Personal Emergency
Tever, Texas
I used to live with my fiance and her family. Her father is a massive, abusive brute. Kate has medical issues that cause seizures, and whenever she would have one, her father would stand over her, waiting for her to finish so he could berate her for it. He treated her like a seizure was a behavioral issue that just needed enough punishment to solve.
Her whole family was pretty bad, honestly. Her seizure triggers are stress and noise, so of course, the whole house was a noisy, high stress environment. Whenever Kate would ask people to tone it down a little, they would pile it on even worse.
Anyway, on Thanksgiving of 2016, they had other family staying over. It was a crowded, noisy mess. Kate couldn't sleep at all for like three days. And her mother's solution was just suck it up, this is your fault anyway. So I threw some stuff in the car and took Kate to a hotel room. We were there for a few days, and after that, we started sleeping in the car.
It was exhausting, but her health actually started improving. After a month, we figured, OK, maybe we can go back now. They don't have guests anymore. Maybe it'll be OK. So we started spending a few hours at a time, still sleeping in the car, but getting closer to sleeping at the house again. Until Christmas.
Christmas Day, we went up to see the extended family, as you do. Kate's father was just an angel all day long. We were planning to finally start sleeping at the house again. Evening comes, we all go home, and he puts on some crime drama marathon. It's a little too loud, so Kate asks him if he minds turning it down. He does so...for about five minutes, until she's out of the room again, and then he turns it up louder than it was previously.
Kate seizes. I'm just trying to get her out of the house. Suddenly, her father comes screaming out the door, chases us down the street, yelling at us to never step foot in his house again. So we haven't. And we won't.
We were homeless for about a year after that, scrimping and trying to save and begging our friends for money. Last month, we got a break. A windfall, just enough to let us rent a trailer and move across country.
You guys, it was almost heaven here. There was just one little problem: the phone lines going to the house are bad. I work online. I haven't been able to work since we got here because we barely have enough money to get into town. We've been scraping by for two weeks with a car that needs repairs. Even when I do get to a library or, like right now, a McDonalds, my computer doesn't work anymore. The hard drive won't connect or something, so I can only get online at all by using an Ubuntu live USB.
I'm stranded at this McDonalds right now. I don't have enough money to get home, and I won't until I get paid on Thursday. Kate is home, and she has food there, but I have nothing. Once they kick me out of here, I'm going to be sleeping in my car. I had a hamburger today, and I've got enough for another one tomorrow, and then I'll be going hungry. And even on Thursday, I'm going to have to spend almost my entire paycheck on Kate's medication because she's been out for two weeks. My landlord gave me a brief respite on getting the rent in, but only a brief one.
I don't know what I'm going to do. Please, I'm begging you guys. Help me.
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