My Maid Asked for Two Months’ Salary in Advance—So I Followed Her and Found Her Kneeling Beside a Dying 7-Year-Old Boy
PART 1
I notice everything.
That is how men like me stay alive.
For three weeks, Linda Reyes had been changing.
She was twenty-four, quiet, efficient, and almost invisible inside my
Chicago house.
Lately her uniform hung loosely from her shrinking frame.
Her hands trembled.
Dark circles deepened beneath her eyes.
Twice I caught her lingering outside my office during meetings.
In my world, sudden changes meant leverage.
Federal pressure.
A rival.
Betrayal.
Then one rainy Tuesday, she appeared in my study without her cleaning
cart.
“Mr. Gallo, I need a favor.”
Her knuckles were white.
“Two months’ salary in advance. And I need to leave at three.”
I studied her.
“Are you in trouble?”
“No, sir.”
She was lying.
I heard it in her voice.
I pulled an envelope of cash from the desk and handed it to her.
“Take it.”
Relief nearly broke her face.
“Thank you. I swear I’ll make up the hours.”
She left at 3:05.
I followed.
PART 2
Linda walked six blocks through freezing rain.
She entered the subway and traveled away from downtown.
Not toward a federal office.
Not toward anyone I recognized.
She got off on the South Side and entered County Children’s Medical
Center.
That was the first moment suspicion became something else.
I followed her to the fourth floor.
Pediatrics.
Room 412.
Through the half-open door, I saw Linda beside a boy who looked seven.
He was painfully thin.
His hair was gone.
An oxygen tube rested beneath his nose.
An IV disappeared into a bruised hand.
Then Linda smiled.
I had never seen that smile in my house.
“Look what I brought, Mateo.”
She pulled out an old comic book and a blue action figure.
His face brightened.
“Captain Galaxy.”
“The one and only.”
She kissed his forehead.
His eyes were exactly like hers.
Her son.
PART 3
A nurse entered carrying a clipboard.
Linda immediately opened the envelope I had given her.
“I have the money. This clears what I owe, right? So we can move
forward?”
The nurse’s expression fell.
“Linda, there’s been a change.”
Linda stopped.
“What change?”
“The assistance authorization was suspended this morning.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“How much do I need?”
The nurse hesitated.
“The estimate you were given shows an eighty-thousand-dollar gap.”
Linda stared.
“By Friday?”
“That’s what the current paperwork says.”
“I clean houses.”
Her voice cracked.
“I scrub floors. I don’t have anything else to sell.”
The nurse sat beside her.
“We’re asking financial services and the clinical team to review it.
Please don’t assume treatment stops because of one billing notice.”
But Linda had already heard the number.
Eighty thousand.
She looked at her sleeping son.
Then sank beside the bed.
PART 4
She pressed her face into the blanket so Mateo would not hear her
crying.
Her entire body shook.
I stood outside the room without moving.
I had spent weeks believing she might be compromised.
Instead, she had been working inside my house while her child underwent
leukemia treatment.
Then I looked at the paperwork on the counter.
One name caught my attention.
The Bellwether Children’s Fund.
My companies had donated millions to Bellwether.
The fund existed specifically to help families facing treatment-related
financial gaps.
And according to the reports delivered to my office every quarter,
approved pediatric oncology cases were not supposed to receive sudden
demands like the one Linda had just heard without an appeals process.
Something did not fit.
PART 5
I stepped into the room.
Linda looked up.
Her face emptied.
“Mr. Gallo?”
She stood too quickly.
“What are you doing here?”
I did not lie.
“I followed you.”
Fear replaced embarrassment.
“Why?”
“Because I thought someone was pressuring you.”
“You followed me because I asked for my salary?”
“Because you had been acting frightened for weeks.”
Her expression hardened.
“That gave you the right to follow me to my son’s hospital room?”
No.
It had not.
PART 6
I could have justified it.
Men in my position always have justifications.
Security.
Risk.
Protection.
I had built an entire life around words that made control sound
reasonable.
So I said the thing Linda least expected.
“No.”
She stared.
“I was wrong.”
Silence.
Then Mateo opened his eyes.
“Mom?”
Linda turned instantly.
“I’m here.”
He noticed me.
“Who’s that?”
Linda looked at me.
For one uncomfortable second, I wondered how she described me at home.
