« Mom, are they going to mutilate me? »
« They’re going to fix you, » I said. « And you’ll run faster than anyone else. »
She tried to smile. Her smile came out askew.
When I got home, sitting at the kitchen table, I realized one thing: I needed a considerable amount of money, immediately. And I knew exactly who was holding it.
Brandon.
I wasn’t harassing him. I was really trying to live as if he didn’t exist. But Brandon was the kind of person you couldn’t completely avoid. He was a small local celebrity. Parties, luxury cars, projects, photos by the pool, a drink in hand and headphones on your ears. A blissful smile, as if life were beautiful. Even when he was over thirty, he had this habit of looking like a twenty-year-old who thinks that the rules don’t apply to others.
He had everything that was a fantasy for me: several properties, his parents’ house with a swimming pool, money spent lavishly.
And I had a little girl who might not survive until the next school year.
I opened a local news site and saw a headline. His father was retiring. A large reception, a private event, a prestigious venue: the perfect opportunity to speak.
I’m not proud of what I did next, but I would do it again.
That’s how we ended up on these steps. I made the diagnosis. I have brought the figures. I brought my child. I brought the truth to a place designed to ignore it.
And Brandon came with a cigar, confidence and his famous phrase about abortion.
After his words, I wanted to curl up in the passenger seat and disappear. I wanted to cry hot tears. I wanted a thousand things, but Maddie was sitting right there.
And I knew that if I collapsed, she wouldn’t just remember the hospital and the surgery. She would remember me broken.
So I did what I know how to do best. I turned my emotion into action.
The next day, I met the hospital’s social worker. We filled out the forms. We have submitted applications. We have done what people who do not have rich parents and who do not have a boost from the system do.
At the same time, I launched a crowdfunding campaign. Yes, that very one. On the platform that all Americans know. I told our story as best I could. Without hysteria or staging: just the facts. An 8-year-old girl, a heart, an operation, a chronology.
I didn’t write Brandon’s name. It wasn’t necessary. In our city, everyone knew who he was. And when someone recognizes themselves between the lines, it usually has more impact than a direct accusation.
The money started coming in slowly, then faster and faster. Sometimes strangers would write, « We are not rich, but we support you. » Sometimes someone would give five euros and a heart emoji. Sometimes someone would give a thousand euros without comment. Sometimes people would bring food to my grandmother, because we don’t have time to think about shopping at the moment.
This is the incredible thing: strangers were nicer than his own father.
And a few days later, I finally went where I should have gone from the beginning: applying for legal aid.
Not because I dreamed of a trial. I hate the courts. I hate administrative battles. But I hate it even more when someone thinks they can abandon a child and go on with their life as if nothing had happened.
The lawyer reviewed my documents and said what I already knew, but which I had not allowed myself to affirm.
« In this country, a child has the right to the support of both parents. Whether you like it or not, it’s not a favor, it’s an obligation. »
I didn’t feel a sense of triumph. I was tired.
We have officially filed a request for recognition of paternity with the court. Not by words, not by equity, but by law.
Brandon tried to do what he does best: disappear and hope that the problem solves itself.
Not.
It has been notified. He received calls. We found him. Because as fun as the life of a party animal is, we always leave traces. Addresses, papers, invoices.
I didn’t celebrate. I just did it because his voice was still echoing in my head.
You won’t get anything from me.
Very well. I won’t take it from you. I will take for Maddie what is due to her.
Mattie’s surgery took place on time. The funds have been raised. Help has arrived. People were present. The hospital has responded to the challenge.
Brandon doesn’t.
But you know what? At that point, I didn’t care who saved my daughter. Only one thing mattered: his heart.
After the surgery, Maddie was another child. Not in terms of his personality, but in terms of his need for oxygen. She started running, laughing louder, asking for one more ride on the merry-go-round.
One day, she simply said, « Mom, I’m not afraid to breathe anymore. »
I went into the bathroom, closed the door, and for the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to cry. Silently. Quickly.
