November 26, 2013 – around 2:00 p.m.

I feel alone. I feel small. I feel unimportant.

I feel despair and hopelessness take over.

People at the hospital hurt me. They did things that I was not okay with. They didn’t even ask if they could do those things. They just did it. They didn’t ask what I wanted because what I want doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter when I was raped and it doesn’t matter now.

Except, this time is worse. This time, my husband is right there beside me as they hurt me. He lets them do it. I scream with all my might, but he still doesn’t stop them. He’s just there with a look of terror frozen on his face. A pastor from our church is there too. She tells me that I have to let them hurt me. But I want to go home. I didn’t even want to come here in the first place. My husband was the one who talked me into it.

To add insult to injury, after they finish with their procedures and protocols – after they take whatever they want from my body – they send me home. They dump me back out onto the street without even offering to buy me breakfast. A month later, they send me a bill for the “services” they provided to me.

On top of all this, no one understands me and why I am so upset. Worse, is that nobody will help me clear up this confusion. I’ve talked to lots of people on the phone – customer service people, pastors, patient advocates, even a lawyer or two. Every one of them expects me to pay this ridiculous bill. They tell me I should be grateful. They tell me that the doctors and nurses at the hospital saved my life.

I try explaining to them that the doctors and nurses at the hospital didn’t save my life. I tell them that the person I was before the surgery died on that operating table. And the person who came back may look the same and have the same name as me – but whoever “Jackie” was before that surgery is gone forever. My name might be on it, but it’s not my bill.

That girl they murdered, she wanted to go home. She screamed and fought because she wanted to live out whatever time she had in peace surrounded by people she loves. Instead, she died on a cold operating room table at the hands of a merciless butcher surrounded by strangers. She died alone and nobody even acknowledged her passing.

They tell me I should “get help.

I tell them to go to hell.

But none of this really matters.

Because I don’t matter.

And that girl who died? She doesn’t matter either.

Every month I place a phone call to make a payment on that bill.