Through Rob’s wife Shirley, who keeps in touch with everyone, I heard more. Mark’s back surgery had been more complicated than they expected. He’d been approved for short-term disability through his employer, but it only paid sixty percent of his wages and ran out after twelve weeks. His long-term disability claim had been denied the first time. They’d gotten a bill from Trinity Hospital for $18,400 after insurance, for their share of the surgery and the hospital stay. And they were two months behind on their mortgage.
Shirley said Pam had picked up extra shifts at the nursing home where she works as a CNA. She was working sixty hours a week.
“She’s drowning, Julie,” Shirley said on the phone. “She’s not a bad person. She’s just drowning, and she’s too proud to say so.”
I sat with that a long time.
At work, I’d seen hundreds of families like Pam’s. Good, hardworking people who get hit with one medical emergency and watch everything slide out from under them. The hospital bill comes, then the late mortgage notice, then the credit card balances climb. They stop opening the mail because every envelope is bad news.
I’d also seen what happens when they’re too ashamed to ask for help.
I thought about my sister ordering two hundred gallons of propane instead of four hundred, and maybe using the rest of our money to keep her lights on. I thought about my mother writing $1,400 checks so her daughter wouldn’t lose her house, then turning the thermostat down so she wouldn’t run out of propane.
Two people I loved, each trying to protect the other, and nobody telling the truth.
And me, a hundred and twenty miles away, sending my $250 every October and feeling like I’d done my part.
