My Husband Is Entitled

Today started with me pacing around the house, not with coffee in hand, but with my phone pressed to my ear as I bounced between hospital security, the town police department, and a collections agency — all before most people even stumbled to their desks.

Why?
Because my husband, a neurosurgery resident who leaves home at 4 a.m. and returns around 8 p.m. if the universe is feeling generous, has been parking in the emergency room lot. It’s technically for patients, yes, but when you’re running on three hours of sleep and sprinting between emergencies, saving 10–15 minutes of walking isn’t convenience — it’s oxygen.

Those 15 minutes might be the difference between seeing his daughter awake or missing her entirely. They might be the only moment he gets to inhale food before a 12-hour stretch. They might be the tiny sliver of rest wedged between overnight consults and nonstop trauma calls. Residents don’t have spare minutes. They live their lives in the margins.

So he parked where he could. And for that — he was ticketed.
Not once. Not twice.
Six times.

Each ticket was $20. Annoying but manageable… until I discovered that because he didn’t pay them in time — because he quite literally lives in a fog of exhaustion — they ballooned with $35 police late fees plus $15 collections fees each. And because those tickets were jammed somewhere in his car’s “resident life black hole,” I had no idea they existed until they arrived in collections.

He told me HR would take care of it — apparently, they’ve stepped in before because of how neurosurgery works. But this time? They didn’t. So everything snowballed straight into the hands of collections.

So here I am, begging a collections agent for a shred of mercy.
They give me none and tell me to call the police department.

I do.
And I meet a woman whose empathy level could be described as “stone tablet.” She listened, unmoved, as I explained the situation. She offered nothing.

Somewhere in our conversation, she casually mentioned she was married to the former chief of police and understood how hard it is when your husband is never home. I thought — finally — someone who gets it.

So I asked again for help.

She shut it down and told me to try hospital security.

So I called them. They transferred me from person to person like I was applying for citizenship. But eventually — miraculously — they removed the late fees from two of the tickets. It wasn’t everything, but I celebrated like I’d won a prize on a game show.

Then I called the police department back.

By this point, my voice was shaking — not with fear but frustration. I explained again that residents barely make anything, that my husband’s paycheck covers our roof and that alone is monumental, and that these surprise fees were now my responsibility to somehow absorb.

And then she dropped the line that made my blood boil:

“He sounds a little entitled.”

Entitled.
A neurosurgery resident who sleeps in 3-hour increments.
Entitled.
A father who misses countless moments with his only child because he’s busy saving someone else’s.
Entitled.
A man who parks in the ER lot not because he thinks he deserves special treatment, but because minutes are survival.

That’s when I snapped.

I reminded her — firmly — that if she, of all people, being married to someone who risked his life daily as the chief of police, couldn’t grasp how absurd it was to call my husband entitled, then we were living in wildly different realities. I told her my husband leaves before the sun rises and comes home long after it sets, and he does it to save strangers. He parks closer so he can get to them faster — not because he thinks rules don’t apply to him.

She went silent.
Completely silent.
And then, without another word of judgment, she removed every single police late fee.

The total dropped from $330 to $210, because we still had to pay the collections fees — apparently those are sacred.

But honestly? This wasn’t about the money anymore. It was about dignity. Humanity. The principle that residents deserve more than ticket after ticket for trying to survive the grind of a system that demands everything from them.

Today, I fought — hard. And I’d do it again. Because when your partner is too busy saving lives to save himself from bureaucratic nonsense, you become the one who steps in. You become the advocate. The voice. The person who refuses to let the world treat him like he’s disposable.

And today, that fight mattered.

UPDATED BIO:

Hi, I’m Fiona — a writer in the midst of an unexpected chapter.

In April 2024, I lost my job. Since then, my husband and I have been getting by on his modest income as a medical resident. After stepping away from IVF, we were shocked — and overjoyed — to find out we were pregnant naturally. While it was the happiest surprise, it also brought new financial stress as we prepared for our growing family.

Then, our baby arrived early — on April 29th, 2025, instead of the expected due date in late May. With no paid maternity leave and no room in our budget for childcare, I’ve returned to part-time jobs and writing just a week after giving birth to help cover essentials like groceries, bills, and a few things for our 🌈 miracle baby.

If you’d like to support my writing — and by extension, our little family — your kindness would mean the world. Every bit helps: $1, $2, whatever you can give.

💸 Donate here — Venmo

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This post was previously published on medium.com.