Rain battered the only ventilation window in the basement, while the tin awning rang like a broken drum. Arthur Rockefeller sat hunched on the edge of the bed, staring at the eighth overdue-payment notice from the hospital on his phone screen. Behind him, he could hear his wife Lina breathing, the sound rattling with phlegm. It was a classic symptom of a lung infection, but one course of the special medication cost eighty thousand dollars, and they couldn't even scrape together next month's rent. Thirty-five-year-old Arthur was a bankrupt delivery driver, $193,000 in debt, with nothing to his name but a secondhand electric bike and a phone with a shattered screen. He swiped the payment notice
