Zeroes

“You know what he told me?” Timothy said, looking down at his small cup of black coffee. “I need to work more. And spend less.”

I stared back at Timothy in silence, hardly surprised; he had spoken to several financial advisors, and they all told him the same thing. Many of them had met Timothy in coffee shops like the one we were sitting in right now.  With cruel irony, the café’s sound system was softly playing ABBA’s “Money, Money, Money.” Tim and I sat in our usual spot in the café at a table tucked away into the corner. The walls were a light green and the furniture a dark, mahogany brown. The seats had leather cushions that were some of the most comfortable I had ever used. There were two young college kids behind the counter: One made the drinks and the other worked the till. Both of them had headsets to allow them to take orders from the drive through, but other than that, they were both casually dressed. I loved how the owners let the employees wear whatever they wanted.

“That’s it?” I stared back at him incredulously. “How much did you pay for this ‘advice?’ Didn’t he have anything beyond just the obvious? 

“I mean, your problem is not unique, Tim. Doesn’t this guy speak to lots of people that are up to their eyeballs in student loans and credit card debt?” 

“Well, he mentioned a few government relief programs,” Timothy said, pushing his grey wire-rimmed glasses up his nose. “However, I qualify for none of them. I either have to be in a STEM field or doing some sort of public service job. Unfortunately, I don’t qualify for any of the jobs that would grant me debt forgiveness.

“I guess I will just have to slave away until the day I die,” Timothy sighed before taking a sip of his now cold coffee. He had dark circles under his normally bright green eyes. His short, red, curly hair was disheveled, and he sported a worn, dark blue suit that he wore periodically from the time when I met him at a men’s group I led three years ago.

I really felt for Timothy. After all, my situation was not much better; he and I both completed liberal arts degrees at the same state school, though I finished my degree a few years earlier than he had. 

The biggest difference between the two of us was that I was lucky enough to win a scholarship that paid for half of my tuition and books. By the time Timothy graduated high school, that scholarship ran out of funding. 

Even though I had nowhere near the amount of debt as Timothy and a decently paying job, I couldn’t help but wonder if his current situation would be mine as well. After all, I fastidiously tracked my expenses in an Excel sheet that I created. I couldn’t help but notice that every month they ticked upwards ever so slightly, even though my spending habits remained the same.

As the years went on, Timothy and I lost touch. I was still at the same job, making slightly more money than that day we were conversing over coffee. However, I was married now, but my wife could no longer work. 

“How much???” I stared at the hospital bill in my left hand, my skin crawling all the while I beheld the numerous zeroes. They stared back at me like thousands of bats waking from a cavernous slumber. 

“Why am I paying your company all these premiums if you won’t even cover a basic treatment for my wife?” I shouted. I immediately cringed; I had worked many call center jobs such as the one the representative on the other side of the line, dealing with irate people like me.

We went back and forth for another ten minutes before I was fed up with the conversation. I hung up with the representative and thought about the ‘advice’ Timothy had relayed from his financial advisor all those years ago. 

“Work more…Spend less.”

So I resolved to do just that. I pinned the medical bills and my credit card debt statements to the lavender-colored wall in front of our bed. “Out of sight, out of mind,” as the saying goes. I resolved to keep this goal firmly within my sight. 

From that day on, I lived at my various jobs and at the hospital. When I was not at the hospital visiting my wife, I was working one of my two jobs. 

Her condition slowly deteriorated. As her health declined, the bills kept rolling in like waves battering a ship against a shoal. A couple hundred for this test here, fifty for those meds there…

Three grand for this procedure??

“Work more…Spend less…”

I took on a third job and furiously worked all seven days of the week while visiting her as much as I could. I stopped driving and started biking. Riding my bike everywhere soothed my frayed nerves, as well as helped me skip the sky-high prices at the pump.

At least, it helped most of the time.

There was a massive Greyhound bus approaching very fast from my left as I waited to cross the street one evening. I was on my way to visit my wife after another grueling day of work. I put my foot on the pedal, tempted to push down on it very hard and pedal furiously the six feet or so to the middle of the street.

Suddenly I saw my wife staring back at me, her eyes red and rivulets twisting down her cheeks. 

