If you’ve been kidnapped by a hospital, receipts are the only visa you can hope for. These fragile pieces of beige and white paper carry the heavy blue ink of the doctor’s notes. Ink so heavy it can tear through the leaf of paper like tissue.
On the page are also marks from administrators. They contain dates. When the patient came in, when they were healthy enough to leave, and another date that you wait for. That you dream about. The date someone pays for your release. They don’t list the incarcerated days between, but those days live on the paper nonetheless. In that space between the day you came and the other date you wait. Your waiting can only be closed by a dated stamp that says you paid.
It is usually pressed in colored ink that bleeds through and garbles the letters in the hospital logo. Its this stamp that guards look for before allowing women to leave.