“My boss.”
Mateo frowned.
“The scary one?”
I almost smiled.
Linda closed her eyes.
“I may have said that once.”
PART 7
I stayed near the door.
“Hello, Mateo.”
He looked at my suit.
“You look like a bad guy in a movie.”
“Mateo.”
“What?”
I answered him.
“I’ve been told that.”
He considered this.
Then lifted Captain Galaxy.
“Captain Galaxy beats bad guys.”
“That seems inconvenient for me.”
Mateo smiled.
Linda did not.
Not yet.
PART 8
I pointed toward the Bellwether paperwork.
“May I look at that?”
Linda pulled it closer.
“No.”
I nodded.
That surprised her.
“I know people at Bellwether,” I said. “One of my companies supports the
fund. If you want, I can ask why the assistance changed.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“I don’t want charity from you.”
“This wouldn’t be charity from me.”
“What would it be?”
“Finding out whether a program is doing what it says it does.”
She looked at the papers.
Then at Mateo.
“I need to think.”
“Fine.”
I left my card.
Then I walked out.
PART 9
I did not pay the eighty thousand dollars that afternoon.
It would have made a cleaner story.
Billionaire discovers sick child.
Billionaire writes check.
Child saved.
Real medicine does not work that way.
Neither does responsible philanthropy.
The treatment being discussed was not a guaranteed cure.
The eighty-thousand-dollar figure was a projected uncovered cost
connected to an investigational therapy program, supportive care, and
insurance uncertainty.
The clinical team still had decisions to make.
The financial notice was not the same thing as a physician refusing
emergency care.
But something about Bellwether still bothered me.
PART 10
The next morning I called the executive director.
I did not mention Linda’s name.
I asked a general question.
“Has Bellwether suspended oncology assistance?”
A pause.
“Not broadly.”
“Any program?”
“Some grants are under administrative review.”
“Why?”
“We’re reconciling commitments.”
That phrase meant money.
“How large a reconciliation?”
Another pause.
“I’ll have finance send you a report.”
“No.”
I looked out my office window.
“Send it to the independent audit committee.”
PART 11
My legal businesses were extensive.
Real estate.
Logistics.
Hospitality.
Private credit.
The newspapers preferred the other part of my reputation.
They called me a Mafia boss.
Some of that came from my family name.
Some from people around me.
Some from investigations that had followed my organization for years.
I had stopped arguing with headlines.
But Bellwether was legitimate.
Public.
Audited.
Supposedly transparent.
That made what came next worse.
PART 12
Bellwether had approved more assistance than its immediately available
restricted cash could support.
On paper, the fund looked healthy.
In practice, some money donors believed was available for patient grants
had been committed elsewhere.
Not stolen.
At least, that was not what the first review showed.
Reallocated.
Delayed.
Pledged against future fundraising.
Words that sounded cleaner than the consequences.
PART 13
The board had approved an expansion program.
New offices.
A national campaign.
Consultants.
A fundraising gala series.
The expenditures were legal if properly authorized.
But restricted and unrestricted funding had been tracked poorly.
When finance discovered the shortfall, administrators froze several
pending commitments.
Families learned before donors did.
Linda was one of them.
PART 14
I was furious.
My first instinct was to call Bellwether’s chairman and tell him exactly
what would happen if Mateo lost treatment because someone wanted a
better office.
Then I stopped.
Anger was not an audit.
I sent the matter to outside counsel and independent accountants.
I asked one question.
“What was promised, to whom, and what money was legally available for
those promises?”
PART 15
Linda called me that evening.
“You asked about Bellwether.”
“Yes.”
“The hospital social worker said my case is being reviewed again.”
“Yes.”
“Did you pay them?”
“No.”
“Did you threaten them?”
I almost laughed.
“No.”
“You hesitated.”
“I was deciding whether my definition of threat matches yours.”
“Mr. Gallo.”
“No. I did not threaten them.”
She exhaled.
“Okay.”
PART 16
Then she said:
“Why are you doing this?”
I could have said because of Mateo.
That was true.
But incomplete.
“Because my name is on donor reports saying this program helps
children.”
Silence.
“If those reports are misleading, I want to know.”
Linda was quiet.
Then:
“Thank you.”
“You don’t owe me thanks yet.”
“I know.”
