When in Rome, do as the Romans do. The rest is none of your concern.

(This work, while not graphic, contains some fairly heavy topics including exploitation of disabled people and systemic/corporate corruption.)

I was nine years old and about to receive my first Confession and Communion. The only priest at our parish came to our only catechism lesson in town and instructed thusly: after we died, our sins would be weighed not only by what we did do, but also by what we did not. What we neglected or what we chose to ‘stay out of’ to secure our own comfort. All those would add up to a nice little pile documenting the worst parts of ourselves. He also implied that we should think about how our actions would affect the future, how perhaps one nasty comment could lead to another’s breaking point after a particularly bad week.

I had to wonder, then, what is the price of doing something good?

A simple explanation would be the good deed is all that matters, and any resulting consequences would not weigh the same. The scales of “right” and “wrong” were already unbalanced in this regard.

A few years later, at summer camp when the boys and girls were allowed to mingle during lunch, I was still peckish and asked for a portion of a friend’s Chinese leftover takeout. Barely a bite in and my lips were distorted, red, and covered in lumps of hives. My throat was swollen closed, blocking any breath that tried to give some relief.

I had already used my EpiPen earlier in the week of camp, during a false alarm when I had a small run-in with some poison ivy. Not enough to send me home, and not enough to need the pen, but a replacement had not been given to the nurse in that time. The boy who shared his food with me promised later that he had no idea it contained peanut sauce.

No one in my cabin had a pen I could use. No one could find the nurse, likely tending to some moron’s bee sting, and I was quickly losing vision.

If it were not for one counselor who carried a pen for her own allergies, I do not know if I would have lived. Between the time it would have taken to find the nurse and call emergency services, I certainly would have suffered long-term issues from a lack of oxygen.

I’d rather kill myself than be some vegetable, I thought, sitting in my custom office chair designed for people who preferred to sit criss-cross or in other strange positions. My brain is what got me past being too asthmatic for track and field, too introverted for theater, too stilted for art. I tried to remember the woman’s name. Perhaps, if she was on our list of clients, I could reach out to her. Assuming she would not regret what she had done.

After graduating from community college, I managed to secure a surprise position at my small town’s budding insurance company. In a matter of ten years, we had gone from providing mediocre care to small farmers who drained our funds more than they could give back, to relocating to central Manhattan with thousands more employees around the globe. I was not some top-of-the-food-chain CEO, but I was credited—and rightly so—for this progress.

We started simple. Rather than just take anyone who came to our door with the same rates, we started to evaluate them further by risk and ability. This was something I was pretty good at, after making a pretty penny through investing in senior life settlements, which could be described in simple terms as buying life insurance from those who could no longer afford to upkeep it and receiving the death benefit if the client died before the end of the term. I encouraged us to provide more assistance for services, medications, and treatments that would result in less loss from us, and may even lead to future collaborations with medical providers and pharmaceutical companies. I had learned all too soon how easy and fast it is to die, but even among those of us who are weaker, some of us might just have better luck.

My own insurance covered my EpiPens and inhalers, so what was there for me to worry about? I had provided low or no-cost access for families in need of those treatments, some who credited my company for saving them.

So then, do those saved lives weigh that ‘good’ side of my scale enough? There certainly were many.

Despite the press’ questions, I prefer to think of who I have helped. I no longer regularly go to church, although I do make sure to bring it up when I’m in a more conservative crowd. I’ve got a few verses listed on my notes app in case I ever need to pull one out from ‘memory’.

People die. Some of us are meant to struggle, but still live and prosper, but some are not.

Certain chronic illnesses and progressive diseases were quite fickle. They are both hard to discuss even in a more sterile business setting, and when answering questions regarding policy updates. These clients would siphon the money from our pockets as we tried to stay afloat for people with a small chance of making it. After some convincing, my firm directed its coverage away from these sort of ‘miracle’ one-in-one hundred cure treatments and focused more on pain medicine and end of life care. A dignified death for these families, best for them to not live a painful lie for a few more years.

I glanced out my window, a large one that took up the full wall to my back, looking down a couple dozen stories. High enough for me not to see the leftover signs littering the streets. The protesters had given up, but a week ago they surrounded our entrance until we had to consider shifting employees to work from home.

All of it over one client. One error in our system, after all the people I had saved.

An elderly man was denied coverage for his heart surgery. It was deemed unessential for his chronic condition, and his health already had a poor record from unrelated aging issues. Apparently that surgery was a bit more important than the employee who was left to the case realized, likely because of her own poor English. The client died within a month.

I fired those responsible for the act as compensation, and for public appearances I made sure to emphasize how helpful we were in getting clients their insulin. Mentioning “insulin” alone is such a hot-button topic that it solves all previous discourse.

Some treatments are cheaper than others. It is better not only for us, but for those with illnesses to consider that. I was neither ‘sick’ nor ‘disabled’. Whatever I took for my medication, I repaid a thousand percent with my contributions to society as a whole.

Someone with Huntington’s disease would be a very different case.

It was a sign of our company’s generosity and values to suggest assisted suicide to struggling spouses, parents, or siblings. We would cover the whole cost. Those of less worth would provide to those with more, and at the end of the day I could tell myself it was entirely their choice.

I wondered what that former camp counselor would think, I considered as I searched through the less biased reports. Perhaps she would understand our lack of coverage for her son’s Lupus treatment was in both of our best interests.

What ground would she have to stand on? We all had to face reality, that we lived in the same city and bought from the same stores that sold goods with far more sordid histories than a simple Midwest startup. We both paid taxes. As long as I kept that ‘good’ end of my scale intact, I was proud of myself.

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”, but what did that mean for the ‘holy’ people giving money to the Roman elite? Perhaps by someone’s more puritan standards, that counselor committed a sin by saving my life.

I’m a hypocrite, and that is how the world was made. The idea of being ‘sinless’ is impossible. So as long as I’m happy, and I can find the simplest route to making others happy, then how much of a sinner can I be?

I am just doing what I am capable of, which is far greater than most. If I was more grateful, I would consider myself lucky, but this is merely my own ability that others just lack.