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<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\n\u201cWhere\u2019s my boy?\u201d<\/p>\n
The nurse said it the second she rolled down her window. Snow was blowing sideways across Route 9, and the wipers on her dented silver Corolla were going as fast as they could. She didn\u2019t look at me. She looked past me, out at the gas station across the road, where for over a year a rusty green Honda had sat every school morning with its engine running.<\/p>\n
The lot was empty except for the snowplow guy filling up at pump four.<\/p>\n
She said it like a joke, but her eyes weren\u2019t joking.<\/p>\n
\u201cDidn\u2019t show today,\u201d I said. \u201cFirst time in a year.\u201d<\/p>\n
She paid for her own small vanilla latte. It was $4.85, the same as always. She dug the money out of a little coin purse shaped like a strawberry, and she looked strange doing it, like a woman reaching for a stair that isn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n
\u201cHuh,\u201d she said. \u201cSnow day, probably.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Neither of us believed it, and neither of us knew his name.<\/p>\n
My name is Rosemary Delgado. Most people call me Ro. I\u2019m fifty-eight, and for eleven years I\u2019ve worked the 5 a.m. drive-thru window at the Mug & Muffin, a little coffee stand on Route 9 just outside Bangor, Maine. It\u2019s a shed with a window, really, painted barn red, with a hand-lettered menu and a tip jar that says \u201cFueling Maine Since 1998.\u201d<\/p>\n
You learn people by their cars at that window. There\u2019s the plumber in the white van, large black, two sugars. There are the twins in the minivan who always want whipped cream, and a retired game warden in a Ford Ranger who orders decaf and pretends it\u2019s regular.<\/p>\n
And there was the boy in the rusty green Honda.<\/p>\n
He started coming the September before last. He was a skinny kid in a gray hoodie, with a Bangor High School parking sticker on the windshield and a crack running across the passenger side of the glass. The muffler on that Honda sounded like a lawnmower with bronchitis.<\/p>\n
He always ordered a small hot chocolate, $2.75. Then, before I could close the window, he\u2019d glance in his rearview mirror.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever the car behind me gets,\u201d he\u2019d say. \u201cI\u2019ll pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first time, I thought he was being sweet. Kids do that sometimes. They see it on TikTok.<\/p>\n
The second time, I noticed the car behind him. It was a dented silver Corolla with a tired woman behind the wheel in navy blue scrubs and a hospital ID badge clipped to her collar. She ordered a small vanilla latte, $4.85.<\/p>\n
The third time, I realized he was waiting for her.<\/p>\n
I started watching. You do at a drive-thru window at five in the morning, when there\u2019s nothing on the radio but the farm report and the Red Sox losing.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d park in the lot of the Irving station across the road with his engine running and his headlights off. He\u2019d sit there five minutes, sometimes fifteen. Then the silver Corolla would come down Route 9 from the direction of Hermon, and the second her blinker went on, the green Honda would pull out and slide into my line right in front of her.<\/p>\n
He did it every school day for over a year.<\/p>\n
He paid for his hot chocolate and her latte, $7.60 total. Most days it was a five-dollar bill and a handful of quarters and dimes, counted out carefully, like every coin mattered. Then he\u2019d pull away before she reached the window.<\/p>\n
When I told her the kid ahead had paid, she\u2019d smile and shake her head.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat kid again,\u201d she\u2019d say. \u201cTell him thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll tell him.\u201d<\/p>\n
She never knew who he was. As far as I could tell, she never even got a good look at him. He was always gone before she pulled up.<\/p>\n
On her birthday in September, the boy handed me a cupcake through the window, chocolate with pink frosting and a single blue candle, in a plastic clamshell from the Hannaford bakery.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you give this to her?\u201d he said. \u201cWith the coffee? It\u2019s her birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you know it\u2019s her birthday?\u201d<\/p>\n
He shrugged and looked at his steering wheel. \u201cI just do.\u201d<\/p>\n
I lit the candle with the lighter we keep for the propane heater, and while he waited, I snapped a quick photo of him through the window with my phone. He was leaning out a little, squinting at the flame, with the gray hood pushed back for once and his hair sticking up. I don\u2019t know why I took it. It just made me smile.<\/p>\n
When the Corolla pulled up and I handed the nurse her latte and the cupcake with the candle still burning, she just sat there and stared at it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow did he know?\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wouldn\u2019t say.\u201d<\/p>\n
She blew out the candle. Then she put her forehead down on her steering wheel for a few seconds before she drove off to work.<\/p>\n
I asked the boy once, straight out.<\/p>\n
It was October, cold and still dark, with frost on the window ledge. He handed me a five and four quarters.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you know her?\u201d I said. \u201cThe nurse?\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at the money in my hand instead of at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot really,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Then he drove away.<\/p>\n
That \u201cnot really\u201d stuck in me like a fishbone. It wasn\u2019t \u201cno,\u201d and it wasn\u2019t \u201cyes.\u201d It was the answer of a kid carrying something too heavy to set down in front of a stranger.<\/p>\n
My manager, Kurt Gagnon, hated it.<\/p>\n
Kurt was thirty-four, the owner\u2019s nephew, and he ran the Mug & Muffin like it was a Fortune 500 company. He had a clipboard and a stopwatch app on his phone, and he timed every car at the window. The franchise office in Portland measured \u201caverage service time,\u201d and Kurt wanted a bonus.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s holding up the line every morning,\u201d Kurt said, standing behind me with his arms crossed. \u201cWaiting across the street like some kind of stalker. If he does it again, I\u2019m calling the school.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s buying a nurse a coffee, Kurt.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s weird. Kids that age don\u2019t do that for nothing.\u201d He tapped his clipboard. \u201cIf he\u2019s parked over there tomorrow, I\u2019m calling the cops.\u201d<\/p>\n
