The voicemail from the hospital billing department arrived three weeks after I opened my eyes. I was sitting in my friend Deborah’s apartment, still moving carefully because my ribs protested every deep breath, when the automated message played through my phone speaker.
“This is St. Catherine’s Hospital regarding outstanding balances for patient Wendy Thomas. Please contact our billing department at your earliest convenience to discuss payment arrangements for services rendered.”
I set the phone down and stared at it for a long moment. Services rendered. That was one way to describe the surgery that had saved my life—the surgery my father had explicitly refused to authorize, the surgery he’d signed a Do Not Resuscitate order to prevent, the surgery that happened anyway because a nurse named Pat Walsh had looked harder at my employee file than my own father had ever looked at me.
