Alea Bates wasn’t ready to leave Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare’s main hospital four days after a stranger shot her seven times at close range. Miraculously, hospital records show, none of the bullets damaged her internal organs.
But after surgery, Bates said, she couldn’t get out of bed or walk to the bathroom without help. She complained of intense pain radiating down her left leg, weakness in her knee, and a numbing sensation below it, according to hospital records. Bates, who worked as an Uber Eats driver, didn’t have the strength to drive a car.
Still, Bates said, the hospital told her it was time to go.
“They didn’t do any further X-rays or CTs or MRIs to figure out why my knee was numb,” she said. “And they were just like, you know, ‘It’ll go away.’”
Doctors said she was medically stable, Bates said, and because she had no health insurance, they could not send her to a rehabilitation hospital or a skilled nursing facility, which can charge thousands of dollars a day for such care.
