Okay, maybe you don't remember that part. I didn't blog about the costs associated with our trip. I thought I had. As luck would have it, we had just canceled our insurance the week before Zara's accident because we could no longer afford it and we hadn't really needed it anyway.
As soon as we had Zara's stitches removed, we asked to pay the bill right then. It came out to roughly $1500, $972 for the first ER visit to have the stitches put in and $500 for the stitches to be removed. They waived the fees for the second visit so we wrote a check for $972 and went on our way. (Thankfully we had just gotten our tax return so we had the money.)
A few weeks ago, completely out of the blue, we received a check from the hospital for the $972 we had paid them. I was positive it was some sort of mistake, so I called the hospital to figure out what was going on. It took me nearly an hour to get through to someone, but once I finally got ahold of someone in billing, she told him they were calling it an "overpayment" and that we would not be charged for our ER visit, except perhaps for a small doctor's association fee.
I don't know why or how this happened. Call it a tender mercy, miracle, or clerical error. All I know is that I am incredibly grateful for a returned check and for the money we still so desperately need.
