As Gramps was wheeled into the Ranch, his eyes remained closed, their lids like fragile veils, shielding a silent battlefield beneath. Though his gaze was absent, faint flickers danced under his eyelids, the smallest tremors of life clinging to its fragile thread. The family hung onto those subtle signs of movement, reading them as waves of faint hope—a whisper from his soul that survival wasn’t entirely out of reach.
The clinic, however, had been far less optimistic. Their prognosis had wavered on a knife’s edge, teetering between "he might" and "he might not." Clinics like theirs, Ted thought bitterly, often walked a fine line between calculated care and calculated profits. The clever ones sent their critical patients away just in time, their reputations intact. But the greedy ones—the insatiably avaricious—would keep a patient confined, milking every ounce of gold from desperate families until the Angel of Death rendered their services obsolete.
Ted clenched his fists as he thought about the system. Was there no room for humane morality anymore? Was compassion a casualty in the pursuit of profit? Surely, somewhere in this vast, indifferent world, there had to be exceptions—places where dignity and care were more than mere commodities. But why were they so few and far between? And why did Gramps, a man who had once stood tall and proud, now seem at the mercy of an unfeeling machine designed to churn out wealth, not healing?
As Ted stood beside Gramps’ bedside, he couldn’t help but wonder. The fight for survival shouldn’t feel like a transaction, yet here they were, balancing hope against bills, life against loss. Gramps, frail and silent, bore no answers—only the flicker of a question beneath his closed eyes: Will I make it?
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