Banks don’t charge you twelve dollars to pay a medical bill.

Not even once.

Certainly not thirty-nine times running.

At the next table a woman laughed at something on her phone.

Behind the counter, the barista handed a latte to a man in a cycling jacket and got his name wrong.

I tapped my thumbnail down the screen, tap, tap, tap, along the column of dates, and counted the months I could have spent that money on a new roof.

I thought about calling the clinic.