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Cousin Awaited Surgery Money; Wife Sent Eight Cents, Funded Ex's Car
NovelShort
Completed
My cousin had an accident on the construction site and urgently needed eighty thousand for surgery. My wife controlled all the money in our household, so I asked her to lend the money to my uncle's family first. "Eighty thousand? Can you even make eighty thousand in a year? Who are you trying to be, some big shot?" She fiddled with her phone impatiently a couple of times. "Fine. Sent it over."
Chapters (4)
第1章
My cousin had an accident at the construction site. He urgently needed eighty thousand for surgery.
My wife controlled all the money at home, so I asked her to lend that money to my uncle's family first.
"Eighty thousand? Can you even earn eighty thousand in a year? What are you playing at, big spender?"
She fiddled with her phone a couple of times, impatient. "Fine, it's transferred."
Not long after, my aunt called.
"Hugh Finch, if you don't want to lend the money, just don't. What's the meaning of sending eighty cents?"
"Your cousin's life is hanging by a thread, and this is how you treat family?"
My wife took the phone from me, unhurried.
"Auntie, things are tight for us too. Eighty cents is the most we can do."
"Besides, he was impaled through the chest by a steel rebar. What happens when you lose both him and the money?"
With that, she hung up.
Later, because he missed the window for treatment, my cousin died.
A week later, her first love, Quinn Lawrence, bought a car, and she paid the two-hundred-thousand down payment for him herself.
The day Quinn picked up the car, she posted on her feed to show it off: "A luxury car for a brilliant man. Perfect match~"
When I called to confront her, she was breezy about it.
"It's Quinn's first car ever. If I don't help him, who will?"
Holding my cousin's memorial photo in my arms, I thought back on all the little moments from when we were kids.
And suddenly I laughed. In this rotten marriage, I was the one who'd been too dumb to see it all along.
1
The seventh day after my cousin's death,
I didn't leave the house all day. I just sat on the living room couch, holding his memorial photo against my chest.
A week ago, at noon, I got the call from my uncle.
His voice was breaking apart. He said my cousin's safety line had come loose while he was working up on the scaffolding, and he'd fallen the whole way down, chest run straight through by a thick steel rebar.
They were still trying to save him, the bleeding wouldn't stop, and the hospital had already issued a critical condition notice.
Eighty thousand for the surgery had to be paid up front, immediately, or they'd stop the operation and stop the medication.
One minute too late, and he'd have no chance.
My mind went blank on the spot. I forgot all about work, asked my boss for leave, and rode my electric scooter home like a madman.
Three years of marriage, and I'd never once had a say over the money at home.
From the day we registered our marriage, Queenie Pruitt told me a household is only stable when the woman handles the finances.
I believed her.
For three years, the second my twelve-thousand salary hit my account each month, I transferred it straight to her card.
Year-end bonus, overtime pay, the odd bit of cash from a side job. I kept none of it.
I always had just a few hundred on me. I smoked the cheapest cigarettes, never bought new clothes or shoes, wore the same work uniform through every season.
I thought if I lived steady and honest, it would earn me a good marriage.
That day I got home and told her my cousin had had an accident, that we needed eighty thousand right now to save his life.
She didn't even glance at me.
"Eighty thousand? You work yourself to death all year and don't clear eighty thousand. Who are you playing hero for?"
"What's wrong with your relatives, always coming around asking for money?"
I was frantic, pacing back and forth, explaining it to her over and over.
It's not a loan, it's his life. My cousin is dying.
I was getting on her nerves, and she brushed me off with a frown.
"All right, all right, quit yelling in my ear. It's transferred."
Hearing that, the boulder on my chest finally hit the ground.
I even felt guilty inside, thinking I shouldn't have snapped at her, shouldn't have doubted her.
I grabbed my keys to rush to the hospital.
And the next second, my aunt's call came through.
There was nothing on the line but crying, raw and torn open.
"Hugh Finch, your cousin is about to stop breathing. If you don't want to help, just say so. What is the meaning of sending eighty cents!"
"Is humiliating our whole family fun to you!"
I froze where I stood, hands and feet going cold in an instant.
Eighty cents.
Eighty thousand to save a life, and she'd sent me eighty cents.
Before I could react, Queenie snatched the phone from my hand, her tone light as air.
