The Lonely Elder and Her Heartless Son

I was in the hospital for a month and had three surgeries. The doctors issued a critical condition notice twice, and both times, I was the one who had to sign it, alone, outside the ICU. Not a single phone call from my son. My texts vanished into a black hole. On the day I was discharged, I dragged my weak body back to an empty, silent apartment. The next day, my son finally called. His first words were: “Hey Mom. My father-in-law wants a new car. Can you wire me sixty grand?” I was stunned into silence for three seconds, then I said calmly, “Son, Mom is out of money.” “What do you mean?” His voice immediately shot up. “Your mortgage payment. I stopped it.” The other end of the line erupted.

1 In the sterile white corridor of the ICU, my fingers wouldn’t stop shaking. The pen weighed next to nothing, but in that moment, it felt as heavy as lead. “Family of the patient, please sign here.” The nurse’s voice was flat, the sound of someone who witnesses life and death as a daily routine. I looked up, my gaze drifting past her to the end of the long hall. In front of the other rooms, anxious family members huddled together, sitting or standing in worried clusters. But I, Evelyn, was completely alone. The harsh fluorescent lights stretched my shadow long and thin across the polished floor, like a giant, mocking question mark. A flicker of sympathy, almost imperceptible, crossed the nurse’s face. She lowered her voice. “Ma’am, is there any family we can call for you? The hospital chaplain, perhaps?” My throat was dry. I managed a smile that felt more painful than tears. “I have a son. I have a son.” The nurse’s expression turned awkward. She didn’t press the issue, just nudged the pen a little closer. I signed my own name. Each stroke felt like it was being carved into my heart. Back in my hospital bed, every cell in my body screamed in pain. I fumbled for the phone under my pillow. The screen lit up, showing the same familiar chat window. Mom’s sick, at City General Hospital. Could you come visit when you have a chance? The message sat there, unanswered. Beneath it, the word “Unread” felt like a tiny, sharp needle in my eye. Before the second surgery, my surgeon approached me with the consent forms, his face grim. “Mrs. Miller, this procedure is high-risk. We absolutely must have a signature from a next of kin.” I forced myself to sit up, my voice weak but firm. “My son is on a business trip. He’s on his way. I’ll sign for now. I take full responsibility for myself.” The doctor looked at my face, pale as a sheet of paper, and finally sighed, handing me the pen. Again, my own name: Evelyn Miller. There were three of us in the room. The lady in the next bed had a daughter who brought her different kinds of homemade soup every day. The woman in the bed across from me had a husband who never left her side. When mealtime came, the room would fill with the comforting aroma of real food. I opened the plastic container delivered from the hospital cafeteria. White rice, a few limp green beans, and two thin slices of mystery meat. I could hear the soft cooing from the next bed. “Mom, I made you chicken soup today. Drink up, it’ll give you strength.” I poked at my rice. A tear fell, unbidden, then another, splashing hot against the cold food. In the dead of night, a searing pain from my incision ripped me from a shallow sleep. Cold sweat soaked through my hospital gown. I curled up into a ball, like a small, abandoned animal. Once again, I reached for my phone and pulled up the number I knew by heart. Alex. My finger hovered over the call button for a long, long time. In the end, I let my hand fall, defeated. It’s been ten years, Evelyn. You should be used to this by now. After the third surgery, they sent me straight to the ICU. The second critical condition notice followed. When the nurse found me to sign it, I just looked at the paper and started to laugh. I laughed out loud, my shoulders shaking, laughing so hard that the young nurse just stood there, stunned. She probably thought I’d lost my mind. I was just wondering, if I really did die this time, would he come? Would Alex finally make the trip back home, the home he hadn’t returned to in a decade, just to claim my body? When my consciousness was at its foggiest, a warm hand took mine. “Evelyn!” It was Susan, my old colleague, my only true friend in this world. She looked at me, with tubes running in and out of my body, and burst into tears. “How much longer are you going to put up with him?” she choked out, her voice trembling. I shook my head, too weak to even speak. Susan, furious, snatched my phone and dialed Alex’s number directly. It rang for a long time, so long that Susan was about to give up when someone finally answered. The background was loud—music and laughter. It sounded like a party. “Yeah? Who’s this?” Alex’s voice was sharp with annoyance. “Alex! Your mother is in critical condition in the ICU, do you have any idea?” Susan yelled into the phone. “Look, I’m busy right now. Just text me whatever it is.” He hung up. Just like that. Susan was shaking with rage, about to call back when my phone chimed with a notification. It was a text from the bank. A transfer of $1,100.00 from your account ending in xxxx was completed on xx/xx. I stared at the text. It was the automatic transfer I had set up the month before, the day before I was admitted to the hospital. The money for his mortgage. Right on time. A chill, colder and more piercing than the 24/7 air conditioning in the ICU, shot through my bones. Susan saw it too. She grabbed the phone, her eyes red. “He remembers the day his mortgage is due,” she seethed, “but he can’t remember if his mother is alive or dead!”

