The machines spun faster, their roar deafening.
At eleven-thirty, my eyelids grew heavy.
One of the machines let out a strange groan and jammed.
Out of habit, I cut the power and reached in for the dough.
The workshop plunged into darkness.
"Power's out!" someone shouted.
"Who's going to flip the breaker?"
"I got it!" That was Harry Brewer, working the machine next to mine.
I wanted to yell don't touch it—let me see where my hand is first, but my mouth opened and nothing came out.
Too exhausted. Too drained to even scream.
Click. The breaker snapped back on.
The instant power surged through, every machine in the workshop roared to life at once.
"AHHHHH—"
My vision blurred. Darkness crept in from the edges.
In my last moment of consciousness, I forced my eyes toward the clock on the wall.
Eleven-fifty.
Ten minutes until the New Year.
So this was the "year" my mother had given me.
Sure enough, she appeared in my dreams that night.
She was smiling. "This was supposed to be your tribulation at sixty-five. I pulled some strings and moved it up. Suffer while you're young, and you'll have an easy old age. Understand?"
"You..." My voice came out raw. "Why would you..."
"Why?" She leaned closer, her face unnervingly sharp in the dream. "Because I'm your mother. Only I know what's best for you. Serena, you need to learn gratitude."
"I hate you."
She threw her head back and laughed, the sound echoing through the empty dreamscape. "Hate me, then. Even hatred is a blessing. When you're old and gray, you'll look back at this suffering and thank me."
She turned to leave.
"Wait!"
She stopped but didn't look back, dissolving into the mist.
I woke up.
I lay in the hospital bed, staring at the water stain on the ceiling.
My right hand was gone. Forever.
All I could do was scrape by writing copy for strangers online—pennies for words.
Then autumn came, and the community organized a support group for people with disabilities. Drew Lawrence, the caseworker, practically dragged me there.
The meeting was held in the community center. About a dozen people showed up.
Some in wheelchairs. Some on crutches. Some with visual impairments. Some with hearing loss.
We sat in a circle and took turns speaking.
When it was my turn, I kept my head down. "Serena White. Twenty-nine. Right arm amputation. Three years."
The next person was a man. His voice was gentle. "Hi, everyone. I'm Ivor Chavez. Thirty-two. Left leg amputation. Also three years."
I looked up.
He sat in a wheelchair, wearing a simple white button-down. His hair was cropped short, his features clean and defined, a pair of thin-framed glasses resting on his nose.
He didn't play the victim when he spoke. Didn't complain. Just calmly described how he'd taught himself to walk again.
After the meeting, Drew wheeled me over to introduce us. "Ivor, this is Serena. She's an amazing writer."
That was how we met.
He never asked how I lost my arm. Never drowned me in pity.
He just said, when my left hand trembled from hours of relearning to write, "Take it slow. When I was teaching myself to code left-handed, I had three breakdowns a day."
He just handed me tissues when I knocked over a glass of water and sobbed, then quietly swept up the shards.
He just stayed on the phone with me until dawn when I woke at 3 a.m., shaking, my mother's face still burned into my mind.
Autumn passed. Winter returned.
One day in the last month of the lunar year, Ivor came over to help me clean for the New Year.
According to my mother's rules, the house had to be swept by the twenty-eighth. No brooms on the twenty-ninth—or you'd sweep away your fortune.