That answer pleased me more than gratitude would have.
PART 17
Mateo’s physicians determined he remained eligible for the
investigational treatment protocol being considered.
They were careful with language.
Potential benefit.
Material risks.
No guarantee.
Linda signed nothing until the medical team explained it repeatedly.
The hospital financial office worked through insurance, research
funding, charitable support, and assistance programs.
Bellwether’s hold on Mateo’s grant was reversed during review.
The eighty-thousand-dollar projected gap changed substantially.
Treatment moved forward.
PART 18
Linda came back to work two weeks later.
I told her she did not need to.
“I need income.”
“You have paid family leave available.”
She stared.
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes.”
“No one told me.”
That sentence opened another door.
PART 19
My household employees were employed through Gallo Residential Services.
According to the benefits manual, full-time workers had paid family
medical leave after one year.
Linda had worked for me eighteen months.
She had never received the manual.
Neither had two other employees I asked.
My estate manager, Vincent Hale, handled household administration.
I called him in.
“Why doesn’t Linda know about family leave?”
He frowned.
“She’s domestic staff.”
“I know her job.”
“The benefit is discretionary.”
“No.”
I slid the policy across the desk.
“It says eligible.”
PART 20
Vincent looked uncomfortable.
“We’ve traditionally avoided encouraging extended absences.”
I stared at him.
“Encouraging?”
“If staff know they can take eight weeks paid, people use it.”
“That is generally why benefits exist.”
He shifted.
“You know what I mean.”
I did.
That was the problem.
PART 21
The review widened.
Not because Linda asked for revenge.
She did not.
She wanted to care for Mateo and keep her job.
But I wanted to know whether my household policies existed only on
paper.
They nearly did.
Records showed employees had been discouraged from applying for leave.
Some overtime entries had been adjusted without clear explanation.
A transportation allowance had not been distributed consistently.
Vincent insisted he was controlling costs.
He had never asked me.
PART 22
That discovery embarrassed me.
I notice everything.
That was how I had begun the story in my own head.
It turned out I noticed threats better than people.
I knew which vehicle had followed me for four blocks.
I knew which rival had changed security companies.
I knew when a waiter in a restaurant was watching the wrong table.
I did not know my maid had a seven-year-old son with leukemia.
I did not know she had paid hospital bills by selling her mother’s
jewelry.
I did not know employees in my own house were afraid to request benefits
I claimed to provide.
PART 23
Power creates blind spots.
Not because information is unavailable.
Because people learn what is safe to tell you.
Linda had never told me about Mateo because she believed personal
problems made employees replaceable.
“Who taught you that?” I asked.
She looked at me strangely.
“Every job I had before this.”
Then she added:
“And this one.”
That hurt.
It should have.
PART 24
Vincent was removed from direct employee administration while the review
continued.
Independent HR support was brought in.
Employees received written explanations of benefits.
Back-pay corrections were made where records supported them.
A confidential reporting channel was created.
None of that made me generous.
It made the organization closer to what it had claimed to be already.
PART 25
Bellwether’s problems were more complicated.
The independent review found poor governance and misleading internal
forecasting.
It also found that some board members genuinely believed aggressive
expansion would increase future fundraising and help more children.
Intent did not erase consequences.
Several leaders resigned.
Grant accounting was restructured.
Restricted funds were segregated more clearly.
Existing patient commitments received priority.
PART 26
No secret villain had taken eighty thousand dollars from Mateo.
That almost disappointed the part of me trained to identify enemies.
Instead, many people had made decisions.
Consultants wanted expansion.
Executives wanted growth.
Board members wanted national recognition.
Finance staff assumed future donations would cover current promises.
Nobody woke up planning to hurt a seven-year-old.
A seven-year-old was still hurt by the uncertainty they created.
PART 27
I visited Mateo only when Linda invited me.
The first time after treatment began, he looked worse.
That frightened me.
Linda explained that treatment could do that.
His doctors were monitoring him closely.
I brought nothing expensive.
I brought a Captain Galaxy comic.
Mateo examined it.
“You bought issue fourteen.”
“Yes.”
“I already have fourteen.”
I looked at Linda.
“You told me he liked Captain Galaxy.”
“I didn’t say you were competent.”
PART 28
Mateo handed the comic back.
“Get seventeen.”
“I’ll make a note.”
