Downstairs at the admitting desk, the clock on the wall read twenty past two, the second hand sweeping silently around the white face. The clerk behind the safety glass partition was a tired-looking woman with graying hair, her name tag reading Beatrice.
“I need a credit card for the admitting deposit and the deductible,” Beatrice said, her fingers hovering over a black keyboard.
I pulled out my wallet and handed her my personal Visa card, the gold one I kept for international business travel.
While she processed the payment, my phone buzzed in my palm with three rapid notifications from my banking app.
I unlocked the screen, expecting to see the hospital charge of eight hundred dollars.
Instead, the top notification showed a charge of twelve hundred and forty dollars at a restaurant called Prime One Twelve in Miami Beach.
Directly below that was a charge of nine hundred and eighty dollars at the Fontainebleau Hotel, also in Miami.