I took my foot off the bike pedal. The Greyhound bus passed, and the walk man appeared on the other side.

Years passed like this. One day, the doctors finally allowed me to take my wife home. I rolled her out in her wheelchair to the park by our apartment. The sky was a bright blue, and the crab apple trees were in full bloom, their flowers adorning their branches like hundreds of white gold necklaces. The grass was a vivid, emerald green, and butterflies danced among yellow dandelions sprouting here and there. In a nearby pond, frogs croaked serenely atop lily pads. A flower stood atop each pad next to the frog, like a semaphore.

“Could you get me my shawl and my other sweater?” My wife said, smiling and shivering. I smiled back and helped her put on her second sweater, then draped the shawl around her shoulders. When I was done, she closed her eyes, breathing the warm air. After a few moments, she dozed off.

I pulled out my ten-year-old smart phone to check my credit card balances and the medical bills. My web browser took its time loading my balance: 

$481.34

My heart skipped a beat. Finally, I was close to paying off everything. 

Over the next month, I worked extra hard by taking on more hours at my various jobs. Every evening I logged into my bank account and made extra payments to my various bills, no matter how small. 

“Anne!” I shouted as I opened the door to our apartment, completely winded after furiously pedaling my bike home. I pulled out my smart phone and navigated to the app I used to track our debts. I bounded the short distance to our bedroom, where she was resting. 

“Anne, I finally did it!” I panted excitedly. I ripped off the bill statements from the wall, the bills that had hung there for so many years as a reminder to myself. At long last, they would no longer burden us!

My wife was still fast asleep, her chest rising and falling ever so slightly. 

“Anne, look!” I nudged her shoulder, waving the screen in front of her face. 

$0.00

I nudged her again. 

She remained still.

I stared at her in disbelief. I could feel myself gaping slightly at her. I nudged her again. Still, nothing. I tried to feel her pulse. 

I slowly left our bedroom and walked to the counter where I had flung the day’s mail in my haste to share the good news. 

Desperate for any sort of distraction, I ripped open the envelopes on the countertop. Of course, they were more bills. I quickly tallied them up in my mind (such mental math had become second nature to me by now) and quickly realized that they were higher than that month’s income, somehow.

Before I knew it, I was slumped on the ground, my back against the wall. I wanted to cry. And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to. I remembered the conversation I had with Timothy all those years ago.

“Work more…Spend less…”

Somehow, deep down, I had always known that I wouldn’t be able to escape the same fate as Timothy.

I did not have any family living at the time, and now that my wife was gone, I truly was alone. And yet…

I felt a strange connection to both Timothy and my wife. One that I had never felt before. We each struggled valiantly against our respective fates, but life had other plans for us.

Over the next week or so, I gathered together all of the documents Anne and I had prepared. I held a small funeral per her wishes. Her friends and family and even some of my coworkers attended. The latter was especially surprising, because my coworkers had never seemed interested in my life up until that point. 

I stole a moment away from the funeral guests to sit by the lily pond for a few moments. I glanced at the bright orange and purple zinnias blooming in plant holders next to the pond.

Anne’s favorite flowers.

“Hey Damian! It’s been a moment.”

I turned around to see a lanky guy a few years younger than me. He was wearing a black suit with a dark green tie and a white shirt. His hair was curly and red, and he had bright, green eyes. 

“Timothy!” I said, smiling despite myself. “It’s great to see you again! I can’t believe it’s you after all these years!”

“My company just moved me back here and I saw Anne’s obituary in the local paper.” He said. “I am really sorry for your loss.”

“I appreciate that, my friend.”

“I feel awkward showing up out of the blue like this.” Timothy said with his characteristic sheepish grin. “These past few years my job has been like a whirlwind flinging me across the globe.”

“At any rate,” he paused. “That is no excuse for not reaching out sooner.” 

I didn’t say anything. 

“Listen, if there is anything I can do to help, please let me know.”

I reached out to shake my friend’s hand. He took my right hand in his, then pulled me close into a half hug with his other arm. I did the same. 

Perhaps, despite all that had happened, isolation and poverty would no longer be my fate.