One morning, Kurt leaned right over my shoulder at the window and said it to the nurse herself.<\/p>\n
\u201cLady, that kid\u2019s a creep,\u201d he told her. \u201cHe\u2019s probably casing your car. Figuring out your schedule. You should report him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The nurse looked at him for a long moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe buys me coffee, Kurt,\u201d she said. She read his name off his tag. \u201cNobody\u2019s done that for me in years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next morning, the green Honda was there anyway. Kurt glared at it the whole time, but he never made the call. I think he knew how it would sound out loud. \u201cOfficer, there\u2019s a teenager buying lattes for a nurse.\u201d<\/p>\n
I ignored Kurt, and so did the boy.<\/p>\n
By Christmas, I\u2019d done the math on the back of an order pad. He\u2019d been paying $4.85 every school morning since September, plus his own $2.75. Counting only the days I worked, that was more than a hundred and forty mornings, and over a thousand dollars.<\/p>\n
For a kid in a rusty Honda with a cracked windshield and a muffler held on with a coat hanger, that was a fortune.<\/p>\n
Where was a seventeen-year-old getting that kind of money? And why was he spending it on a woman he said he didn\u2019t really know?<\/p>\n
Then, on a Tuesday in February, the green Honda didn\u2019t come.<\/p>\n
It was snowing hard, the wet, heavy kind that snaps power lines. Bangor schools had announced a two-hour delay, so I figured that was it. He\u2019d be sleeping in like every other kid in Penobscot County.<\/p>\n
But the Corolla came, right on time.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when the nurse rolled down her window and looked past me at the empty lot.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere\u2019s my boy?\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t come Wednesday, or Thursday.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Kurt actually smiled. \u201cProblem solved,\u201d he said, tapping his stopwatch app. \u201cOur average service time dropped eleven seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t answer him. I was watching the road.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the nurse came through the line looking like she hadn\u2019t slept in three days. Her hair was pulled back in a messy knot, and there were dark smudges under her eyes. Her hospital badge was clipped on crooked. For the first time, I could read the name on it: JOANNE PELLETIER, RN, CRITICAL CARE.<\/p>\n
\u201cStill no?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
I shook my head.<\/p>\n
She gripped the steering wheel with both hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cI keep thinking something\u2019s wrong,\u201d she said. \u201cI know that\u2019s stupid. I don\u2019t even know who he is. But I lie awake at night thinking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she hesitated, and her voice dropped.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a kid come into the ICU Monday night. Car accident on Route 9, near the Hermon line. Black ice. Seventeen years old. He\u2019s still not awake.\u201d<\/p>\n
She swallowed hard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not on his case. I work the other unit, the cardiac side. I\u2019ve only seen him through the glass when I walk past.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did he look like?\u201d I asked. My own voice sounded far away.<\/p>\n
\u201cSkinny. Brown hair.\u201d She closed her eyes. \u201cHis things came in with him in a plastic bag. Patient belongings. They hang them on a hook outside the room. There was a gray hoodie in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I felt my stomach drop right through the floor of that little red shed.<\/p>\n
I pulled out my phone with my fingers shaking and scrolled back through my photos, past my granddaughter\u2019s dance recital and a picture of a moose that wandered into the Irving lot. I found the birthday photo: the boy, the cupcake, the gray hoodie.<\/p>\n
I turned the screen toward her.<\/p>\n
She leaned halfway out of her car window in the snow to look.<\/p>\n
Then she put her hand over her mouth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s him,\u201d she whispered. \u201cThat\u2019s the boy in bed four.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she looked at the photo again, closer this time, and said something that made me grab the counter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWait,\u201d she said. \u201cI know that face. I\u2019ve seen it before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kurt was in the back counting the cash drawer. There were three cars behind Joanne\u2019s Corolla, honking. I didn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere?\u201d I said. \u201cWhere have you seen him?\u201d<\/p>\n
Joanne stared at the photo. Snow was landing on her scrubs and in her hair.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo years ago,\u201d she said slowly. \u201cAlmost two and a half. In the ICU. A woman came in with sepsis from a kidney infection that went bad. She was forty-one, a single mom. She worked at the Walmart on Stillwater Avenue, and she\u2019d put off going to the doctor because she didn\u2019t have insurance and couldn\u2019t afford it. By the time she came in, it was too late.\u201d Joanne\u2019s voice was shaking. \u201cShe was in my unit for nine days.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the boy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHer son. Fifteen. He sat in the family waiting room every single day for nine days. All day, every day. He slept in the chairs at night. Nobody came with him. No dad. The grandmother was sick herself and couldn\u2019t drive.\u201d She pressed her fingers against her lips. \u201cHe never cried. Not once that I saw. He just sat there in the same gray hoodie, doing his homework, waiting for somebody to tell him his mom was going to be okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Behind her, the minivan with the twins laid on the horn.<\/p>\n
Joanne didn\u2019t even hear it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI brought him a hot chocolate,\u201d she said. \u201cFrom the vending machine on the second floor. The first night, because he looked so cold. A dollar twenty-five.\u201d She laughed, and it came out as a sob. \u201cThen I did it every morning when I came on shift. All nine mornings. It was the only thing I could think of to do for him. I\u2019d hand it to him and say, \u2018Drink this, honey, you need something warm.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
