parents over two hundred thousand dollars even after insurance.
In most families, that would have been a story of love and relief — the harrowing thing you survived together, the crisis that bonds people. In the Thomas household, it became evidence of debt. An obligation Wendy could never fully repay.
“Do you know how much you cost this family, Wendy?” She was eight years old the first time her father said it. She had asked for new sneakers because the sole of hers had cracked, and rain soaked through to her socks every time she walked to school. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of medical bills spread before him like evidence in a trial. “Two hundred fourteen thousand dollars. That’s what you cost.”
She didn’t get the sneakers.
More importantly, she learned that her existence carried a price tag, and that price was perpetually being calculated
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