"Auntie, we're an ordinary family too. Life isn't easy for us."
"Eighty cents is a token. It's the thought that counts."
"His injuries are too severe. Even if they save him, he'll be a cripple. Rather than throw tens of thousands away for nothing, better to accept his fate."
With that, she hung up and tossed the phone onto the coffee table.
I stared at her, shaking all over.
第2章
I asked her why.
She lifted her eyes to me, and the coldness in them was terrifying.
"Hugh Finch, I married you to build a life with you, not to be your whole family's ATM."
In that moment, for the first time, everything inside me turned to ice.
But I still held on to one last shred of hope.
I thought, maybe the hospital had some kind of emergency fast track.
Maybe my uncle could put down a little first, maybe my cousin could hold on.
Three hours later, my uncle sent a text:
【Your cousin is gone.】
That afternoon I couldn't stay on my feet. I crouched on the floor and couldn't catch my breath for a long time.
No one knew that my life, the whole road of it, had all been given to me by my cousin.
From the age of six, I ate and slept at my uncle's house.
My uncle and aunt treated me just like their own son.
My cousin was three years older, and he gave way to me in everything from the time we were small.
When the other village kids picked on me, cornering me on the way home from school, it was always my cousin who charged in to shield me.
He got into fights for my sake and came home covered in bruises again and again.
When we were in school, the family was poor, and there was only enough tuition for one of us.
My cousin's grades were far better than mine. The teachers all said he could test into a top high school.
But he quietly tore up his acceptance letter.
At fifteen, he threw a worn backpack over his shoulder and went off alone to work construction in another city.
He told me, "Hugh, study hard. I'm no good at school, so I'll earn the money to put you through it."
From middle school all the way through college, seven full years.
On the site he hauled bricks, carried rebar, mixed cement, doing the dirtiest, most exhausting work.
He wouldn't spend on food or clothes for himself, wouldn't buy a single new shirt all year long.
Every month when his pay came, the first thing he did was transfer all of it to me.
My tuition, my meals, my clothes, all of it was his blood and sweat.
That I made it out of the countryside, that I had a stable job, that I could marry and start a family.
All of it my cousin ground out, suffered through, fought for with his own hands.
He was only twenty-eight.
He never had a girlfriend in his life, never bought a nice car or a nice place, never enjoyed a single day of comfort.
The biggest wish of his whole life was to earn a little more, save up a down payment, marry a wife, and live out a quiet, steady life.
A wish that simple, and he died without it ever coming true.
On the drive home after the funeral, she said to me, light as anything:
"Just as well he's dead. Now nobody from your family will come around borrowing money every other day. Much more peace and quiet."
That whole week, I didn't fight, didn't make a scene.
Every day I sat silent and blank, and I even kept lying to myself.
I told myself she was just cheap, just short-sighted, just unwilling to part with money.
She wasn't cruel, she just didn't understand how people treat each other...
Until I came across her post.
A brand-new black luxury car, the lighting perfect, the whole shot showy.
The caption: A fine car for a fine man, quite the match~
I tapped into the comments. It was all her friends congratulating Quinn Lawrence on his new car.
I scrolled through several before I finally saw one honest line.
【Queenie's so generous, dropping the whole two-hundred-thousand down payment for Quinn just like that, she spoils him rotten!】
Two hundred thousand.
I stared at those words.
The eighty thousand to save my cousin's life, she couldn't spare.
Two hundred thousand for her first love's car, she handed over without blinking.
In that moment, holding my cousin's memorial photo, I sat in the empty living room.
Every lie I'd told myself shattered clean to nothing.
......
第3章
I held my phone and read that post over and over, a dozen times or more.
Then I called Queenie.
The other end was loud. Music, cheering, laughter, all of it tangled together.
She was at Quinn's car party, having the time of her life.
My voice came out hoarse.
"You paid the down payment on Quinn's car?"
Not a trace of guilt. Her tone was light, almost smug.
"Yeah. It's Quinn's first car, that means something, of course I'd help him."
I let out a jittery laugh. "Two hundred grand and you don't even blink, but you wouldn't put up eighty thousand for my cousin back then?"
"How is that the same? That was a bottomless pit. He couldn't be saved anyway. Pure waste of money."
When I heard that, I only laughed harder.
A living human being. The cousin who protected me my whole life.
In her eyes, he didn't measure up to a car for her first love.
