Seven years ago, the Make-A-Wish foundation called my husband. They had a teenager, 16, with a terminal illness who dreamed of voicing cartoons. My husband, a long-time voice actor and coach, was baffled at first. Los Angeles is a bacchanalia of voice coaches; how did Make-A-Wish pick Ed Cunningham out of a hat the size of the Colosseum?

Turns out the teenager was a big fan of voice actor William Salyers (voice of Rigby the Raccoon on The Regular Show) and my husband had produced the demo that helped launch his career. Make-a-Wish asked if Ed would consider donating a few lessons. The teenager suffered from cystic fibrosis, a lung disease, and was attached to oxygen via tank. Would that be a problem? Was this even doable?

What began as a few lessons bloomed into a year. Megan came to our house each week and my kids rushed to greet her, my youngest fascinated by the tubes that ran to her nose. Voice acting requires breath control and this kid, despite her lungs, knocked it out of the park. She worked hard and landed a part on the animated series High School USA!. Megan’s health faltered shortly after. We didn’t know it then, but it was the beginning of a long, very long, stretch of hospital stays.

Last week, Motel 6 called the cops on Megan and her mom. They’d been living in the roadside motel after losing their home. I’m trying to tell this story without getting all “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events” but, a few weeks prior, Megan had received some bad news: The medical and insurance overlords determined she was not a “good financial or medical client” for a lung transplant. Case closed. She was now on palliative care, the step before hospice.

Why did Motel 6 call the police on a dying girl?

Megan and her mom were moving to South Dakota. Call it a social media miracle. A Christian woman, whose own daughter died at Megan’s age from Cystic Fibrosis, reached out and offered them a free room until they could afford a place on their own. A new start! Megan was elated.

On departure day, Megan and her mother went to the Motel 6 office to ask if they could check out past noon, the standard checkout time. Megan’s mom, in an all too human moment, had misplaced the car key and, while the car doors were unlocked, they wouldn’t be able to drive without it. The key was somewhere in that half-packed room, and looking for it set her back. When Ed and I arrived to say goodbye and bring gifts for the road, I saw the oxygen tanks lined along the wall of their motel room and knew not much else would fit in their small car. How many Americans, I wondered, know what it is to gather from their life only what they can carry?

An hour after we left, Megan texted in a panic: Motel 6 was calling the police because her mother was taking too long to checkout. Motel 6 could have lent an employee to help look for the key, or to help carry belongings to the car. Instead, they called the police on a 23-year-old girl permanently connected to oxygen. Megan and her mom got out before the police arrived. The emotional stress of the threat, the pressure on her mother, was not only unnecessary; it was cruel. I can tell you this much: there was no want for rooms at the Palmdale, California Motel 6. The parking lot was near empty when Ed and I pulled in.

When I wrote “Ketchup Sandwiches” (my own story of poverty), I knew there would be people who couldn’t fathom how a family might not have $17 to spare. I also knew a huge chunk of Americans would understand all too well. Though the article is now a few years old, I continue to receive letters. Every week, someone writes me their Ketchup Sandwich story.

I know, I know. There are thousands of Megans in the United States suffering from terminal illness and living in poverty. We can’t save them all. It would be like dropping a penny in the ocean and diving in to save it before it falls where humans can’t go, to the place Shakespeare called, “The undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns…” But I have to try. I promised her I wouldn’t let her go down alone. So in I go.

I did a quick search and found some, well, not so nice reviews about Motel 6. Seems things have gone downhill since the 1960s when two men startedthe cute lil’ chain of budget motels. Heck though, sweet money was made. Mr. Becker and Mr. Greene had a net worth of eight million dollars after just five years in business. Well done, gentlemen!

But that was then, this is now. Motel 6 is privately owned, and I can’t wrap my mind around the gazillions they’re worth. I would ask their long-time CEO, Jim Amorosia, for help, but he retired this year in Texas. There’s a new CEO now, Rob Palleschi. Rob, is there any chance you can get Megan a back brace for her spine and a portable oxygen concentrator so she can walk around without dragging a 20 pound tank every step she takes? It would really improve her quality of life and make walking easier. I bet you have lots of things that improve your quality of life, like a salt-water infinity pool? Oof, I bet that’s good on the bones after a long day at the office.

Anyway, Rob, Megan’s mom set up a GoFundMe months ago and it’s sitting there collecting cobwebs. Business is slow, if you know what I mean (CEO lingo!). Truly though, thanks for anything you can do. Her requests are tiny. It’s almost embarrassing how tiny.

No one expects decency from Corporate America because Corporate America is a thing, right? Wrong. It’s a handful of very wealthy human beings. The average CEO at one of America’s 500 biggest companies makes as much money in one day as the typical worker earns in a full year. Their demand for grotesque amounts of money, for excessive compensation, is something we accept as normal. We laugh at ancient civilizations who stupidly threw virgins into the mouths of volcanic gods to feed their demands, and yet we’re still doing it. CEOs, star athletes and A-list celebrities: these are our gods and whatever they hunger for, we lowly humans willingly give. Tom Brady bought a 20 million dollar apartment last year. These are not homes, these are temples. We may not ritualistically spill the blood of goats in their honor, but we continue to sacrifice lives. The wealth gap in the U.S. is worse than in Russia and Iran. The income inequality in Los Angeles is equivalent to Sri Lanka, and Miami’s is like Zimbabwe.

Earlier this year a family of four was found in the back of a Honda Odyssey; the baby boy and his sister were in their PJs, settled in for the night. They’d been living in their van. Authorities think the father may have backed the van against something that caused the exhaust to vent back into the vehicle. No one suffered, the family slipped away quietly from carbon monoxide poisoning. The news article says foul-play was not suspected. I disagree. A homeless family living in a van for months at a time — that’s a crime. As far as no one suffering… I disagree there, too.

Merriam Webster defines the American dream as “a happy way of living that is thought of by many Americans as something that can be achieved by anyone in the U.S. especially by working hard and becoming successful.”

It may be time to file that definition under archaic and update the entry. Maybe we borrow a line from American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson?

The American Dream: a happy way of living that is thought of by many Americans as something that can be achieved by knowing even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.