She looked at me with tears running down her face.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis mother died on the ninth night. I was holding her hand. He was in the waiting room. I had to go out and tell him.\u201d<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t speak.<\/p>\n
\u201cSmall hot chocolate,\u201d Joanne whispered. \u201cHe always orders a small hot chocolate, doesn\u2019t he?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single morning,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Joanne Pelletier sat in her car at my drive-thru window in the snow and cried like her heart was breaking. I reached through the window and held her hand. The minivan with the twins finally backed up and pulled around to the exit without their whipped cream.<\/p>\n
Kurt came up behind me with the cash drawer.<\/p>\n
\u201cRo, what is going on? We\u2019ve got cars backed up to the road!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKurt,\u201d I said, without turning around, \u201ctake the window.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTake the window. I\u2019m going to the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019d never left a shift early in eleven years. Not when my husband, Hector, had his gallbladder out, and not the morning my granddaughter was born. I\u2019d worked through two ice storms and a power outage and the winter my furnace died and I slept in my coat.<\/p>\n
That Friday, I took off my apron, hung it on the hook, and walked out to my car.<\/p>\n
Kurt stood in the window with his mouth hanging open. \u201cRo! You can\u2019t just leave! Who\u2019s going to work the window?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got two hands and a stopwatch, Kurt,\u201d I said. \u201cFigure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The medical center sits up on the hill on State Street, eight floors of brick and glass overlooking the Penobscot River. Joanne met me in the main lobby at 7:30 in her scrubs, with her badge still crooked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t get you into the room,\u201d she said quietly. \u201cI\u2019m not even on his case. Patient privacy rules are strict. But I can tell you his name now. It\u2019s on the board at the nurses\u2019 station.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s his name?\u201d<\/p>\n
She took a breath.<\/p>\n
\u201cElijah Thibodeau,\u201d she said. \u201cEverybody calls him Eli.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eli. After more than four hundred mornings at my window, he finally had a name.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis grandmother\u2019s upstairs,\u201d Joanne said. \u201cShe\u2019s been here every day. She\u2019s seventy-four, and she doesn\u2019t drive, so she takes the city bus from Brewer. Two transfers.\u201d Her voice caught. \u201cShe\u2019s sitting in the same waiting room he sat in two years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
We took the elevator to the fourth floor. Joanne walked me down a long hallway that smelled like hand sanitizer and floor wax, past a nurses\u2019 station with blinking monitors, to a small family waiting room with blue vinyl chairs, a TV playing the Weather Channel with the sound off, and a vending machine humming in the corner.<\/p>\n
An old woman sat in the chair closest to the window. She was small and thin, with white hair pinned back under a knit cap. A winter coat was folded in her lap, and a rosary was wound through her fingers. On the chair beside her sat a battered canvas tote bag stuffed with papers.<\/p>\n
\u201cMrs. Thibodeau?\u201d Joanne said gently.<\/p>\n
The old woman looked up, and when she saw Joanne\u2019s face, she went very still.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou,\u201d she whispered. \u201cYou\u2019re the nurse. The one from before. When my Danielle\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, ma\u2019am,\u201d Joanne said. \u201cI\u2019m Joanne. I was Danielle\u2019s nurse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The old woman\u2019s face crumpled.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe talked about you,\u201d she said. \u201cEvery day, for two years. The nurse with the hot chocolate. He said you were the only person in this whole hospital who saw him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her name was Bernadette Thibodeau. She was seventy-four, a retired school lunch lady from Brewer, the town right across the river. Since her daughter Danielle died, she\u2019d been Eli\u2019s legal guardian. The Penobscot County Probate Court had appointed her the month after the funeral.<\/p>\n
We sat with her in that little waiting room for three hours. Joanne went back to her unit when her shift started, but she came by every break. I bought Bernadette a cup of tea from the vending machine, and she held it in both hands without drinking it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a good boy,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s the best boy. He works at the Hammond Lumber yard on Odlin Road three afternoons a week after school and all day Saturday. Eleven dollars an hour. He gives me half of everything for groceries and the light bill. He says it\u2019s his rent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBernadette,\u201d I said carefully, \u201cdo you know where Eli went every morning before school?\u201d<\/p>\n
She looked confused. \u201cHe leaves at a quarter to six. He said he liked to get to school early to use the library. He\u2019s applying to colleges.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came to my drive-thru,\u201d I said. \u201cEvery school morning for over a year. He bought a hot chocolate, and then he paid for the coffee of the car behind him.\u201d I paused. \u201cIt was always the same car, Bernadette. It was always Joanne.\u201d<\/p>\n
The old woman set down her tea.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery morning?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery school morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bernadette pressed the rosary against her lips and closed her eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe told me he was going to find her,\u201d she said quietly. \u201cAfter Danielle died. He said, \u2018M\u00e9m\u00e8re, I\u2019m going to find that nurse and pay her back someday.\u2019 I told him the hospital wouldn\u2019t give out a nurse\u2019s name. He said he didn\u2019t need her name. He\u2019d recognize her.\u201d She shook her head. \u201cI thought it was just grief talking.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe found her,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd then he waited for her every single morning, across the road, so he could pay for her coffee before she ever got to the window.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t he just tell her?\u201d Bernadette whispered. \u201cWhy all that sneaking around?\u201d<\/p>\n