Then I washed my face because work, school, life.
We have started to live again.
Maddie constantly outdid the other children. I was proud of her in such an intense way that the pride seemed visceral. It won competitions: local, regional, and then larger. School was child’s play for her. She would soak up information like a sponge and then ask questions that would require me to Google because I couldn’t always keep up with my own child.
In CM2, she started programming. Just imagine! A child who has just overcome her fear of breathing sits up and starts writing code because she wants to understand how things work.
By the time she graduated from high school, she was earning more than I had ever earned as a nurse. Not because of today’s youth, but because Maddie was passionate about her work, in the positive sense of the word. She could spend sleepless nights building something, because she wanted it to be perfect.
In college, she and two friends started a tiny tech company. Small, resourceful — laptops on your lap, vending machine coffee, but big ideas.
Then, what was once a chaotic adventure faded. Then, investors arrived. Then, articles, then interviews. Then, Maddie began to make a name for herself.
Sometimes I would turn on the television and see my daughter in a report on young entrepreneurs, and my brain couldn’t realize that it was the same girl who once whispered, « Are they going to cut me off? »
At 30, she was a millionaire. I couldn’t believe how quickly it happened.
For me, she was still Maddie, the girl with her book and this obstinacy to finish what she undertook. Frankly, I didn’t understand half of what she was doing. But I understood the essentials. She did it with an all-consuming passion, and it worked.
Grandma was able to see it. She has aged a lot, she has become very small. But she kept her head. Sometimes she would sit in her chair, watch Maddie on the news, and say softly, « That’s why I held on. »
And each time, my throat was tight. Because Grandma, unlike Brandon, never acted like it wasn’t my responsibility. She simply stayed.
When Maddie was 10 years old, I met David at work. Inevitably, everything that was important in my life seemed to be happening either in the hospital or nearby.
David tried to woo me like a normal human being, but at the time, I was suspicious of men. Brandon was anchored in me like a vaccine. A charming smile, empty promises, then disappearance.
It took David a long time to put me at ease. He didn’t force his hand. He didn’t play games. He was just there. He behaved like an adult. He proved by his actions that he could be trusted.
We got married. We had Ava. And above all, David has never made a difference between Ava and Maddie. He played chess with Maddie. He spoke to her, not as to a child, but as to a person. He supported her ideas, laughed at her jokes, listened carefully to her when she explained how new software worked, even if, like me, he didn’t always understand.
Sometimes I felt like I was paying more attention to Maddie. Not because I liked Ava less, but because Maddie always carried that feeling with me. I owe him something. I owe him these gestures, this refusal, this sentence on abortion.
David once said to me, « You don’t owe him anything. You’ve already done it all. »
And this is perhaps the strongest support I’ve ever heard.
Growing up, Maddie repeatedly said, « David taught me that normal men exist. »
And every time, I thought, « There you go. That’s family. Not blood, not last name, not fairness — choice. »
I tried not to think about Brandon.
Most of the information I gathered about Brandon afterwards came to me in fragments: local news articles, public documents, and, years later, the reporter’s words to Maddie.
I knew he was somewhere, that he was living his life, that he was partying, that he was posing for photographers. Sometimes, his photos resurfaced, because the internet loves to offer us memories that we never asked for.
But time makes things better.
His father retired. Help became scarcer. Brandon sulked. Not because he suddenly understood the value of labor, but because money was no longer so easy to earn. His father, now retired, went into business. For a while, it seemed to work.
Then a heart attack.
And Brandon ended up with a mother who had never worked, who had gotten used to a life where things happen naturally.
From what I heard, after his father passed away, Brandon’s service didn’t keep him there for long. They had kept him in office out of respect for the former leader. Once that respect was gone, Brandon left too.
Little by little, he and his mother sold their possessions. There were many, enough to allow them to live a comfortable life for years. Brandon even had time to get married and have a daughter.