2 I lay in bed that night, wide awake. The last ten years played over and over in my mind like a broken film reel. My son, Alex, hadn’t set foot in this home since he got married a decade ago. Christmas? He had to spend it with his in-laws. My birthday? He was taking his wife and kids on vacation. The excuses were always perfectly valid, leaving me with no room to argue. I still remember at his wedding, his father-in-law, Robert, clapping me on the shoulder and booming for all the guests to hear, “My dear Evelyn is a retired teacher! So cultured, with a great pension. Alex and Jessica are going to need your help to get by!” At the time, I brushed it off as polite wedding chatter and smiled and nodded. I never imagined it would become a ten-year prophecy. The first month after the wedding, Alex called. “Mom, we want to get some new furniture. Jessica found a set she loves from Restoration Hardware. We were thinking…” I didn’t hesitate. I transferred five thousand dollars. The next month, he called again. “Mom, we want to remodel the house. Jessica thinks the old style is so dated.” I transferred another ten thousand. I once tried, full of excitement, to visit their new home, to see the “Restoration Hardware style” that my life savings had paid for. I showed up with bags full of groceries and called Alex from the gate of their community. He stammered on the phone. “Oh, Mom, the house is a total mess right now, we haven’t finished unpacking. Don’t come up. Next time. I’ll pick you up next time.” That day, I stood outside that upscale gated community from afternoon until dusk. I watched as lights flickered on in one window after another, but not a single one was for me. In the end, I gave the groceries to the security guard and took the last bus home alone. For ten years, I was like a wind-up toy. Every month, on schedule, I transferred $1,100 for his mortgage. For holidays, a check for two or three thousand. For his in-laws’ birthdays, another thousand or two as a “gift of respect.” I scrolled through my mobile banking history, my finger swiping through page after page. Car for Alex: $30,000. Renovations for Alex: $15,000. Birthday gift for Alex’s father-in-law: $5,000. Wedding gift for Alex’s sister-in-law: $8,000. Tuition help for Alex’s father-in-law’s nephew: $3,000. Every transfer had a noble-sounding reason, and every reason revolved around his perfect, respectable family. Meanwhile, my own home, his childhood home, hadn’t seen him in a decade. Even when he did come back, it was just to pick up money. He never stayed, never even came inside. I remember it so clearly. Three years ago, on my sixty-fifth birthday. I spent the day before shopping, and I made a huge batch of his favorite lasagna. I worked up all my courage and called him. “Alex,” I said, my voice timid. “Tomorrow… it’s Mom’s birthday. Could you… could you come over for dinner?” There was a pause on the other end. “Oh, Mom, what a coincidence. It’s actually my father-in-law’s birthday tomorrow too. We’ve had plans for weeks. I really can’t get away.” After he hung up, I sat alone at the dining table, staring at the big pan of lasagna as it went from steaming hot to cold and stiff. It was only later that I found out from Susan, completely by chance, that it wasn’t Robert’s birthday at all. My son had lied to me, just to avoid coming home. Susan once sat down with a calculator and added it all up for me. “Evelyn, you get seven hundred dollars a month from your pension. That’s not bad. But where are your savings? You’ve given him everything! You’re still living in this thirty-year-old apartment from your teaching days. The paint is peeling off the walls, and you won’t even spend the money to fix it.” At the time, I had argued back, full of righteous indignation. “He’s my only son. If I don’t give my money to him, who else would I give it to?” Lying in this cold hospital bed now, those words sound utterly ridiculous. A nurse came in to change my IV drip. She saw my red-rimmed eyes and asked softly, “Ma’am, is the incision hurting again?” I shook my head and turned my face away. It doesn’t hurt. My heart went numb a long time ago. How could it possibly feel any pain? I was just remembering things. Things I had deliberately forgotten, lies I had told myself for years.