“Do you have people who do that?”
“Do what?”
“Buy comics.”
“Apparently I need better people.”
He laughed.
Linda laughed too.
It was the first time I saw her laugh without immediately looking
guilty.
PART 29
Her name was Linda Reyes.
For eighteen months, I had called her Linda.
I knew nothing else.
Her mother lived in Indiana.
Her father had died when she was sixteen.
Mateo’s father, Caleb Ortiz, had left before the diagnosis and provided
inconsistent support.
Linda did not describe herself as abandoned.
She said:
“He made choices. I made mine.”
I respected that.
PART 30
She was studying bookkeeping at night before Mateo became ill.
She had stopped classes.
“Why bookkeeping?”
“I like when numbers have answers.”
I smiled.
“You picked the wrong profession.”
“What do you mean?”
“Numbers have answers. People decide what the answers mean.”
She thought about that.
“That sounds like something a criminal would say.”
I looked at her.
She froze.
Then I laughed.
PART 31
Months passed.
Mateo responded to treatment.
Not perfectly.
Not dramatically.
There were infections.
Delays.
One frightening hospitalization.
Then improved blood counts.
Then another setback.
His medical team refused to make promises.
Linda learned to live between test results.
I learned not to ask:
“Is he cured?”
Instead I asked:
“How is today?”
Today was a question medicine could sometimes answer.
PART 32
My relationship with Linda changed.
But not into romance.
At least, not then.
She worked for me.
I controlled her salary.
That mattered.
Whatever affection existed needed distance from that imbalance.
When Linda eventually decided not to return to domestic work, I did not
invent a better-paying position to keep her close.
She resumed bookkeeping courses using an education benefit available to
former household staff after the policy reforms.
She earned the credential herself.
PART 33
Two years after the rainy afternoon, Linda joined a medical nonprofit as
an accounting assistant.
Not Bellwether.
She wanted no favors.
She worked on patient-assistance reconciliations.
The irony amused her.
“I spend all day asking where grant money went.”
“Terrifying.”
“You should be scared.”
“I am.”
PART 34
Mateo was nine when his doctors used the word remission with cautious
optimism.
Linda cried in the parking garage.
So did I.
I pretended rain had gotten into my eyes.
We were inside.
She did not mention that.
PART 35
By then, Linda had not worked for me in more than a year.
I asked her to dinner.
She stared.
“Dinner?”
“Yes.”
“Like a meeting?”
“No.”
“Like a date?”
“Yes.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“You followed me through Chicago the first time we went anywhere
together.”
“I have improved.”
“That remains under review.”
She agreed.
PART 36
Dating Linda was harder than intimidating businessmen.
She did not care how much a restaurant cost.
She cared whether I listened.
She did not care how quickly I could solve a logistical problem.
She cared whether I asked before solving it.
Once, I replaced her unreliable car.
She refused the keys.
“What is wrong with it?”
“It’s too much.”
“Your car breaks down.”
“My car.”
I understood eventually.
I returned the new one.
PART 37
A month later, her old car died permanently.
She called me.
“Do not say anything.”
“I haven’t.”
“I can hear you thinking.”
“That seems medically unlikely.”
She laughed.
Then bought a used car herself.
I paid for dinner.
Those were the terms.
PART 38
Mateo did not call me Dad.
He had a father.
Complicated did not mean nonexistent.
I was Mr. Gallo.
Then Luca.
Then, eventually, just Luca.
He taught me Captain Galaxy continuity.
I taught him chess.
He cheated badly.
I pretended not to notice twice.
The third time I took his queen.
He called me ruthless.
Finally, a reputation I deserved.
PART 39
Bellwether recovered slowly.
The scandal became public because nonprofit financial reports and
governance changes eventually drew scrutiny.
My involvement was mentioned.
Headlines called me the billionaire Mafia boss who saved a children’s
fund.
I hated that.
I had not saved it.
Auditors, hospital staff, donors, board members, and employees rebuilt
it.
Linda’s case had simply exposed a weakness.
PART 40
One journalist asked Linda whether I had saved Mateo’s life.
She answered:
“No.”
The reporter looked disappointed.
Linda continued.
“Doctors treated my son. Nurses cared for him. Researchers developed the
therapy. Financial counselors helped us navigate costs. A grant program
helped pay for part of it.”
