" money from me. I am here to discuss what comes next."
I glanced at my dad lying unconscious and then back at this man. "He is unable to speak with you. He's not awake."
"I am not here to have a conversation with him," Dean said. "I am here to converse with you."
"About what. I don't have anything to do with his loan."
"You have everything to do with it." He took one step further into the room and stopped. "Your father owes forty-six thousand dollars. Three extensions. Four months without a single payment. That stops today."
"He's in a hospital bed."
"I can see that."
"So whatever this is it can wait."
"It can't." His voice didn't rise. Didn't need to. "The debt transfers to you. Your father cannot carry it anymore and someone has to. That someone is you."
"I'm a teacher. I don't have that kind of money."
"I know about your income."
That was something else entirely. The fact that he already knew. That he walked in here with information about me before I even learned his name. Something went cold inside me right then.
"Then you know I can't pay you," I said.
"Not with money," he said. "No." He held my gaze and let what he wasn't saying hang between us long enough that I started understanding it before he put it into words. "Your father made an arrangement when he took the loan. He understood what the collateral was if he couldn't pay."
"What collateral?"
"You," Dean said. "You are the price Jessica. You always were. He knew that when he signed."
Everything in me went still.
"You're telling me my father used me as collateral."
"I'm telling you the debt is yours now and you will honour it."
"Should I choose to withdraw?"
He gazed at my father resting there. Then back to me. He stayed quiet and there was no need for him to reply since the answer was already present with us.
"Twenty-four hours," he said. He placed a card on the table beside the bed. "After that, I stop asking."
He left. The door closed. I stayed by my dad's bed motionless. The card was sitting right there on the table. My father's hand was still warm from where I had been holding it.
He had signed my name on something without telling me. He had put me up as collateral and never said a word and I had been sitting here all night talking to him like he was the victim.
Maybe he was.
But so was I.
I grabbed the card from the table. No business name. No heading. Merely a figure. As if his name by itself should have sufficed.
I walked downstairs to the hospital canteen and phoned my mom. It rang twice before she answered, and I could tell from her tone that she hadn't rested either.
"Jessica." Where are you located? "I have been trying to reach your father since last night"
"Mom, he's in the hospital." I noticed her breath pause. He fell down. He's stable, yet he has remained unconscious since arrival.
"Oh Lord." Which medical facility? "I'm on my way"
"Mom, pay attention to what I'm saying." I maintained a soft tone. "Tonight, a man arrived here." He mentioned that Dad had borrowed money from him. A substantial amount of money. He mentioned that Dad utilized me as collateral, and now the debt belongs to me."
Quiet on the opposite side.
"Mother."
"Rip it apart," she said. "Tear up whatever he handed you at this moment." "If there is no proof, there is nothing he can act upon."
I glanced at the card I was holding.
I was aware of how silly that seemed. A man arrived at a hospital before dawn, aware of my name and precisely what I made. A man such as Dean Lance did not function with a single version of anything.
Ripping this card wouldn't remove a single item.
It only meant I couldn't contact him.
And a part of me realized that this was precisely the type of error he was anticipating me to commit. I don't want double what I'm inside already.