I thought about the boy at my window, saying \u201cNot really\u201d and driving away.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think,\u201d I said slowly, \u201che didn\u2019t want her to feel like she owed him anything. She gave him something when he had nothing, and she never expected it back. I think he wanted to give it back the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bernadette started crying then, the quiet, worn-out crying of a woman who\u2019s done too much of it.<\/p>\n
Then she reached into the canvas tote bag beside her and pulled out a thick stack of envelopes held together with a rubber band.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what to do with these,\u201d she said. \u201cThey keep coming. The hospital, the insurance, the lawyers. I can\u2019t read half the words. Eli always handled the mail. He handled everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
I went through the envelopes one at a time, right there in that waiting room.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not a lawyer or an accountant. I\u2019m a woman who\u2019s made lattes for eleven years. But I raised three kids and buried a husband, and I\u2019ve fought with enough insurance companies to know when somebody\u2019s trying to take advantage.<\/p>\n
The first envelope was from the medical center\u2019s patient accounts office: an \u201cEstimate of Patient Responsibility\u201d for Elijah Thibodeau. ICU care was running about $13,800 a day. He\u2019d been there four days, and there was a line for \u201cSelf-Pay Balance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t have insurance?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
Bernadette shook her head. \u201cHe was on MaineCare when Danielle was alive. That\u2019s the state insurance for kids. But when he came to live with me, there was some paperwork. I didn\u2019t understand it. They sent a letter saying his coverage ended.\u201d She wiped her eyes. \u201cI meant to fix it. I just didn\u2019t know how.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second envelope was worse. It came from a collection agency in Portland called Coastal Recovery Services. They were demanding $31,240.17 for \u201cthe outstanding medical balance of Danielle M. Thibodeau, deceased.\u201d It was addressed to Bernadette, and it said: \u201cAs next of kin, you may be responsible for this obligation. Failure to respond may result in further collection action.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been calling me for two years,\u201d Bernadette said. \u201cEvery week. Eli told me not to answer, but I worry. He\u2019s been paying them fifty dollars a month out of his lumberyard money so they\u2019ll stop calling.\u201d<\/p>\n
My hands went cold.<\/p>\n
\u201cBernadette, did Danielle leave anything when she died? A house? A bank account?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe rented a trailer in Hermon. She had about four hundred dollars in the bank and her car. That\u2019s all.\u201d She hesitated. \u201cAnd a little life insurance policy through Walmart. Twenty-five thousand dollars. The probate court put it in a special account for Eli. Nobody can touch it until he\u2019s eighteen. A lawyer helped me set it up for free, through Pine Tree Legal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The third envelope was the one that made me want to throw something.<\/p>\n
It came from an insurance company called Granite State Mutual and was addressed to \u201cThe Guardian of Elijah Thibodeau.\u201d Inside was a two-page letter and a single-page form titled \u201cFull and Final Release of All Claims.\u201d<\/p>\n
The letter said that Granite State Mutual insured a commercial delivery truck owned by North Woods Freight LLC of Old Town, Maine. It said the truck had been \u201cinvolved in\u201d the accident on Route 9 on Monday night. It offered \u201c$15,000 as a full and final settlement of any and all claims arising from the incident, in exchange for a signed release,\u201d and it said the offer would expire in ten days.<\/p>\n
At the bottom of the release form, there was a line for Bernadette\u2019s signature.<\/p>\n
\u201cA man from the insurance company called yesterday,\u201d Bernadette said. \u201cVery nice. He said fifteen thousand dollars would help with the hospital bills. He said I should sign it quick, before the offer ran out.\u201d She looked at me with frightened eyes. \u201cShould I sign it? Fifteen thousand dollars is so much money.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at the form, then at the hospital estimate showing $13,800 a day.<\/p>\n
\u201cBernadette,\u201d I said, \u201cdon\u2019t sign anything. Not one thing. Not until we talk to a lawyer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The police accident report came out the following Wednesday. Joanne\u2019s friend in the ER, a nurse whose husband was a Maine State Police trooper, helped Bernadette request a copy. It cost $10.<\/p>\n
The report was six pages long, and I read it at Bernadette\u2019s kitchen table in Brewer on a cold gray afternoon while she made tourti\u00e8re, the meat pie her mother taught her to make in Van Buren up in the County.<\/p>\n
Monday night, 9:47 p.m., Route 9 near the Hermon town line. Road conditions: snow-covered with patches of black ice. Vehicle 1: a 2009 Honda Civic, green, driven by Elijah Thibodeau, age 17, eastbound. Vehicle 2: a 2021 Freightliner box truck owned by North Woods Freight LLC, westbound.<\/p>\n
Then I read the trooper\u2019s narrative, written in that flat, careful police way.<\/p>\n
\u201cWitness statement from driver of Vehicle 3 (traveling behind Vehicle 2) indicates Vehicle 2 was traveling at approximately 55 mph in a posted 45 mph zone at time of incident, under snow and ice conditions. Witness observed driver of Vehicle 2 looking down at a handheld device immediately prior to the vehicle crossing the center line. Vehicle 2 crossed into eastbound lane. Vehicle 1 swerved to avoid head-on collision, lost traction on ice, left roadway, and struck a utility pole. Driver of Vehicle 2 did not stop at scene. Vehicle 2 was located 2.3 miles west at North Woods Freight terminal. Driver cited for failure to stop and render aid, speed greater than reasonable and prudent, and use of handheld device while operating a commercial motor vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n
