"Lung cancer," Arabella repeats, voice small and flat. "Read the line again," Dr. Ethan Park says. She stares at the paper like it can change shape. "Stage one," she says. "Early stage. That's good, right?" "Early stage gives options," Dr. Park answers. "Surgery is the standard route. We can remove the nodule now and follow up with scans." Arabella presses her thumb to the edge of the report, grip tight. "How soon?" "As soon as we schedule the thoracic team," Dr. Park says. "There's a vacancy in two weeks if you can sign consent and confirm coverage." "Coverage," she says. The word lands heavier than the diagnosis. "Do you have insurance?" He looks at her the way a man reads a file—careful, practical. "No," she says. "I have..." She stops. Listing what she doesn't have takes too long. "Do you have family who can help with financials?" Dr. Park asks. "My mother is on disability," Arabella says. "We live in a ward—" She swallows and keeps speaking. "I can work. I can—" "You work," Dr. Park repeats. "You can work, and we can apply for hospital assistance. There will still be out-of-pocket expenses. Operating room fees, surgeon fees, anesthesia, hospital stay—" He lists numbers in plain sentences. Arabella counts syllables instead of dollars. "How much?" she asks. "With assistance, a ballpark is twenty to thirty thousand dollars up front," he says. "If you have trouble covering that, we can plan a staged approach, but