Robert Banes is hospitalized at University of Illinois Hospital with persistent blood in his urine, unable to get clear answers about whether surgery is needed.

Jackie Banes visits her hospitalized husband and brings food from home, including cake from their daughter Brianna's first birthday party that Robert was forced to miss.

Robert is discharged after three days when doctors determine the bleeding from his rejected kidney will eventually stop on its own.

Robert undergoes kidney dialysis three mornings a week, a grueling schedule requiring him to wake before dawn that functions like a demanding part-time job.

The Banes family repeatedly fails to secure Cora Jackson's monthly Medicaid green card before coverage lapses, leaving her uninsured until the cycle begins again.

Sister Mary Ellen, a Catholic nun and community social worker, visits the Banes apartment to advocate on behalf of Cora Jackson's healthcare coverage needs.

Doctors warn that Cora Jackson's second leg risks amputation, but unaffordable transportation prevents her from attending all required weekly hospital visits.

Cora Jackson's depression deepens as her amputation-caused immobility confines her to bed, leaving her increasingly withdrawn and uncommunicative with the family around her.

Abraham follows a single nighttime shift at Mt. Sinai's emergency room, where one doctor simultaneously manages twelve patients including gunshot victims and teenage pregnancies.

Jackie weighs placing Cora in a nursing home as her daughter Latrice begins failing school for the first time, overwhelmed by the household's impossible demands.

Robert Banes misrepresents the severity of his cocaine addiction to his doctor and is placed on the state's kidney transplant waiting list.

Cora Jackson's second leg is amputated, and Jackie decides her grandmother must move to a nursing facility to receive full-time care.

Cora Jackson's MRSA diagnosis causes every nursing facility to refuse her admission, further delaying the care her deteriorating condition urgently requires.

Doctor Stone is unable to initiate conversations with Jackie about Cora Jackson's end-of-life care wishes, leaving her without a do-not-resuscitate order.

Cora Jackson dies at Oak Forest Hospital, and her funeral brings together community members who remember and celebrate who she was before her illness.

The Banes family's story begins with Robert's hospitalization for a failing kidney, introducing the family's exhausting battle to access basic medical care in Chicago's North Lawndale neighborhood. As Robert undergoes dialysis three times a week, his wife Jackie simultaneously fights to maintain Medicaid coverage for her elderly grandmother Cora Jackson, whose diabetes is rapidly destroying her health. Sister Mary Ellen arrives to help advocate, but even with her support, Cora's physical and mental health continue to decline as her mobility disappears. Jackie's impossible caregiving role grows heavier as she weighs placing Cora in a nursing home while her daughter Latrice starts failing school for the first time. Robert secretly misrepresents his drug use to secure a spot on the kidney transplant waiting list, adding another layer of uncertainty to the family's fragile stability. Cora's death at Oak Forest Hospital, following failed resuscitation attempts, closes the narrative, and her funeral offers the community a final chance to restore her dignity.

The Banes family's core struggle through America's broken healthcare system.

Tommy Markham suffers a stroke after knowingly ignoring dangerously high blood pressure, leaving him partially paralyzed on the left side and confined to a wheelchair.

Robert Banes regularly uses cocaine and drains the family's income, but refuses to discuss his addiction with Abraham or anyone other than Jackie.

Jackie Banes rations Cora Jackson's medications at home to save money, unaware that Cora qualifies for government-funded paid home-care assistance programs.

Cora Jackson and Jackie Banes come to believe the public aid office is deliberately conspiring to prevent Cora from receiving her monthly Medicaid coverage.

Abraham discovers that Cora Jackson's family doctor failed a peer review, though the Banes family remains completely unaware of his history of inadequate practice.

A doctor prescribes Cora Jackson antidepressants during a hospital stay but discontinues the medication before it has any chance to take effect.

Medical workers fail to inform the Banes family about Home Psychcare, a grant-funded program providing psychiatric assistance to homebound patients like Cora Jackson.

Abraham details how Mt. Sinai Hospital was originally founded as a charity institution to serve North Lawndale's Eastern European Jewish immigrant community.

Mt. Sinai's administration chooses to remain in North Lawndale and serve its incoming Black population after Jewish residents begin leaving the neighborhood.

Tommy Markham attends appointments at Lawndale Christian Health Center with Dr. Jones but wavers on whether to give up smoking and drinking as his doctor urges.

Secretary of Health Dr. Louis Sullivan publicly argues at a national medical conference that individual Americans bear personal responsibility for maintaining their own health.