I put the report down.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t black ice that put Eli in that hospital bed. A truck driver on his phone, going ten over the limit in a snowstorm, crossed the center line and ran him off the road. Then he drove away and left a seventeen-year-old boy unconscious in a ditch, in a crumpled Honda, in the snow.<\/p>\n
And four days later, his company\u2019s insurance carrier mailed his grandmother a fifteen-thousand-dollar check offer with a ten-day deadline.<\/p>\n
\u201cBernadette,\u201d I said quietly. \u201cWho found him? On Route 9? Who called 911?\u201d<\/p>\n
She set down her rolling pin.<\/p>\n
\u201cA plow driver for the Town of Hermon,\u201d she said. \u201cHe saw the headlights in the ditch. He said Eli\u2019s car was half buried. He said if he\u2019d come by twenty minutes later, Eli would have frozen to death.\u201d<\/p>\n
I called a lawyer the next morning, and that was Kurt\u2019s doing.<\/p>\n
When I came back to work on Monday, I told him everything: Joanne, Danielle Thibodeau, the nine mornings of vending machine hot chocolate, the truck, and the insurance letter. I expected him to roll his eyes and check his stopwatch.<\/p>\n
Instead, Kurt went very quiet. Then he took his phone out of his pocket and scrolled through his contacts.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy cousin Danny was hit by a drunk driver in Ellsworth six years ago,\u201d he said. \u201cThe insurance company offered him ten grand the week after. My aunt almost signed it. A lawyer in Bangor got him a settlement of four hundred thousand.\u201d He held out his phone. \u201cThomas Ouellette. Ouellette & Roy, on Main Street. He\u2019ll talk to her for free. He did for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at Kurt.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou called that boy a stalker,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Kurt\u2019s ears went red.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know,\u201d he said. \u201cI was wrong. I thought\u2026\u201d He stopped and rubbed his face. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I thought. I guess I didn\u2019t believe anybody would do something nice for nothing. I\u2019m sorry, Ro.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTell Joanne that,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI already did,\u201d Kurt said. \u201cShe came through this morning at 6:10. I told her I was sorry I called him a creep.\u201d He swallowed. \u201cShe paid for the car behind her. First time ever. A guy in a pickup. He looked confused as hell.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas Ouellette was in his sixties, with a gray beard, a tweed jacket, and an office above a bookstore on Main Street that smelled like old paper and woodsmoke. He read the police report, the insurance letter, and the release form while Bernadette and I sat across from his desk.<\/p>\n
When he finished, he took off his reading glasses and set them down slowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cMrs. Thibodeau,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019m going to be very direct with you, because that insurance company wasn\u2019t. Do not sign this release. If you\u2019d signed it, you would have given up every right your grandson has to recover for his injuries, his medical bills, his lost future earnings, all of it, for fifteen thousand dollars. His hospital bills are already well past fifty thousand, and he\u2019s still in the ICU.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bernadette went pale.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd there\u2019s something else you need to know,\u201d Ouellette said. \u201cIn Maine, any settlement of a claim on behalf of a minor has to be approved by a judge. That protects children from exactly this kind of thing. Even if you\u2019d signed it, that release might not have held up without court approval. But they were hoping you didn\u2019t know that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey told me it would expire in ten days,\u201d Bernadette whispered.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey tell everybody that,\u201d Ouellette said. \u201cIt\u2019s pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pulled a legal pad toward him.<\/p>\n
\u201cCommercial trucking companies in Maine are required to carry substantial liability insurance. Federal rules require at least $750,000 for interstate carriers, and many carry a million or more. This driver was speeding, on a handheld device, and left the scene. That\u2019s about as clear a case of negligence as I\u2019ve seen in thirty-five years.\u201d He looked at Bernadette over his glasses. \u201cMrs. Thibodeau, if you\u2019ll let me, I\u2019d like to represent Eli. On contingency. You won\u2019t pay me a dime unless we recover something for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bernadette looked at me.<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d she said. \u201cPlease.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ouellette didn\u2019t stop at the trucking company.<\/p>\n
\u201cMs. Delgado, you said the grandmother\u2019s getting collection calls about her daughter\u2019s medical bill?\u201d he asked me that afternoon. \u201cBring me those letters.\u201d<\/p>\n
I brought him the whole stack from Coastal Recovery Services: two years of demand letters, along with the receipts for every fifty-dollar payment Eli had made out of his lumberyard paychecks. It came to $1,200.<\/p>\n
Ouellette read the first letter and actually laughed, a short, angry bark.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018As next of kin, you may be responsible,\u2019\u201d he read aloud. \u201cThat\u2019s a lie dressed up in a maybe. Under Maine law, a person\u2019s debts are paid from their estate when they die. If the estate doesn\u2019t have enough money, the debt generally dies with them. A mother isn\u2019t responsible for her adult daughter\u2019s medical bills unless she signed something agreeing to pay them, and certainly not a fifteen-year-old grandson.\u201d He shook his head. \u201cAnd collecting from a minor\u2019s wages to pay a dead parent\u2019s debt is the kind of thing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has strong opinions about.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wrote a letter to Coastal Recovery Services that same afternoon. I read the copy. It was a page and a half long, very polite, and terrifying. It demanded that they stop all contact with Bernadette Thibodeau and her grandson immediately. It informed them that the Estate of Danielle M. Thibodeau had been closed in Penobscot County Probate Court with no remaining assets. It asked them to refund the $1,200 collected from a minor in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, within thirty days, or face a lawsuit.<\/p>\n