I didn't fight with her. I just hung up.
After the call I sat on the couch and started thinking back over these three years of marriage.
How much of a doormat had I been?
Three years. I handed over every paycheck, kept nothing for myself.
I wore twenty-dollar bargain-rack clothes all year round, kept wearing socks with holes in them.
Two-dollar breakfast sandwiches, the cheapest set meal in the cafeteria at lunch, never once ordered delivery.
When friends asked me out for drinks, I turned them down every time, afraid of spending the money.
Skincare, lipstick, bags, clothes, whatever Queenie wanted,
I'd buy it for her even if it took me months to save.
She didn't want to do housework, so I came home from work and did all of it, the laundry, the cooking, the mopping.
She'd stay up late binging shows while I fetched her tea and waited on her.
She threw tantrums over nothing, and every time I was the one who backed down and apologized and coaxed her out of it.
I thought a true heart would earn a true heart back.
I thought if I just lived right, she'd eventually see everything I gave.
But I was wrong, completely wrong.
My frugality, my giving in, everything I put in.
To her it was all just her due.
It was the capital that let her shamelessly favor an outsider.
I thought of my cousin, back when he was alive.
Every holiday we met, he'd pull me aside and remind me,
"Hugh, treat your wife well. Don't fight. Just live a good life."
"Starting a family isn't easy. I don't ask you for anything else, only that you're settled and happy."
He even told me, smiling, that once he saved up enough he'd buy a place and we'd be neighbors.
All his kindness, all his hopes, ruined in the hands of the woman I married.
A little after ten, Queenie came home.
Reeking of alcohol, another man's cologne clinging to her.
She walked in, saw me sitting in the dark with the funeral photo in my arms, and her face pinched up at once.
"Sitting here in the dark, holding a dead man's picture. What's wrong with you? You want to jinx us?"
I looked up at her.
I asked, "Why wouldn't you save my cousin back then?"
She kicked off her heels, answered without even looking at me.
"I already told you. It wasn't worth it."
"Throw eighty grand in and you still can't keep him alive. A pure loss, that's all."
My own family's life, in her mouth, was just a deal that did or didn't pay off.
I looked at that pretty face and felt, for the first time, that she was a total stranger, and that she made me sick.
I didn't argue with her, because I truly had nothing left in me to argue with.
Every bit of warmth, love, and hope I'd had died clean the day my cousin drew his last breath.
Seeing me sit there silent, she figured I was just sulking like usual.
She came over and reached for my arm, her voice careless and offhand.
"Come on, it's been a long time. Let it go already."
"Life goes on. Quit acting so passive-aggressive all day."
I turned my body and moved away from her hand.
Her hand froze in midair. She blinked, and her face soured.
I stood, wiped my cousin's photo clean, and set it carefully in the very back of the cabinet.
I knew it, clear as day.
From the moment she sent that money to Quinn, from the moment she stood by and watched my cousin die,
the three years we'd spent as husband and wife were finished for good.
第4章
For the next few days, I stopped noticing her completely.
Every chore in that apartment used to be mine.
Washing the dishes, mopping the floor, doing the laundry, tidying the rooms.
For three days I touched none of it.
The dishes piled up in the sink until they stank, clothes lay heaped on the couch, and the floor was gray with dust and trash.
At first Queenie didn't care at all.
She was certain I wouldn't dare do anything, certain that in a day or two I'd cave and come coax her.
She still went out every day done up and pretty, gone before I woke, back after dark.
Every day out with Quinn, eating, shopping, catching a movie.
And when she came home she made a point of rubbing it in.
"Quinn's new car is gorgeous. So comfortable to ride in."
"His friends all say we make a great pair. He's got good taste."
I kept my head down over my food the whole time and said nothing.
The deader I went, the more it wore on her patience.
"Hugh, can't you make something of yourself?"
"A relative dies, so what? Who are you moping at, day after day?"
"I already told you, even with the money, there's no guarantee he'd have lived!"
I looked up at her. "Then where's the two hundred thousand?"
Her face flipped in an instant, righteous as anything.
"That's my own money! I'll spend it however I want! It's got nothing to do with you!"
When I heard that, whatever was left in me went flat and still.
Three years of salary, hundreds of thousands in savings, every cent scraped together by me.