Then she looked at me.
“Luca asked why the grant failed.”
That was enough.
PART 41
I kept the clipping.
Not because it praised me.
Because it did not.
PART 42
Years later, Mateo found out I had followed Linda to the hospital.
He was thirteen.
“You stalked Mom?”
Linda nearly choked on coffee.
“I had security concerns.”
“That means yes.”
“It was more complicated.”
“You followed a maid on the subway.”
I looked at Linda.
“You told him badly.”
“I told him accurately.”
Mateo shook his head.
“Creepy.”
“I apologized.”
“To me,” Linda said.
Mateo considered.
“Okay. Slightly less creepy.”
PART 43
He became healthy enough that hospital visits stopped defining his
calendar.
School did.
Basketball did.
Friends did.
He remained under medical follow-up.
His history did not disappear.
It simply stopped occupying every room.
Linda kept the blue Captain Galaxy figure from Room 412.
Its paint wore away along one arm.
She never threw it out.
PART 44
The first time Mateo visited my estate after years away, he stood in the
kitchen.
“So Mom cleaned this whole place?”
“Not alone.”
“It’s huge.”
“Yes.”
“You should have cleaned it yourself.”
Linda smiled.
“I’ve been saying that.”
I looked at both of them.
“This feels coordinated.”
“It is,” Mateo said.
PART 45
I eventually married Linda.
Years after she stopped working for me.
Years after Mateo’s treatment crisis.
Years after the financial assistance issue was resolved.
People still turned it into a fairy tale.
Maid.
Billionaire.
Sick child.
Mafia boss.
Marriage.
The truth was less convenient.
PART 46
Linda did not fall in love with me because I had money.
She had spent too much of her life learning how dangerous dependency
could feel.
I did not fall in love with her because she needed rescue.
The moment she stopped needing anything from me was when I finally had
the right to ask whether she wanted me.
She did.
Eventually.
PART 47
Our wedding was small.
Mateo was fourteen.
He gave a speech.
“I met Luca because my mom accidentally made herself suspicious by being
exhausted and poor.”
Everyone laughed.
Linda covered her face.
Mateo continued.
“He followed her because apparently billionaires have hobbies.”
More laughter.
I considered removing him from the inheritance.
PART 48
Then Mateo became serious.
“My mom taught me that asking for help isn’t the same as owing somebody
your life.”
He looked at me.
“Luca taught me that powerful people can be useful when they learn to
ask before helping.”
Linda squeezed my hand.
Mateo smiled.
“And I taught both of them which Captain Galaxy issues matter.”
That received the loudest applause.
PART 49
Years after Room 412, I still remembered the moment Linda sank beside
the hospital bed.
At the time, I thought the tragedy was that she needed eighty thousand
dollars.
I was wrong.
The deeper failure was that she believed she had to carry the entire
crisis silently until she collapsed.
She worked in my home.
She had benefits she did not know existed.
She was connected to a charitable system that had made promises it could
not immediately honor.
Everyone had information.
Nobody had put the pieces together.
PART 50
That changed how I ran everything I controlled.
Not because I became gentle.
I did not.
But I became suspicious of silence in a different way.
Before Linda, silence meant conspiracy.
After Linda, I understood it could mean fear.
Shame.
Exhaustion.
A person deciding that asking for help was more dangerous than suffering
quietly.
PART 51
I still noticed everything.
License plates.
Doors.
Hands.
Eyes.
People entering rooms too slowly.
People leaving too quickly.
But I started noticing different details too.
An employee skipping lunch.
Someone repeatedly refusing overtime because of childcare.
A driver hiding a medical appointment.
Not every change meant betrayal.
Sometimes people were simply trying to survive.
PART 52
When Mateo turned eighteen, he volunteered at the hospital.
Pediatrics.
He carried comics to children receiving treatment.
Linda worried it would be too painful.
He said:
“It’s not the same room.”
She understood.
One afternoon he sent us a photograph.
He was standing outside Room 412.
The room had been renovated.
Different paint.
Different bed.
Same number.
PART 53
His message said:
Tell Luca I checked. No suspicious maids.
I replied:
Maintain surveillance.
Linda sent:
Both of you are ridiculous.
PART 54
Mateo eventually studied biomedical engineering.
Not oncology.
Everyone assumed he would become a doctor.