Jackie Banes fails to have her three children immunized for measles, mumps, and rubella due to poor communication from government vaccination programs.

Black patients face significantly longer waits for kidney transplants than white patients due to lower organ donation rates in the Black community and outdated matching policies.

Tommy Markham reveals that while imprisoned, he was coerced into being infected with malaria as part of paid medical research experiments conducted on inmates.

Jackie Banes wakes from a dream about her deceased aunt Nancy and interprets it as a sign that Cora Jackson is about to die.

The secondary events surrounding the Banes family's story illuminate the broader institutional failures compounding their healthcare crisis. Tommy Markham's stroke and Robert's hidden cocaine addiction show how untreated and concealed health problems quietly devastate the family's stability. Jackie's attempts to manage Cora's care at home are undermined by rationed medication, an endlessly resetting Medicaid cycle, and a family doctor with a hidden record of inadequate practice that the family never learns about. Abraham's investigation of Mt. Sinai Hospital traces how the institution's financial pressures and racial history created a system chronically ill-equipped to serve its Black patient population. The government's rhetoric of individual responsibility, the failure to immunize children, and the revelation of coerced medical experiments conducted on Black prison inmates all deepen the portrait of systemic inequality bearing down on the family. The pool closes with Jackie's ominous dream about her deceased aunt, which signals the approaching end of her grandmother's life.

The secondary struggles and institutional failures shaping the Banes family's health crisis.

Abraham uses Jackie Banes's bus ride home to reveal North Lawndale's poverty and racial history through the neighborhood's decaying urban landscape.

Abraham reveals that only one-third of dialysis patients return to work, making Robert Banes's ability to hold a night job a fragile and exceptional feat.

Jackie Banes feels scrutinized and judged by the home-care nurses who visit regularly to monitor Cora Jackson's at-home treatment.

Jackie Banes must skip some of Cora Jackson's required weekly hospital appointments because the family cannot afford transportation to all of them.

Jackie Banes admits to Abraham that she feels angry and helpless watching her grandmother's depression grow worse with no way to stop it.

Abraham observes that Sister Mary Ellen's overwhelming caseload and professional restrictions prevent her from addressing Cora Jackson's emotional and psychological needs.

Abraham discovers that Mt. Sinai Hospital financially depends on its minority of privately insured patients to subsidize care for its low-income majority.

Cora Jackson's home physical therapy is cut short when healthcare agencies fear Medicare will reverse its funding policies again, further limiting her recovery.

Jackie Banes confronts impossible guilt about placing Cora in a nursing home, fearing the decision will cause her grandmother to feel abandoned.

Organ distribution policies effectively gerrymander transplant access in Illinois, forcing poor Black patients to compete against patients from wealthier out-of-state lists.

The Black community's deep distrust of white doctors is traced back to the legacy of abusive medical experiments, including the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

Jackie Banes refuses to donate a kidney to Robert, telling him she does not trust that he will not damage it through his drug use.

Dr. Stone admits in interviews that his Jewish faith prevents him from initiating end-of-life conversations with patients from different religious and cultural backgrounds.

Dr. Stone delivers a desperate plea to Mt. Sinai's Ethics Committee requesting a DNR coordinator for patients like Cora Jackson but receives no institutional support.

Medical records reveal Cora Jackson endured repeated electric shock and cardiac stimulant resuscitation before her death, though Jackie was told she died peacefully.

The turning points and revelations woven through the Banes family's story expose the deeper structural mechanisms behind every failure they encounter. Abraham uses Jackie's bus ride home through North Lawndale to establish that the family's health struggles are inseparable from the neighborhood's history of racial displacement and concentrated poverty. Critical observations, including the rarity of dialysis patients who can work and Jackie's forced role as an unpaid nurse, reframe individual hardships as predictable outcomes of systemic neglect rather than personal failures. Institutional revelations about Mt. Sinai's financial dependence on wealthy patients, Medicare's history of reversed home-care policies, and the gerrymandering of transplant access show how structural forces doom the family before any individual choice is made. The book's deepest emotional turn comes when Jackie refuses to donate a kidney to Robert, and its sharpest cultural rupture arrives when Dr. Stone's religious convictions prevent him from discussing Cora's end-of-life wishes with her family. The pool closes with the devastating revelation that Cora's death involved repeated violent resuscitation attempts that Jackie was never warned about and never told the truth of.

The key revelations and turning points exposing how the system fails the Banes family at every level.