Her son, Leo, seven years old, came in with a Lego spaceship. “Did we win?” he asked.

Marta looked at the letters. Then at her curled hands. Then at his open, hopeful face.

The waiting was a physical thing. It lived in her chest, a tight balloon. She checked the mail every day at 10:17 AM, just after the postman’s truck groaned up the hill.

She couldn’t weld anymore. But she could still open that drawer. And that, she decided, was a kind of victory.

She spent a Tuesday filling out the CPP forms. List all jobs in the last six years. She wrote Welding, Fab Shop, North Bay . Welding, Marine Docks, Midland. Each line felt like a tombstone for a version of herself that could still grip a torch.

Marta knew the forms by the shape of their water stains. The ODSP – Medical Review sat on the left corner of her kitchen table, a thick beige mountain. The CPP Disability – Application lay to the right, a slimmer, grayer peak. Between them was a valley of cold coffee and unanswered phone calls.

She opened CPP first. Approved. Her payment would be $847.32 a month. She almost laughed. That was less than her old weekly paycheck.