Chapter 4

The days after my final departure from the penthouse blurred together. I found myself in a small, dingy motel room on the outskirts of Manhattan, paid for with the last of my emergency cash. Each morning, I woke to the same crushing reality: I was dying, abandoned, and utterly alone.

I spent my days researching free clinics and my nights staring at the ceiling, my body aching with the progression of untreated cancer. The betrayal festered inside me alongside the disease, twin poisons coursing through my veins.

One evening, after a particularly discouraging day of being turned away from yet…