Put That On My Tab Please

Emergency room, Thursday night. We got off easy again. Flesh wound. Stitches. Every so often, my 3 year old son hurts himself. It’s never during our doctor’s office hours. So far his sisters, five and two, have spared me the emergency room visits. Check out time, the old familiar sting. “Can I pay $100 now, and be billed for the rest?” Thanks.

Phew. Add it to my tab, and it’s back to the old drawing board. I’m already tired of fearing every trip in the car may end in an accident that puts us back in the hole, only worse next time.

Over lunch the other week, I met up with a friend I haven’t seen since our bankruptcy. In the span of six years, my husband and I managed to pay off the bulk of three out-of-pocket child births to a balance of only $947.35, before an unrelated IRS “situation” caused us to file Chapter 7.

I won’t bore you with the details. Anyone who has been through bankruptcy knows: It’s no picnic.

My husband was left wishing we hadn’t paid our huge medical bills since we went belly up anyway. Conversely, I was left with a bruised ego and severe case of guilt from not fully paying them. After all my budgeting, scraping, sacrificing and payment-making every month—sometimes small, sometimes big, through thick and thin—I wanted the satisfaction of seeing that zero balance. I felt like a failure. In consolation, another wise friend pointed out: “No one gives you a medal for paying it off.”

It’s been about three months since we were free and clear of medical debt, thus the rare lunch out with a girlfriend. We discussed the ordeal a little, including some medical insurance rhetoric, during which she said with the flip of a fry, “Yeah, but you guys are the exceptions. Most people don’t have insurance because they have iPhones and luxuries instead.”

Ahh, the exceptions. True, I don’t have an iPhone, so I don’t know if they really cost as much as family medical insurance premiums. And sure, since becoming a one income household, my idea of a splurge is one pair of boots per year from Zappos. ON SALE. Well, not every year. And I do need an occasional emergency babysitter and the rare cosmetic refill from CVS or Target.

If I had a few hundred extra bucks per month, my oldest daughter would be in our local cheap private school rather than homeschooled to avoid our poorly-rated public school. Or maybe, we could get a new car to replace the used one we share, which is deteriorating quickly. At least we took advantage of this brief reprieve from debt to replace our dishwasher, which has been broken for over a year. Now I don’t have to stand at the sink for two hours every day, washing up after three meals for three kids, a luxury I thank my lucky stars for.

My good friend knows we work hard, don’t have credit cards, and legitimately can’t swing private insurance, but MOST everyone else? Apparently she thinks they can.

I look to the window pondering what would be more futile, talking to a friend with health insurance about not having health insurance, or trying to levitate the Victorian house across the street with my mental telepathy.

Should I tell her how in theory, in our state, “all kids are covered,” but in reality, with a fluctuating income, more time is spent dropped, not covered, or in limbo applying for coverage, than covered? And you can’t be reimbursed for costs that happened in limbo, so not every kid is covered. Mine aren’t anyway. Maybe they will be soon; we have to try AGAIN after filing this year’s returns.

Should I tell her how it feels to leave a career to have kids, and no longer be “worth insuring” to society? Nah. Everyone’s heard it all before. I forgive her, for she knows not what she says.

I breathe in some shakti and refuse to let the system shade my opinion of one more friend….who, by the way, has coverage through her husband’s job and an iPhone…. and then I couldn’t help myself.

“You know who else is the exception?” I blurt. “My friend who just got cut off by her insurance company, leaving her with her newborn’s ICU bill. Her baby was born with an underdeveloped colon and needed surgery. She’s going back into the ICU for more surgery in a couple of weeks. But because my friend’s husband had a stroke (at 39 years old) during her fourth month of pregnancy, they used up all their "coverage.” She’s been living in a tiny apartment, running her own beauty salon and paying through the nose for that insurance for over fifteen years, and now they owe over $50,000."

I could list quite a few more exceptions, but I abstain.

“Wow,” says my friend. “They should just file bankruptcy.”

Pulling out of the emergency room parking lot with three exhausted, hungry kids, the only place open is the local pizzeria. I call ahead to make a quick pick up. While waiting for my order, I spot a homemade collection jar on the counter. Apparently, a local farmer and his son, pictured in a color copy taped to the sign, were severely burned in an accident and airlifted to a burn unit in Allentown. I look at the son, a handsome Warrior Run High School football player, pictured before the accident, smiling with his dad. I feel my chest tighten. I try to imagine the trauma of having loved ones so seriously injured. The accompanying financial ruin seems gratuitous at that point. Who had to see through their tears and make the collection jar to take to the pizzeria? A friend?

I hear later in the week from my Zumba teacher, who is also the burned boy’s home room high school teacher, that he was burned over 90% of his body. She’s hosting a Zumba-thon in their high school gym in January to benefit their family. According to her, his devastated classmates have been tirelessly rallying to raise funds because their family’s insurance through his mom’s bank job is not covering the costs. She tells me they are the nicest family in the world, loved by the whole community. You know, those type of people who are the exceptions.

There appears to be about four dollars and some pennies in the jar here at the pizzeria. I feel the hot wave of tears and fight it back. I swallow my rage for the way things are when people are hurt or sick. I feel small and nearly powerless, but I CAN fold up a twenty, and put it in the jar. I go back to my beautiful kids, and take them home.

Amy Abattoir is a mother, a painter, and a writer in central Pennsylvania.