They refunded it in nineteen days. The check came by FedEx with no letter, made out to Elijah Thibodeau.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Joanne went to the hospital\u2019s financial counseling office. A patient financial advocate named Linda Morrissette helped Bernadette fill out an emergency application to restore Eli\u2019s MaineCare coverage. It turned out that when Eli moved in with his grandmother, his coverage lapsed only because a renewal form was mailed to Danielle\u2019s old trailer in Hermon after she died. Nobody ever got it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe should never have lost his coverage,\u201d Linda said. \u201cHe was a minor, an orphan, living with a low-income guardian. He qualified the whole time.\u201d She typed fast. \u201cMaineCare allows retroactive coverage for up to three months before the application date if you were eligible. That covers the accident. That covers all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two weeks later, MaineCare approved Eli\u2019s coverage retroactive to November first. Every dollar of his ICU bill, which was over $160,000 by then, was covered.<\/p>\n
For the first time since that snowy Tuesday, Bernadette Thibodeau slept through the night.<\/p>\n
But Eli still hadn\u2019t woken up.<\/p>\n
Every morning for nine days, Joanne Pelletier stopped by Eli\u2019s room before her shift.<\/p>\n
She still wasn\u2019t his nurse. The ICU charge nurse, a no-nonsense woman named Theresa Boucher, made sure of that. But Theresa wasn\u2019t made of stone. When Joanne told her the story, Theresa said, \u201cYou\u2019ve got five minutes before shift change, every day. Family\u2019s allowed visitors. If Mrs. Thibodeau says you\u2019re family, you\u2019re family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bernadette said she was family.<\/p>\n
So every morning at 6:50, Joanne came into Eli\u2019s room carrying a small hot chocolate from the Mug & Muffin. I made it myself at 6:15 and handed it through the window when her Corolla came through. She set it on the little rolling table beside his bed, where he could have smelled it if he\u2019d been awake.<\/p>\n
\u201cMorning, honey,\u201d she\u2019d say. \u201cDrink this. You need something warm.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hot chocolate went cold every day. She poured it out and brought a fresh one the next morning.<\/p>\n
On the eighth day, Kurt started paying for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cPut it on my tab,\u201d he told me, handing me a ten-dollar bill. \u201cEvery day until he wakes up.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the ninth day, a Thursday in early March, Joanne walked into Room 4 with the hot chocolate, and Eli Thibodeau\u2019s eyes were open.<\/p>\n
She told me about it afterward, standing at my drive-thru window in the rain, crying and laughing at the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was looking at the ceiling,\u201d she said. \u201cConfused, like they all are. The respiratory therapist had just taken the breathing tube out. He couldn\u2019t really talk yet. His voice was just a scratch.\u201d She wiped her eyes. \u201cI didn\u2019t know if he\u2019d know me. I walked over to the bed with the hot chocolate, and I said, \u2018Morning, honey.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did he do?\u201d<\/p>\n
Joanne laughed through her tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looked at me for a long time,\u201d she said. \u201cThen he looked at the cup in my hand. And he whispered, \u2018You weren\u2019t supposed to know.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
I had to sit down on the stool behind the counter.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then,\u201d Joanne said, \u201che said, \u2018You were supposed to just get your coffee.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Eli was in the hospital for another three weeks after he woke up, then in a rehab facility in Brewer for six more. He had a fractured pelvis, three broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and a traumatic brain injury that the doctors said would take months to heal fully. He had to learn to walk again with a walker, and then a cane. He had headaches, and some days he forgot words in the middle of a sentence.<\/p>\n
But he was alive. The doctors kept saying it like it surprised them.<\/p>\n
I went to see him on a Sunday afternoon at the rehab center, the first time he was well enough for visitors besides family. I brought him a small hot chocolate in a Mug & Muffin cup with a lid, and I set it on his tray table.<\/p>\n
He looked at it, and then he looked at me, and his face turned red all the way to his ears.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re the window lady,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m the window lady,\u201d I said. \u201cRosemary. Ro.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he said. \u201cFor holding up your line. Every morning. That guy Kurt was always so mad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKurt\u2019s been paying for your hot chocolate for the last month,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Eli stared at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cKurt?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople surprise you,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
I sat down in the vinyl chair beside his bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cEli, can I ask you something? Why didn\u2019t you ever tell her? You stood in front of that woman for over a year, four hundred and twelve mornings by my count. You could have just pulled up to her window and said thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He picked at the edge of his blanket for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mom died owing everybody,\u201d he said quietly. \u201cThe hospital, the electric company, the landlord. She was always apologizing to people. \u2018I\u2019m sorry I\u2019m late with the rent. I\u2019m sorry, I\u2019ll pay you next week.\u2019\u201d He swallowed. \u201cThen she got sick, and she didn\u2019t go to the doctor because she was scared of owing more. And she died in that hospital owing thirty-one thousand dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEli\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then this nurse,\u201d he said, \u201cthis stranger, came out to the waiting room every morning for nine days and handed me a hot chocolate. A dollar twenty-five. And she never asked for anything. She didn\u2019t want me to owe her. She just wanted me to have something warm.