It removed default coverage for people like Marcus, whose work had dried up to temp shifts and Sunday doubles.
They needed to requalify. The form was 22 pages long.
She filled it out at the kitchen table one night, while Caleb did math homework beside her. One question asked if they’d changed immigration status. Another asked if they’d moved. She hadn’t done either. Just fallen.
Falling wasn’t listed.
She tried to call the Medicaid office the next day. Waited 52 minutes. Got dropped. Wrote the number down in her planner and tried again the next day.
That’s what resistance looked like now: a redial button.
In July, the rhetoric was feral. Trump said inflation was zero. That $16 trillion had been invested in the U.S. economy since his return to office. That prices would fall “1,500%.”
Jane didn’t even look up. You can’t fall more than 100%. Her son knew that. He asked, “Can something go down by fifteen hundred percent?”
She didn’t answer. Just slid a pack of strawberries into their cart.
Later that week, the President called January 6 rioters “hostages.” Said they were innocent patriots. Said the violence was minor. Said it was the FBI.
Jane had watched the bodycam footage. She remembered the officer screaming under a pile of bodies. She remembered Alex’s name on the memorial wall. She remembered what it cost to believe in something real.
They were rewriting the story while people were still bleeding.
Even the prayer was fake. Speaker Mike Johnson recited one he claimed Jefferson read daily. Jefferson, who doubted prayer. Who believed in the wall between church and state. But there it was—scripture carved from fiction, laid before the House like truth.
The press secretary called Trump “the most industrious president… he barely gets any rest.”
He was golfing when she said it.
The Social Security Administration line rang out again. Jane gave up and mailed the form instead. No idea if it would get there. But mailing it still felt like something solid.
She doesn’t watch the news much now. Just enough to track the shape of the storm.
Even the facts feel thinner these days. Like thread pulled too tight. Gas. Groceries. God. Enemies and allies. Numbers big enough to float, detached from math.
“He doesn’t lie to persuade anymore. He lies to wear down the floorboards.”
When Trump said they’d saved 258 million lives, no one blinked. When he called the rioters “hostages,” the audience clapped. When he promised to cut prices by fifteen hundred percent, the cameras didn’t even twitch.