3 Susan came again the next day. She carried a large thermos filled with a bone broth she had been simmering all morning. She fed it to me spoonful by spoonful, as gentle as if I were a child. “Evelyn, your daughter-in-law… her name is Jessica, right?” she asked suddenly. I nodded. “In the ten years they’ve been married, how many times have you seen her?” I counted on my fingers, seriously. There was the wedding. Then the few times she came down to the car with Alex when I was dropping off money; she’d stand a few feet away and give a cool nod. All told, no more than five times. Ten years. Five times. I could barely even remember what she looked like. I only recalled her at the wedding, in her white dress, coming to serve me the traditional tea. She had smiled so sweetly. “Mom, we’re a family now. Alex and I will come visit you all the time.” Ten years later, that sentence had become the funniest joke I’d ever heard. The irony was, half the time Alex asked for money, the reason was related to Jessica’s family. “Mom, my mother-in-law hasn’t been feeling well, she’s in the hospital. As her family, we have to show our support.” “Mom, Jessica’s sister is getting married. As the brother-in-law, I can’t show up with a cheap gift, you know?” “Mom, it’s my father-in-law’s big birthday. We’re planning on getting him a nice watch. We were thinking…” I used to be so naive. I thought if I supported them without reservation, they would at least have some affection for me. I thought if I emptied my own pockets, I could buy my son a respectable life with his in-laws, could ensure his marriage was happy. But I never imagined that when I was critically ill, in the hospital for a whole month, Jessica’s family wouldn’t make a single phone call. Not one. It was as if I were a complete stranger. An ATM. Susan saw the distant look in my eyes and sighed. “Evelyn, do you know what Jessica tells people about you?” My heart clenched. “She complains to the neighbors in her community that her mother-in-law is eccentric and antisocial, that you’re impossible to get along with. She says that’s why they never visit.” Susan’s face was tight with suppressed anger. “My niece heard her with her own ears. They live in the same community. She thought you were some kind of monster-in-law!” I was floored. I had been a teacher my whole life. My reputation, my integrity, meant everything to me. I’d never said a harsh word to her. I’d barely even seen her. Where did “eccentric and antisocial” come from? Susan saw the color drain from my face and seemed to hesitate, as if she had more to say. I grabbed her hand. “Susan, what else? Tell me.” She paused, then finally said, “She also said… she said that you have a good pension and savings, so you’re supposed to be helping them. She called it an ‘investment.’ She said when you get old, of course they’ll take care of you, but right now, they’re young and under pressure, and as a mother, you just have to be understanding.” Understanding? Who was there to understand me when I was alone outside the ICU, signing my own critical condition notice? Who was there to understand me when I was in so much pain I couldn’t sleep, living on painkillers? Susan’s words were a dull knife, twisting in my heart. No blood, but the pain was suffocating. I suddenly remembered something. Last month, a week before I was hospitalized, Alex had called in a panic. He said Jessica was feeling unwell and needed ten thousand dollars for a minor surgery, urgently. I was so worried, thinking something terrible had happened to my daughter-in-law. Without a second thought, I transferred all the money I had set aside for my own medical bills. Thinking back on it now, was there ever a “minor surgery”? Or was it just another lie, cooked up to get more money? The door to my room opened, and an orderly helped a new patient in. She was an elderly woman with white hair. Her daughter bustled around her, efficiently making the bed, swapping the hospital sheets for fresh ones from home, and pouring a glass of warm water. The old woman beamed, comfortable and cared for. I quickly turned my head and stared out the window at the gray, overcast sky. The tears I’d been holding back finally broke free, streaming down my face.

4 After a full month in the hospital, I was finally discharged. The doctor gave me stern instructions. It was major surgery, and my body was severely weakened. I had to rest at home, avoid any strenuous activity for three months, and come back for regular check-ups. I noted it all down, nodding. When I was handling the discharge paperwork, it was the same young nurse. She saw me struggling with my suitcase and couldn’t help but ask, “Ma’am, isn’t your family here to pick you up?” I stretched my lips into what I hoped was a decent smile. “I can manage. I don’t want to bother them.” The nurse’s expression flickered, but she didn’t say anything more. Susan had offered to drive me, but I refused. I needed to be alone. I needed to think. A month on the brink of death had clarified a lot of things for me. I hailed a cab. The driver was a kind, middle-aged man. He saw my pale face in the rearview mirror and started a friendly conversation. “Just got out of the hospital, ma’am? You don’t look too well. Make sure you get plenty of rest.” When we arrived, he insisted on carrying my suitcase up the stairs for me, all the way to my front door. I felt bad and tried to give him a generous tip for his trouble, but he just waved his hands, smiling warmly. “No, no, ma’am. You just take care of yourself. That’s more important than anything.” I closed the door and leaned against the cold wood, my nose stinging. A complete stranger, a taxi driver I’d never see again, showed me more concern than the son I had raised. When I opened the door