My family had just arrived at a seaside village on the east coast of Spain, where I was sitting on a white sand beach looking out at the implausibly blue water. The scene was straight out of a Mediterranean daydream, and yet I was panicking.
Leaving our son with his grandparents, my husband drove us to a small city about 35 minutes inland. As we pulled into the hospital’s parking deck and then walked toward the front desk, I was struck by how similar it looked to hospitals in the U.S. My husband, thankfully fluent in Spanish, took the lead as we checked in, but the receptionist switched to English when she realized that I didn’t speak Spanish.
“I released the breath I’d been holding, handing over my passport as insurance that I would pay at the end of my visit.”