When I became chief resident, Dad shook my hand like he was meeting a neighbor. When Melissa got a job at a boutique for three weeks, we had cake.
Boundaries were optional until they were mine.
The first time I said no, it was about a car.
Melissa had traded in a perfectly fine sedan for a shiny SUV with a monthly payment that made me blink. Two months later, she called me.
“They’re threatening to take it,” she said. “I just need a bridge.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Only $1,100.”
Only. As if the word was not a flag on fire.
“I can’t,” I said.
Silence. Then she said, “Wow. Okay. I see how it is.”
Two hours later, Mom called. “Sweetie, your sister is crying.”
“I’m at work,” I said.
“We are all at work,” she replied, and I could hear the script turning pages. “You know she relies on you.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s part of the problem.”
It did not stop. It just changed shape.
Fewer direct requests for one-off payments. More assumptions that I would cover just this month. Just until the refund hit. Just until tax season. Just until things settled down.
Things never settled down. If I hesitated, I got the same line verbatim, copied and pasted by blood: “Don’t be petty. Family helps.”
There was also the nickname. It started as a joke from my cousin at Thanksgiving: “Doc Moneybags.”
Everyone laughed. It stuck. It became a handle, a tag on every conversation.
“Doc Moneybags is here.”
“Doc Moneybags can probably get it.”
“Ask Doc Moneybags.”
They meant it sweetly, or at least that was what they told themselves. I smiled. I brought pies. I left with less than I came with.
By December, I was tired in my bones. The kind of tired you cannot nap off.
Melissa’s wish list hit me on a night when a teenager had gone through a serious medical crisis and survived. I still had his mother’s voice echoing in my ears when I read, “cash for future tattoos.”
I was not offended by tattoos. I was offended by the math.
I typed, “Is this a joke?” Melissa answered with the sentence that finally gave a shape to my exhaustion: “Don’t be cheap. You’re the rich uncle.”
There is a quiet moment after an insult when you wonder if you imagined it. I did not. The message sat there, blue bubble and three dots, then nothing.