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,

haze, the world distant and sluggish.

“Why?” I asked. “Did something happen? Is somebody sick?”

Her grip whitened around the tablet.

“They said,” she began, hesitated, then tried once more. “They said the parking was getting too expensive.”

At first I blamed the medication for what sounded like an absurd misunderstanding, even managing a brief laugh.

“The parking,” I repeated.

Kayla nodded miserably.

“The garage here is eight dollars an hour,” she replied softly. “After four hours, it’s a flat thirty-two. Your son said they’d already been here almost five