drink from a rooftop mixer last spring.

I collapsed straight back onto the cushions and hit accept. "Hey."

"Where on earth have you been? I've been ringing your phone for three hours!" Piper's voice tumbled out through the speaker, breathless and loud.

"At the hospital. Mom had another bad turn this morning."

"Oh, Aves. No. Is she hanging in there?"

"She's stable for now. But..." I pinched the bridge of my nose, letting my head fall against the back cushion. "The invoices, Pipes. They're terrifying. As in, surrender-both-kidneys-and-throw-in-a-cornea terrifying."

"What did they quote you?"

I rattled off the figure Dr. Harding had given me.

Silence hung on the line for three beats. "That is..."

"Exactly." I looked up at the water stain near the light fixture. "I'm going to look into personal loans first thing in the morning, maybe see about picking up weekend shifts somewhere." My voice cracked. Even with maximum overtime, the ledger wouldn't balance. I would have to work thirty-six hours out of every single day, and the earth was still stubborn about having only twenty-four.

Piper's tone dropped, turning quiet and fierce. "Take my money. I have the savings account—"

"Stop." I sat upright on the sofa. "Do not even say that. That account is for the lease on your photography studio."

"The studio can sit on hold. Lydia cannot."

"If you transfer one single cent into my account, Piper, I swear I will smash every piece of glass in your camera bag and replace the lenses with plastic goggles from the dollar store."

"Fine," she exhaled loudly. "Then let me get you income instead. I know two different outfits looking for reliable part-time hands right now."

"Doing what?"

"My friend Sophie runs that boutique wedding coordination firm, and she's drowning. She needs a remote virtual assistant for evening administrative work. And a boutique marketing firm across town needs contract help for small client decks. Both strictly remote."

"You know Pierce Industries has an ironclad exclusivity clause in my employment contract."

"Avery, half the corporate analysts in your building run freelance tax gigs on the side. It's not like you're selling trade secrets to Pierce's competitors. Sophie schedules floral deliveries, and the marketing shop formats menus for neighborhood bistros."

I chewed the corner of my thumbnail, calculating. "What does it pay?"

"Sophie pays thirty an hour flat, and the marketing decks are priced by project, but the margins are solid."

The numbers spun behind my eyes. With consistent hours, that extra cash could actually put a real dent in the recurring hospital invoices.

"However," Piper's tone turned stern, "if someone in Declan's circle catches wind of this..."

"I know the drill. Summary dismissal, loss of references, an industry blacklist, utter ruin, end of days."

"I'm serious. You have to be meticulous."

"Have you ever known me not to be?"

"Do you want that cataloged chronologically or by order of catastrophe?"

"I'm hanging up on you."

"Love you. I'm texting you Sophie's onboarding link right now."

The following morning turned into a high-stakes balancing routine. I kept Declan's executive files active on my main monitor while discreetly splitting the corner of my personal laptop to skim Sophie's client spreadsheets and training documents. Multitasking took on a psychotic edge as I scheduled executive board meetings while memorizing regional wholesale pricing for white hydrangeas.

"Miss Sutton?"

Declan's deep voice erupted from the desktop intercom unit, making me slam the laptop lid flat against the mahogany surface—even though his office door was closed and he couldn't possibly see through the glass partition.

I keyed the switch. "Yes, Mr. Pierce?"

"Where are we on the Carver draft?"

Right. The merger contract that had been waiting on my desk for two hours while I went down a rabbit hole comparing silk dupioni table runners.

"izing my review now, sir. It will be on your desk in five minutes."

I tore through forty dense sheets of legal stipulations, skimming boilerplate clauses while my sleep-deprived brain strained to keep corporate finance separate from wedding jargon. If I accidentally inserted matrimonial vows into an eight-figure asset acquisition, I was blaming clinical exhaustion.

By midday, my skull felt packed with wet sand. I swallowed half a turkey sandwich at my desk while watching mute instructional videos on wedding coordination software, praying the floor receptionist wouldn't stroll past and ask why I was studying seating chart templates.

Back in my chair after two o'clock, I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyelids, trying to force the balance sheets back into focus. The rows of black font drifted over the white cells like bugs crawling across a page.

"Miss Sutton."

I flinched so hard my elbow clipped the edge of the desk. Declan's tone over the speaker shouldn't have startled me—the intercom had sounded the same way every afternoon for eight months—but my nerves were frayed to absolute ribbons between forty-eight hours of sleep deprivation and the mounting dread of running unauthorized side gigs right under his nose.

"Yes, Mr. Pierce?" My response came out half an octave higher than normal.

"Come to my office."