Our Stories

Natasha Wilson kicked 2014 off with a bang, welcoming a new daughter in March. Unfortunately, the latter half of the year was not so joyful. Her 8-year-old daughter, Aniah, required open-heart surgery in October.

Because she’d used up her vacation days and other time off during maternity leave, Natasha quickly found herself dealing with a loss of income as she struggled to care for a new baby and also prepare for the additional care her older child would need upon returning home.

“I knew I was going to need help with child care, and that can be very expensive even for a child who is well,” says Natasha, a Nurse Tech at Summit Medical Center in Nashville. “On top of that I was at the hospital all day with my daughter, and had to work out her care plan once she was able to go home.”

She knew about the HCA Hope Fund thanks to hearing about it when she joined HCA in 2009. Several coworkers advised her to reach out, and she began putting the application together last November. In short order, some much-needed help was in her checking account.

“It was so fast; I was very surprised,” Natasha recalls. “I was looking at rent, a high water bill and so many other expenses. All that, plus my daughter’s health, had created a very stressful situation for all of us. It was a very desperate situation, and I am so grateful that the Hope Fund was there to help me.”

The family is all together now, and while Aniah’s health is a “day-to-day kind of thing,” Natasha says that just knowing that her coworkers both in Nashville and across HCA were willing to pitch in and offer help means the world.

“I don’t know of any other company that offers anything like that, and I am forever grateful,” she says. “People I don’t even know were there to help me.”