He refused to let childhood illness choose his profession for him.
That pleased me.
A life after crisis should be allowed to become ordinary enough to
surprise people.
PART 55
Linda kept working in nonprofit finance.
She became the person who asked uncomfortable questions during budget
meetings.
Where is the restricted cash?
Which grants are committed?
What happens if fundraising misses projections?
Which families have been promised assistance?
People occasionally called her difficult.
She considered it a compliment.
PART 56
At Bellwether’s twentieth anniversary, Linda was invited to speak about
patient-assistance governance.
She did not tell the room a sentimental story about a billionaire
writing a check.
She showed them a spreadsheet.
I had never been prouder.
PART 57
One line in her presentation read:
A promise is a liability until the resources behind it are real.
Afterward I said:
“That sounds threatening.”
“It’s accounting.”
“Same thing.”
She smiled.
PART 58
The eighty-thousand-dollar number remained in my memory.
Not because I paid it.
I never did.
It changed as insurance, research support, hospital assistance, and
charitable funding were properly reconciled.
The number mattered because it was the moment a frightened mother
believed money stood between her child and tomorrow.
No family should receive that kind of number without explanation,
review, and support.
PART 59
I once thought money was the most direct form of power.
Linda taught me its limits.
Money could hire specialists.
Fund programs.
Pay salaries.
Build hospitals.
It could not guarantee remission.
It could not erase fear.
It could not make a frightened employee trust her employer.
Those things required different work.
PART 60
On a rainy Tuesday many years later, Linda and I left a restaurant
downtown.
Chicago rain came sideways.
Cold.
Sharp.
She stopped beneath the awning.
“What?”
I asked.
“This weather.”
I understood.
The day I followed her.
The subway.
The hospital.
Room 412.
PART 61
“You know what I thought when I saw you in the doorway?” she asked.
“That I was handsome?”
“I thought I was fired.”
I laughed.
She did not.
“You really thought that?”
“Yes.”
“Your son was sick.”
“And I had left work early.”
“You had permission.”
“Poor people learn that permission can disappear.”
I had no answer.
PART 62
She took my hand.
“But you apologized.”
“For following you.”
“Yes.”
“I was still right that something was wrong.”
She rolled her eyes.
“There he is.”
I smiled.
PART 63
If I had not followed Linda that afternoon, she still would have fought
for Mateo.
That matters.
She had already sold jewelry.
Taken extra shifts.
Navigated hospitals.
Appealed bills.
Borrowed money.
Asked me for an advance despite being terrified of the answer.
She was not waiting for a powerful man to save her.
She was already saving whatever she could.
PART 64
What I did was notice the wrong thing first.
I saw trembling hands and imagined betrayal.
Then I followed those hands into a hospital room and discovered the
truth.
Linda was not compromised.
She was exhausted.
She was not meeting an informant.
She was visiting her son.
She did not need punishment.
She needed the systems around her to function as promised.
PART 65
That was the part of the story people rarely repeated.
They preferred the billionaire.
The Mafia rumors.
The secret pursuit through Chicago.
The sick child.
The eighty thousand dollars.
But the real question was smaller.
Why had nobody asked Linda what she needed before she reached the point
of begging?
PART 66
Years later, I asked her.
“What did you need that day?”
She thought for a moment.
“Time.”
“Not money?”
“Money too.”
She smiled.
“But mostly time. Time with Mateo without losing my job. Time for the
hospital to explain things. Time to breathe.”
I nodded.
All the power I possessed, and I had almost missed the simplest answer.
PART 67
The afternoon my maid asked for two months of salary in advance, I
believed someone had compromised her.
I followed her expecting an enemy.
Instead, I found a mother kneeling beside her seven-year-old son, trying
to cry quietly enough not to frighten him.
That image never left me.
Neither did the question it created.
What good was power if the people working beneath my roof were too
afraid to tell me when their lives were falling apart?
PART 68
I never found a satisfying answer.
So I changed what I could.
The policies.
The people administering them.
The questions I asked.
The way I listened.
And years later, when Mateo stood healthy and laughing beside his
mother, I understood something I would have mocked when I was younger.
Sometimes the most important thing a powerful man can do is not take
control.
Sometimes it is to notice that someone is drowning, ask what help
May you like
actually means, and make sure the promises already made to them are
real.