to my apartment, a wave of stale, musty air hit me. A month of being empty had left the place coated in a thin film of gray dust, devoid of any signs of life. I shivered. If I had died in that hospital, how long would it have taken for anyone to find me here, in the home I’d lived in for most of my life? I dragged my weak body to the refrigerator and pulled open the door. The fruits and vegetables I had bought before my hospital stay had rotted completely, emitting a sickeningly sweet stench of decay. I squatted down, pulled out a trash bag, and started cleaning them out, one by one. With every rotten piece of fruit I threw away, my heart grew a little colder. The tears started again, dripping silently into the putrid mess. By the time I had cleared a small space to live in, the sky outside was dark. I was so exhausted I could barely stand. I found a packet of instant noodles in the cupboard and boiled some water. Huddled in my small kitchen, slurping the bland noodles, I started crying again. Just then, my phone rang, the sound jarring in the silence. My heart leaped. My first, instinctive thought was that it was Alex. I hastily wiped my tears and grabbed the phone. But the screen showed a text message from the bank. Dear Customer, the automatic mortgage payment from your account ending in 8888 has failed due to insufficient funds. This has resulted in a late payment. To avoid a negative impact on your credit score, please deposit the required amount as soon as possible. It hit me then. Before I went to the hospital, I had transferred the last of my money to Alex for Jessica’s supposed surgery. My own account was empty, not even enough to cover the mortgage payment. My first impulse was to call Alex and tell him to deposit the money immediately. But my finger froze over the screen. A thought, like a bolt of lightning, cut through the fog in my brain. Why was I the one panicking? He was the one living in the house. He was the one enjoying it. If the mortgage went into default, my credit would be hit first, but shouldn’t he be the one worried about it? Slowly, I put the phone down. I decided to do nothing. I would just wait. I wanted to see just how long it would take for him to remember this. To remember that he even had a mother.

5 And so began the longest wait of my life. I rested at home, clutching my old smartphone, refreshing the screen over and over again. Waiting for the call I had been waiting for for ten years. A day passed. Silence. Two days passed. Still nothing. Three days. Nothing but a few spam texts. It felt like I was conducting some kind of absurd experiment. The hypothesis: if I don’t initiate contact, how long will it take for my son to remember I exist? This was the first time in a decade I had ever done this. In the past, I was always the one who kept track of the dates, who worried he was too busy, too forgetful, or short on cash. I was always the one who called first, who transferred the money first. On the fourth day, the doorbell rang. My heart hammered against my ribs. I practically flew off the sofa. It had to be him! It must be! The bank’s warnings were serious. He couldn’t possibly be this careless! Clinging to a final shred of hope, I stumbled to the door and peered through the peephole. Standing outside was a delivery driver in a yellow uniform. In that instant, a tidal wave of icy disappointment washed over me, drowning me completely. Susan came to visit again. She brought fresh vegetables and meat from the market and went straight to my kitchen, moving with familiar ease. She looked at my gaunt, haggard face and sighed. “You’re still waiting for him, aren’t you?” I just gave her a bitter smile, unable to speak. At the dinner table, Susan suddenly became very serious. “Evelyn, I did some checking for you at the county records office. You’re not destitute.” I stared at her, confused. “You have three properties in your name.” “One is this old apartment we’re in now. It’s yours.” “Another is the house your parents left you. It’s downtown. It’s old, but it’s in a prime location.” “And,” she paused, looking me straight in the eye, “the mortgage you took out in your name to buy your son’s marital home… the title deed for that house is also in your name!” I was completely stunned. “That house… isn’t it in Alex’s name?” I whispered. Susan shook her head. “Absolutely not. I had my contact double-check. You are the borrower on the loan, and you are the sole name on the title. Alex is, at best, a tenant.” My mind reeled. I remembered when we bought the house. Alex had said that since he was just starting his career, he wouldn’t qualify for a large enough loan. But as a retired teacher with a stable income, I would be easily approved by the bank. At the time, all I cared about was helping my son settle down, so I agreed without a second thought. I never imagined that this casual decision, made only to help him secure a loan, would become my only lifeline today. Susan continued, “Think about it, Evelyn. Your pension is seven hundred dollars a month. If you weren’t paying his $1,100 mortgage, you could live quite comfortably. And that old house from your parents? You could rent that out for at least a few hundred a month.” I had never thought about any of this. For ten years, my only thought was: what’s mine is my son’s. But now, lying in that hospital bed, thinking about that cold text from the bank, thinking about his annoyed voice as he hung up on Susan… I started to wonder. I had treated everything I owned as his. But had he ever treated my life as if it were his own? On the seventh day, a second notice arrived from the bank. The language was harsher, explicitly stating that if payment was not made, legal proceedings would begin, and my credit score would be severely damaged.