\u201d He looked up at me with wet eyes. \u201cDo you know what that\u2019s like, when you\u2019ve watched your whole family drown in owing people? To have somebody just give you something?\u201d<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to pay her back,\u201d Eli said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want her to feel like I was settling a debt. I wanted to give it to her the same way she gave it to me. Without her knowing. Without her owing me.\u201d He shrugged with his good shoulder. \u201cI figured if she knew it was me, it would turn into a thing. A transaction. I didn\u2019t want it to be a transaction.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFour hundred and twelve mornings,\u201d I said. \u201cSeven dollars and sixty cents a day. That\u2019s over three thousand dollars, Eli. That\u2019s half your lumberyard money.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a dollar twenty-five a day,\u201d he said. \u201cNine days. It was the only thing anybody gave me that whole year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The case against North Woods Freight settled in August.<\/p>\n
Thomas Ouellette didn\u2019t have to file a lawsuit in the end. He sent Granite State Mutual a demand letter with the police report, the witness statement, the trooper\u2019s citations, the driver\u2019s cell phone records, which Ouellette got through a preservation letter and a subpoena, and eighty-four pages of medical records. The cell phone records showed the driver had been texting his girlfriend for eleven minutes straight, up until four seconds before the crash.<\/p>\n
The driver, a twenty-six-year-old named Tyler Cullen, pleaded guilty in Penobscot County District Court to leaving the scene of an accident involving personal injury and to using a handheld device while operating a commercial vehicle. He lost his commercial driver\u2019s license for five years and was ordered to pay $2,500 in restitution and fines. North Woods Freight fired him.<\/p>\n
Granite State Mutual\u2019s original offer was $15,000. The final settlement, approved by a Penobscot County Probate Court judge in a small hearing room in Bangor on a hot afternoon in August, was $975,000. That was nearly the full limit of North Woods Freight\u2019s commercial liability policy.<\/p>\n
Under Maine law, the judge had to approve it because Eli was still a minor. She read every page. Then she asked Eli directly whether he understood the settlement.<\/p>\n
He was sitting at the table next to Bernadette, leaning on his cane, in a borrowed sport coat that was too big in the shoulders.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, ma\u2019am,\u201d he said. \u201cMr. Ouellette explained it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge looked over her glasses at Ouellette. \u201cCounsel, how is the minor\u2019s portion being protected?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour Honor, after attorney\u2019s fees of thirty-three and a third percent and reimbursement of costs, the net settlement to Elijah is approximately $642,000,\u201d Ouellette said. \u201cWe\u2019re placing it in a structured settlement and a court-supervised trust until his twenty-first birthday. Mrs. Thibodeau will be co-trustee with an independent professional trustee from Bangor Savings Bank. Any distribution before age twenty-one, other than for education or medical care, requires court approval.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGood,\u201d the judge said. \u201cAnd what are Elijah\u2019s plans, if he doesn\u2019t mind my asking?\u201d<\/p>\n
Eli straightened up in his chair.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be a nurse, Your Honor,\u201d he said. \u201cAn ICU nurse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge smiled for the first time all afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cApproved,\u201d she said, and signed the order.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s more, because there\u2019s always more in a small town like Bangor.<\/p>\n
The day after Eli woke up, the Bangor Daily News ran a little story. The reporter had heard it from one of the nurses at the medical center. The headline said, \u201cTeen Paid for Nurse\u2019s Coffee for 412 Days. She Never Knew Who He Was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Somebody shared it on Facebook. By the next week, it had been shared two hundred thousand times. A national morning show called the Mug & Muffin. Kurt actually answered the phone and said, \u201cWe\u2019re kind of busy right now,\u201d and hung up, which I\u2019ll love him for until the day I die.<\/p>\n
People started showing up at my window. They came from Brewer and Hampden and Orono, and some from as far away as Portland and Boston. They\u2019d order a coffee and then say, \u201cWhatever the car behind me gets, I\u2019ll pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
By spring, it was happening forty or fifty times a morning. Some mornings, nobody at the window paid for their own coffee at all.<\/p>\n
Kurt put a chalkboard up beside the menu: \u201cPAY-IT-FORWARD COUNT.\u201d He changed the number every morning with a piece of yellow chalk. By the first day of summer, it was over six thousand.<\/p>\n
Kurt\u2019s uncle, who owns the stand, put out a second jar next to the tip jar, labeled \u201cEli\u2019s Jar.\u201d People filled it with dollar bills, fives, and twenties. A man in a Tesla dropped in a hundred and told me not to tell anybody. By the end of June, there was $11,826 in that jar.<\/p>\n
We gave it to Bernadette. She refused it twice. The third time, Joanne sat her down in her kitchen in Brewer and said, \u201cBernadette, you taught me something two years ago. You let me do something for your grandson when I didn\u2019t know what else to do. Let these people do the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bernadette used the money to pay off the last of the reverse mortgage arrears on her little house. She\u2019d fallen behind on her property taxes and homeowner\u2019s insurance the year Danielle died, and the lender had sent her a default notice in January. She hadn\u2019t told Eli. She hadn\u2019t told anyone.<\/p>\n
Eli found out anyway. He found the paid-in-full letter on the kitchen table and cried for an hour.<\/p>\n
Joanne did one more thing, and she didn\u2019t tell anybody about it either. I only know because Linda Morrissette, the financial advocate, mentioned it to me months later.<\/p>\n
When Danielle Thibodeau was dying in the ICU two and a half years earlier, Joanne had sat with her one night after her shift. Danielle told her that her biggest fear was that her son would end up drowning in her debts the way she\u2019d drowned in her own mother\u2019s.<\/p>\n
