A young North Carolina woman has refused to go to a nursing home in another state. While she wants to leave the hospital, she asks to live in her own home, close to family and her school.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In North Carolina, there’s an 18-year-old woman who has had to live in a hospital since she was 13. Now the hospital is suing her to leave. She wants to live somewhere else, too, but not where the hospital says. NPR investigative correspondent Joseph Shapiro explains.
JOSEPH SHAPIRO, BYLINE: From her hospital bed, Alexis Ratcliff asks the question.
ALEXIS RATCLIFF: What 18-year-old gets sued?
SHAPIRO: What 18-year-old gets sued? It’s hard to hear Alexis. Her voice is soft and the whoosh of the ventilator, the machine that keeps her breathing, is harsh.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINE WHOOSHING)
SHAPIRO: Alexis Ratcliff was sued by this very hospital. It wants her to leave.
RATCLIFF: But I didn’t ask to be here. It wasn’t my choice. It wasn’t my decision. I didn’t want to be here. But unfortunately, I’m the one that got sued.
SHAPIRO: Alexis is a quadriplegic. She can’t move anything below her neck. That’s why she needs that ventilator to push oxygen into her lungs. She came to this hospital in Winston-Salem, N.C., when she was 18 months old after a car crash. Doctors here saved her life. Her mother was driving that car. She was high, got charged and went to prison. Alexis was sent home to live with other family, but that ended when her grandfather had serious health problems and moved to an assisted living facility.
So in 2019, at the age of 13, Alexis Ratcliff returned to this hospital, Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist. Except for one six-month break, she’s lived here ever since. Now the hospital says it’s time for her to go. It found a bed for her in a nursing home in another state. Alexis, who became her own guardian when she turned 18 last summer, said no. The hospital then sued her for trespass.
RATCLIFF: OK, Siri,…
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