I didn’t answer. I opened the door, stepped into the freezing May morning, and pulled it closed behind me with a soft, final click that somehow sounded louder than the slap itself. I got in my car, backed out of the driveway, and drove away from that house for the last time in my life.
I drove straight to UK Health with my brother’s handprint still burning hot on my face. I took the parking‑garage ticket at 10:57 a.m., found a spot on level four, and sat in the car for three full minutes staring at myself in the rearview mirror. The mark was already turning purple—five perfect fingers outlined like a brand. I grabbed my folder of medical records, locked the car, and walked inside.
The oncology waiting room was quiet—mostly older patients, and one scared‑looking teenager with his mom. When the nurse called, “Landry Beckett,” she did the same double take the receptionist had, but kept it professional. I followed her down the hall into the procedure room. Dr. Sarah Mitchell was already waiting, chart in hand, white coat crisp. She looked up, saw my face, and the chart lowered slowly.
“Landry, who did that to you?”
I opened my mouth to lie, to say I walked into a door, but nothing came out. Instead, the whole morning poured out at once. Dylan needing the airport, the slap, my parents standing there like I was a stranger. The fifteen‑minute exodus.
Sarah listened without moving a muscle. When I finished, she set the chart down, peeled off her gloves, and said, “You are not going back to that house. Not tonight. Not ever, if I have anything to say about it.”
The fine‑needle biopsy took eight minutes—local anesthetic, quick pressure, a bandage, done. She told me results would take five to seven business days, and scheduled the follow‑up. Then she asked the question that broke the last thread holding me together.
“Do you have somewhere safe to go after this?”
I didn’t. My studio lease had ended in March. I’d been sleeping in the basement on an air mattress whenever I was in town.
Sarah didn’t hesitate. “You’re coming home with me. Guest room. Spare key. Big dumb golden retriever who thinks everyone is his new best friend. No argument.”
I tried to protest. She shut it down with one look. “I’ve seen what happens when people go back after the first hit. We’re not doing that.”
Her house was a modest 1970s ranch in East Aurora—Christmas lights still blinking on the porch because life’s too short. She handed me a bag of frozen corn, poured two very generous glasses of Cabernet, and sat me at her kitchen table. Then she asked for my insurance card so she could finish the hospital paperwork on her laptop. I slid my wallet across the table. She opened it, pulled out the card, then stopped cold.
“Landry… why are there nine credit cards in here with your name that I’m pretty sure you didn’t open?”
I told her I only had two. She logged into the secure patient billing portal, requested an updated credit report for insurance‑verification purposes. Turns out oncologists can pull full reports when fraud is suspected. And we watched the screen load together.
Total unsecured debt in my name: $178,412. Nine different cards, all opened in the last thirty‑six months. All maxed out, all with payment patterns that matched Dylan’s baseball calendar like a fingerprint. $29,800 on a platinum card—team hotels in Jupiter, Fort Meyers, and Phoenix. $33,100 on a black card—private coaching packages, radar guns, RepSoto units, Driveline Baseball subscriptions. $41,200 on a business Visa—charter flights, private jets to East Cobb, team banquet bills. $34,300 spread across two cards—performance supplements from a Sarasota compounding pharmacy that had been raided twice by the DEA for selling trenbolone and testosterone to minor‑league players.
Every application had my Social Security number, my signature scanned from old school permission forms, my Littleton address. Some even listed Dylan as an authorized user so he could flash them at team dinners.