After that night, Joanne quietly asked the hospital\u2019s charity care committee to review Danielle\u2019s account. The committee forgave $14,000 of Danielle\u2019s balance under the hospital\u2019s financial assistance policy before it ever went to collections. Joanne never told Danielle, and she never told Eli or Bernadette.<\/p>\n
The $31,240 that Coastal Recovery Services was chasing was what remained after that.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019d already been paying it forward for two years,\u201d Linda told me. \u201cLong before that boy ever bought her a coffee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eli graduated from Bangor High School the following June, one year late. He\u2019d missed most of his senior year in the hospital and rehab, and the school let him finish with summer classes and a tutor that Kurt\u2019s uncle paid for.<\/p>\n
The graduation was held at the Cross Insurance Center downtown, a big arena by the river. Eli walked across the stage without his cane, slowly and carefully, with a slight limp he\u2019ll probably carry the rest of his life.<\/p>\n
When the principal read his name, \u201cElijah Daniel Thibodeau,\u201d three rows in the stands went crazy.<\/p>\n
Bernadette was there in her church dress, crying into a handkerchief. I was there with Hector\u2019s old camera. Kurt was there in a polo shirt with his stopwatch app finally turned off. Thomas Ouellette came, and so did Linda Morrissette, Theresa Boucher, the ICU charge nurse, and the plow driver from Hermon who found Eli in the ditch, a big man named Gary Labbe who hugged Bernadette so hard he lifted her off the ground.<\/p>\n
And Joanne Pelletier was there, sitting right next to Bernadette, where family sits.<\/p>\n
After the ceremony, out in the parking lot in the June sunshine, Eli came over to us in his blue cap and gown with his diploma in one hand.<\/p>\n
He handed Joanne something with the other.<\/p>\n
It was a small Mug & Muffin cup with a lid. I\u2019d made it myself at six that morning and given it to him at the window, because he\u2019d asked me to.<\/p>\n
\u201cSmall vanilla latte,\u201d he said. \u201cFour eighty-five.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joanne took it with both hands and laughed through her tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou paid for this one too, didn\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI did,\u201d Eli said. \u201cBut this time I\u2019m handing it to you myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joanne set the cup down on the hood of her Corolla and hugged him. She held on to that boy in the middle of the parking lot for a long time, the way only a mother can hold on to someone.<\/p>\n
I took a picture. It\u2019s taped up beside my window at the Mug & Muffin now, right next to the birthday photo of the skinny kid in the gray hoodie squinting at a candle.<\/p>\n
Eli started at the University of Maine at Augusta that fall, in the nursing program at the Bangor campus. He\u2019s paying for it out of his trust, with court approval, and with a scholarship.<\/p>\n
The scholarship is new. It\u2019s called the Danielle Thibodeau Memorial Scholarship. Joanne started it with $5,000 of her own savings. Kurt\u2019s uncle matched it, and then the Mug & Muffin customers matched them both. It\u2019s awarded every year to a student from Penobscot County who\u2019s lost a parent and wants to go into healthcare.<\/p>\n
Eli was the first recipient. He tried to turn it down because he said he didn\u2019t need it anymore, not with the settlement. Joanne told him he could donate the money back to the fund if he wanted, but that the first one had to have his mother\u2019s name and his name on the same certificate.<\/p>\n
He framed the certificate and hung it in his grandmother\u2019s kitchen, next to Danielle\u2019s picture.<\/p>\n
He still comes to my window every morning. He drives a used Subaru now, a sensible one with all-wheel drive. Thomas Ouellette helped him pick it out and made him promise to put snow tires on it every November.<\/p>\n
He still orders a small hot chocolate.<\/p>\n
And he still looks in his rearview mirror.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever the car behind me gets,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ll pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not always the silver Corolla anymore. Joanne works the night shift now, so most mornings it\u2019s somebody else: the plumber in the white van, the twins in the minivan, or a stranger passing through on Route 9 on their way to somewhere.<\/p>\n
Eli doesn\u2019t wait across the road anymore. He doesn\u2019t need to. He just pays for whoever\u2019s behind him and drives off before they reach the window.<\/p>\n
Last week, a young woman pulled up after him in an old Toyota with a crumpled bumper. She was in scrubs too, with a nursing student ID from the same program Eli\u2019s in. She had dark circles under her eyes and a textbook open on her passenger seat.<\/p>\n
When I told her the kid ahead had paid for her coffee, she stared at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would somebody do that?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
I thought about how to answer.<\/p>\n
I thought about Danielle Thibodeau, who was afraid to go to the doctor because she was already drowning in what she owed. I thought about a fifteen-year-old boy sleeping in a waiting room chair for nine nights, and a tired nurse buying hot chocolate from a vending machine for a dollar twenty-five because she couldn\u2019t think of anything else to do.<\/p>\n
I thought about four hundred and twelve mornings in a rusty green Honda across the road.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause somebody once did it for him,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd he never forgot what it felt like.\u201d<\/p>\n
She looked at her coffee for a long moment.<\/p>\n
Then she looked in her own rearview mirror.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe car behind me,\u201d she said. \u201cCan I pay for theirs?\u201d<\/p>\n
I smiled and reached for the order pad.<\/p>\n
\u201cHoney,\u201d I said, \u201cthat\u2019s how it works.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWhere\u2019s my boy?\u201d The nurse said it the second she rolled down her window. Snow was blowing sideways across Route 9, and the wipers on her dented silver Corolla were … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama-sory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12361"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12363,"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12361\/revisions\/12363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}