08/15/2025
When my 68-year-old father suffered a massive stroke while riding his Harley, the hospital staff treated him like human garbage. "Another organ donor who drove recklessly," the ER doctor muttered when they wheeled him in, not realizing I could hear every word.
Dad lay unconscious, still wearing his leather vest with combat patches from two tours in Vietnam, his gray hair matted with blood, while medical staff exchanged knowing looks over his tattooed arms. I watched in silent horror as they worked on him with obvious reluctance, one nurse even complaining about the "smell of motorcycle grease" as she cut away his clothes.
When they found his wallet with the worn photo of me in my law school graduation gown, their attitudes shifted slightly—confusion replacing contempt as they realized this "old biker trash" had raised a daughter who became an attorney. But the damage was done. I'd seen how they treated him when they thought no one who mattered was watching, how they'd already written him off as just another reckless old man who'd finally pushed his luck too far.
What they didn't know was that my father was riding to his weekly volunteer shift at the children's hospital, where for ten years he'd been reading to kids in the cancer ward. They didn't see the three medals of valor from his military service, or know about the motorcycle charity he'd founded that had raised over two million dollars for veterans' PTSD treatment. They just saw an old biker taking up valuable resources, another statistic waiting to happen.
As I sat beside his hospital bed that night, watching machines breathe for the strongest man I'd ever known, I made two promises: that my father would get the respect and care he deserved from that moment forward—and that when he recovered, the hospital would deeply regret how they'd treated him.
But my father didn't make it.....
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