I'd handed it all over, and in the end it had become, in her mouth, "her own money."
No money to save a life, but plenty to throw at her first love.
This woman wasn't stingy. She wasn't shortsighted.
She was cold-blooded, selfish, and two-faced down to the bone.
Those few days, whenever I had a moment, I quietly packed my own things.
My clothes, my documents, my bank cards, everything that was mine.
I made no announcement. I sorted it all, bit by bit.
At the same time I printed out the last six months of transfer records from her bank card.
I didn't know until I checked. Once I did, the cold went all the way through me.
In just half a month,
on top of the two hundred thousand down payment, there were the scattered transfers, the cash gifts, the expenses she'd covered.
The money she'd spent on Quinn came to a full two hundred fifty thousand, and then some.
Two hundred fifty thousand.
Enough to save my cousin's life three times over.
Enough to let him get proper treatment, recover properly, live...
But in her heart, an outsider would always matter more than my own family.
A few days earlier, my aunt had called me.
The call was short. She didn't curse me. She didn't blame me.
There was only a thick, cold distance.
"Hugh, don't come around anymore."
"Every time I see you, I picture my son lying on that operating table, waiting for money to save him, waiting himself to death."
"Our two families, let's end it here..."
The moment she hung up, my tears finally fell.
The closest family I had in this life had cut me off for good.
I owed my cousin a debt I could never repay, not in this lifetime.
Slowly Queenie sensed something was off, because I didn't get angry, didn't fight, didn't get jealous, didn't coax her.
Zero emotion toward her. Zero expectation. Zero response.
She started to panic.
She started cooking on her own, tidying the place on her own, bringing up things to talk about, even turning soft and clingy with me.
But inside, there truly wasn't a ripple.
I didn't love her anymore, and I didn't hate her either.
All that was left was numbness, and a heart that had given up.
This marriage had rotted through long ago.
Saturday morning, I rode out to the cemetery alone.
The weather was good, hard sunlight, hot enough to sting the skin.
I stood in front of my cousin's headstone for a long, long time.
In the photo on the stone, he was still smiling.
I crouched down and said a lot to him.
"Cousin, I'm sorry."
"I was too foolish, too spineless. I couldn't see people for what they were."
"I married a cold-hearted woman, and it cost you your life for nothing. You looked out for me my whole life, and I couldn't look out for you even once."
The more I spoke, the less I could hold it back, and the tears rolled down like beads off a snapped string.
"Cousin, don't worry."
"From now on I'll take good care of your parents. When they're old, I'll provide for them."
"I'll carry your duty to them, make up for everything I owe. I won't be a fool again..."
I sat in front of the headstone for more than half an hour before I got up and started home.
I got back and the apartment door was open.
Queenie sat at the vanity, carefully doing her makeup and picking out clothes.
By the looks of it, another night out with Quinn, some party or gathering.
On the coffee table lay a fresh transfer receipt, held down under something.
I picked it up without thinking. Fifty thousand, just sent.
Payee: Quinn Lawrence.
Fifty thousand again.
Half a month. Three hundred thousand.
I stood there holding that slip of paper, calm in a way that was frightening.
Queenie saw me, and her eyes flickered, a little guilty.
But she stayed stubborn.
"He's short on cash lately. Just tiding him over for a bit, he'll pay it back soon."
I looked at her and spoke quietly.
"My cousin was only eighty thousand short of living."
"You wouldn't give a cent. You sent him eighty cents to humiliate him, and watched him wait himself to death..."
"But your first love, a car, a loan, spending money, three hundred thousand you just hand over."
"Queenie, put your hand on your heart and ask yourself. Are you even human?"
With every last selfish thing dragged into the open, she couldn't keep her face, and she rushed to grab me.
"I was wrong, okay? I'll never send him money again!"
"Let the past be the past! Let's make this work! From now on I'll be good to you, I'll make this marriage work!"
Out of habit she wanted to pout, to go soft, to smooth it over the way she always had.
I took a small step back, out of reach of her hand.
I looked at her one last time.
Looked at the woman I'd loved for three years, bent for three years, given to for three years.
Every reluctance, every time I'd swallowed it, every compromise, every fantasy, all of it went to zero in that moment.
My voice was quiet, very calm, no anger, no shouting, only a letting go that was complete.
"There's no letting the past be the past."
"Let's get divorced."