They Demanded $20,000 At 1 A.M.—So I Told Them To Call Her

black tags for the ones we can’t save, red for critical, yellow for serious but stable, green for walking wounded. You don’t stand there wasting IV lines and compressions on a black-tagged patient while a red one bleeds out beside you.

My family had handed me their black tag at that bank table. They’d proven, in a fluorescent-lit fishbowl, that they continue reading …