I’m sixty-two, four decades on a motorcycle, and I thought I’d seen all the cruelty this world could throw at someone. I was wrong. Nothing could have prepared me for watching a hospital administrator tell a mother that her six-year-old, dying of cancer, had to leave because her insurance had “run out.”
Her name was Aina. Hairless from chemotherapy, all bones under a thin blanket, curled in her mother’s arms while the hospital lobby buzzed around them as if nothing was happening. Her mother, Sarah, listened as the administrator explained why they had to go.
“Ma’am, your daughter is stable enough for home hospice. We need the bed—”
“Stable?” Sarah’s voice broke. “She’s dying. Maybe just days left. And you want me to take her home? We’re homeless. Living in our car.”
Something inside me snapped. I’d been waiting for news on a club brother after a bike accident, but what I heard made my blood boil. I stood, stepped forward in my leather vest and patches. The administrator glanced at me and swallowed hard.
