Free

Quick follow-up to the "Ellie vs. 400 Year Old Stairs" episode.  When we left the emergency room, they told us they would send an invoice to our house.  Having received nothing, and being a week away from packing a rented mini-van with all our European Worldly Belongings and driving away, we called the hospital today to find out why we haven't received anything yet.

Now, mind you, French health care is socialized, meaning that it is heavily subsidized by the Government -- a doctors' visit cost about $35 (without insurance!).  So, we expected that whatever the cost, it wouldn't be much.

I should clarify that we asked a good friend to call for us as we've pretty much given up the ceremony of planning out phone calls by pre-translating anything we might need to say in response to a set of potential questions.  So, our friend Amy called the hospital today.  The response was comical.

In short, the man said, "wait, how many stitches did you say?  One?  Oh, they won't even bother to bill you for that."

So there you go -- need one stitch?  It's on the house.  Our pleasure.  Come back again sometime!