After Heart Surgery, I Woke Up to Learn My Three Children Had Gone Home Because Hospital Parking Was Too Expensive. I Lay There in Tears Until a Well-Dressed Stranger Entered,

standing up. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Adrienne. Breathe with me. In for four. Out for four. That’s it. That’s it.”

I followed his four-count breathing. Kayla adjusted something on my IV. My pulse settled.

Once composed, I addressed Malcolm.

“How did you get this?” I asked. “This letter.”

“It came to our records department this morning,” he said. “Because it asked one of our physicians to perform a capacity evaluation on you after surgery, it got flagged to our risk management office. Our general counsel called me