I returned to a modest hotel on the outskirts of town.
Miriam had suggested choosing somewhere Mark wouldn’t expect.
The room smelled faintly of detergent and old carpet.
A vending machine hummed outside my door.
I sat on the edge of the bed and began opening envelopes I’d brought from home.
Over the years, I’d stopped reading our medical bills carefully.
Mark said the details upset him.
He said questioning his treatments made him feel like a burden.
So I had learned to look only at the totals.
Now I examined every page.
One invoice charged $8,900 for a cardiac monitoring program.
Another listed $12,400 for an experimental recovery protocol.
A third showed $6,700 for equipment Mark had supposedly received during a week when we had been visiting my sister in Ohio.
The invoices all came from different providers.
But their payment instructions led to accounts bearing variations of the same business name.
