At ten minutes to midnight, Rebecca pulled a folded letter with the Children’s Mercy Hospital logo out of her purse and stood up in front of everyone.
Steve, she said to her husband, you said somebody has to snake the drains. Let me tell you what your nephew did with a wrench.
In January 2024, Rebecca said, during the arctic freeze, the main water line cracked at the childrens hospital where she works, and without water the whole place would have had to evacuate, the NICU and all. A plumber worked forty-one hours straight in the cold and kept the water running the entire time. I am a nurse on that floor. We did not lose a single baby that night. This letter is the hospital thanking the man who made that possible. His name is Jake.
The room had gone quiet. Jake had set down the chip bowl.
Steven bills seven hundred dollars an hour and reminds us every holiday, and the nephew he mocked kept the water running under a hospital full of sick children for forty-one hours.
Rebecca said she had been sitting by the window with that letter on her phone all night, deciding whether to say it, and when her husband made the joke about unclogging toilets one more time, she decided.
I am Jakes mother. He refilled the chip bowl and said happy New Year, Uncle Steve, and took the joke, because a man who kept a childrens hospital in water for forty-one hours does not need a lawyer to tell him what his hands are worth. Steven did not mention his hourly rate again that night.