His wife didn’t stay long. No future. A marriage to a lazy and frivolous man who didn’t know what to take. It wasn’t romanticism. It was a trap. She’s gone. She made him promise. At least, that’s what I’ve been told.
He would never bother them again.
And you know what’s most amazing? From what I could see, Brandon was thrilled to deliver on his promise. Probably the only one he ever held.
They then had to sell the big house, move to an apartment, and then to a smaller, cheaper apartment. Then his mother died, and Brandon was left alone in a tiny two-room apartment, with a disability pension.
Because one day, he drove drunk and had an accident. Seriously injured. According to the journalist, he later considered this accident as a stroke of luck. Without it, he would have had nothing to live on.
According to the journalist, he had friends. Dozens. They were there as long as he had something to drink. Then they disappeared. Then they came back when the money reappeared.
Brandon harbored a tenacious grudge against the whole world. In his eyes, everyone was guilty: demanding women, insufficient parents, children turned against him, a world that didn’t like him, just not him.
His own daughter, the one from his marriage, wanted nothing more to do with him. He said that she had been brainwashed. Of course. There is always someone who brainwashes. There’s no way a person can just remember who you are.
So there was only one thing left.
Alcohol.
I only found out that a journalist had tracked down Brandon when Maddie told me.
That’s how Maddie told me. Mainly from what the journalist told him.
Once Maddie became famous, she was talked about non-stop: interviews, articles, podcasts. And one day, a journalist decided that Maddie deserved an inspiring book for teenagers, a success story from scratch.
He researched family history. He realized that David was not his biological father and, of course, he wanted to find the real one.
He found Brandon.
When he arrived, the reporter said Brandon looked pitiful. A man who was ruined by dint of drinking, unemployed, surviving on a meagre disability pension. The journalist began to ask questions. Brandon tried to justify himself.
« I have a daughter, but we don’t talk to each other. »
The journalist kept talking about a child, without saying his name.
Brandon, of course, had heard of the young tech millionaire, and even envied her. But he hadn’t made the connection.
And then I understood.
Maddie was that little girl — the one I had begged for money, the one he had told to have an abortion. She survived. And she became a millionaire.
Brandon took his head in his hands. Even in his decline, he understood.
After all that had happened, Maddie wasn’t going to throw herself into his arms. But in his mind, another machine had been set in motion. No regret, no guilt: profit.
It could solve all my problems. And it wouldn’t cost him anything.
He started talking about lawyers, laws, the obligation of adult children to provide for their parents. The fantasies of a man who had spent his life believing that the world owed him something.
The reporter looked at him and said something very close to what I had said to Maddie on the steps years ago, in different words. If I were her, I wouldn’t even want to know that you exist.
Brandon asked, tired,
« So, what do you want from me? »
The journalist answered honestly.
« I’m writing a book. I always try to understand the characters in the story. Maybe your example will help someone make the right choice. »
And then he added, as if to drive the point home: this story is a ready-made parable. The moral is simple: you don’t abandon your children.
The journalist left.
According to the reporter, Brandon stayed at the table. It pained him.
And the funny thing — if there is anything funny about it — is not that he suddenly realized the pain he had caused, but rather the money he had lost.
He took a half-empty bottle from the cupboard and drank straight from it.
When Maddie told me, I was silent for a long time. Not out of pity, but because I felt a strange calm.
Life doesn’t always punish spectacularly, like in a movie. Sometimes it punishes slowly, with empty rooms, money evaporating, people leaving because you had no choice but to let them go.
Maddie was there, right in front of her — alive, healthy, strong.
And I told him what I should have said to him a long time ago, and to myself too.
You don’t owe anything to anyone, especially not to the one who didn’t choose anything.
She smiles.
« I know, Mom. »
And that, I believe, is the best ending. Not his fall, but his life.
Thank you for spending time with me today. If you’d like to hear more stories like this, subscribe and like this video. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. I read them all. Your support means a lot to me. Take care and see you soon!
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