Tragic transformed by magic

For the past 10 days, I’ve awakened to my own mad mutterings of a number—“one hundred twenty-five thousand”—repeated over and over. And all night long, that number has intruded in my dreams, and all day long, formed the backdrop to errands, walks, conversations. That’s a roundup of the figure on a bill that dropped into my MyChart account late last month for an emergency ablation for palpitations in August: “Amount Due on 11/28/21: $124,323.06.”

When I saw the bill, I repalpitated on the spot. 

Trouble is, the billing company is a separate entity from the Manhattan emergency room where I was treated, and further, the number on the bill is for a call center, which is itself separate from the billing company, which is in Boston, so there was no one I could actually talk to about the bill. When I made a second call to the call center to see if my inquiry could be expedited because I was afraid the trauma of owing that sum was going to send me back into a-fib, and that I would be afraid to go to the ER because of the cost, I was told no—and not to call back.

So, like the tachycardia that rumbled in my chest in August, anxious reverberations distracted me for days and nights on end.

I polled friends and friends of friends for ideas on how to fight the big bill. Some people advised me to just wait and it would resolve itself; others told me horror stories of people who had to spend scads on lawyers to rescue them from hospital debt.

Then yesterday, I opened MyChart to check something, and I saw posted at the top: “Your Balance: $50.” The monster bill is still there, a couple of links down, but I think it’s just an artifact of the nightmare, left there to reassure me that I didn’t make the whole thing up.

Now I ask you, Is it me or the medical system that is most broken?