“What’s that cash, Mom?” Grace asked, watching me take the stack out.

“This is how we protect your morning,” I said.

I counted twenty crisp twenty-dollar bills onto the bedside table, smoothing the edges flat against the laminate.

I walked back out to the third-floor admitting desk, passed the four hundred dollars through the glass window, and waited while Paula Jenkins processed the payment.

The desk printer hummed and rolled out a yellow registration receipt stamped with the hospital’s official paid seal.

Paula initialed the bottom line and handed the yellow receipt across the counter to me.