Buried Debt
My wife was in a car accident and barely clinging to life, but I calmly stood outside the operating room listening to a sales agent introduce a new apartment to me.
The doctor, covered in blood, came up to me.
"The patient was impaled by a hard object in her lower body. There are two options. We can remove her uterus immediately, or we can try to preserve the organ, but that will require extremely precise equipment and the cost will be very high.
"Please decide quickly. She doesn't have much time."
I answered impatiently, "Then remove it. Don't waste the effort."
When my mother-in-law heard that, she broke down in front of me, wailing.
"Jason, I'm begging you. Use the money to save my daughter. If they remove it, how is she supposed to hold her head up for the rest of her life?"
My father-in-law pleaded through tears too. "She's your wife. Can you really bear to watch her lose the chance to be a mother? Aren't you going to think about your own future?"
I quickly stepped back and said, "If you want to save her, pay for it yourselves. I don't have any money."
"Didn't we give all our money to you two? Take out the four hundred fifty thousand dollars you saved to buy a house and save her first!"
My voice shot up instantly. "What? Spend four hundred fifty thousand dollars to save a piece of rotten meat? Are you kidding me?"
As I spoke, I tossed my card to the sales agent and paid in full on the spot for the new apartment I had just chosen.