All She Ever Wanted (8 page)

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Authors: Rosalind Noonan

BOOK: All She Ever Wanted
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She cried for herself. She cried for the baby who had been taken from her womb and somehow had never reconnected with her.
Her thoughts were far distant when the voice on the phone brought her back.
“Listen to what I am saying.” Janet spoke slowly, like a condescending first grade teacher. “The charges and procedure need to be properly coded and resubmitted.”
“Why can't you change the code yourself? Just fix it, please.”
“I don't have the authority to do that. Your doctor needs to sign off on it.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? The doctors don't even sign these bills when they're submitted electronically.”
“Let me remind you that I don't make the rules. I am an employee of Sounder Health Care.”
“This is how the contract goes. I pay my premiums and you pay my medical expenses. You pay to take care of my baby and me when we have medical needs . . . and you can't withhold payment.”
“We'll be happy to pay when the coding is corrected.”
“Oh, it will be corrected. And then, then you'll pay through the nose. You'll be paying for my shrink, because I'm depressed and delusional.” The fury frightened Chelsea, but she couldn't stop now. “That's right. Your company has driven me crazy! I keep seeing my baby die a hundred different ways, and I've considered ending my own life. I almost crashed my car into a concrete post. How would Sounder like that? Maybe I won't die and . . . and your company will have to pay to keep me suspended in a vegetative state. How about that? Or do you not have a code for brain-dead?”
After a pert silence, the rep continued. “I see here that you're on Nebula for postpartum depression. How is that working?”
“It's helping a little . . . I don't know. Are you a doctor?”
“Ms. Maynard . . . Chelsea . . . I understand that you're upset. You sound absolutely overwhelmed. Maybe your husband should handle these insurance matters. Can you put him on?”
“My husband has a full-time job and he's leaving town Monday and . . . I'm trying to handle this if you would just do your job and help me.”
“I would like to help you, but I can only process what I've been given. You need to get your doctor to resubmit some of these invoices, and then there's the matter of your name change.”
“I never changed my name!”
“I'm simply telling you what the procedure is to correct these issues.”
Chelsea had two words for Janet from Sounder, but she didn't want to waste her breath. She took dark pleasure in cutting off the connection and tossing the phone onto the couch. Curled up in her familiar spot on the couch, she sobbed into her sleeve.
 
The disk had beckoned to her from the drawer when she was tucking away some paid bills, and now Chelsea sat mesmerized, hugging her knees to her chest, as she watched her old self and her handsome husband talking to their unborn child.
The woman on the screen glowed with happiness.
Her blue eyes sparkled like sapphires and her dark hair framed her heart-shaped face perfectly as she rubbed her belly and looked right into the lens of the video camera. She had worn her favorite maternity outfit for the video—the black-and-white houndstooth with a black velvet collar and buttons.
Leo sat tall beside her in a button-down black shirt, and she thought his broad shoulders and lean belly were such a nice complement to her round, very pregnant shape.
“I have always wanted to be a mother,” the old Chelsea told the camera. “It's always been the number-one thing I knew I had to accomplish in life. Ever since I was a little girl playing with dolls.”
Leo sat beside her, his goofy smile indicating he was about to spring a joke. “And I never really played with dolls,” Leo said, “but I'm looking forward to playing with you.”
“He means it,” Chelsea added. “He's like an otter. If it's not fun, he won't do it.”
“Don't tell her that.” He nudged her. “She'll think her old man is a couch potato with no work ethic.”
“Between the two of us, she's going to see plenty of work getting done.” Chelsea smiled at the camera. “So we're in our eighth month, but we haven't decided on your name yet. I'm in love with Chloe.”
“Isn't that the name of a perfume?”
“I also like Samantha.”
“Sam.” Leo rubbed his chin. “Perfect name if she's going to sell used cars.”
She turned to him. “And what's wrong with selling cars?”
“Nothing at all. But wouldn't you rather she sold brand-new Mercedeses than used Plymouths?” Leo squinted, then snapped his fingers. “Wait! How about Mercedes? You can't argue with superior quality.”
“You might as well call her Beamer or Porsche.”
“Then we could have our own version of
Leave it to Beamer
.”
Chelsea rolled her eyes. “As you can see, your father has name issues. But don't worry, sweet pea. I won't let him name you after a car. We'll work it all out before you get here.”
The front door opened and Leo's greeting boomed through the downstairs just as Chelsea was watching the beautiful couple on the monitor wave good-bye.
“Whatcha watching?” he asked, depositing Annie's carrier on the coffee table. He tilted his head at the screen and brightened. “Hey! I know that couple! Play it again so that Annabelle can watch. I don't think she's seen it yet, has she?”
“She's three months old. She doesn't even tune in to
Baby Einstein
.”
“But she might get something out of it. Play it again, hon. I haven't seen it in a long time.”
His down jacket still on, he sat on the couch beside her and watched, his mouth slightly open in awe. Did he notice how beautiful she used to be? That glimmer in her eyes before her mind had become dead space?
“Look at us.” He squeezed her thigh. “Are we a cute couple, or what? See, Annie? See how we talked to you even before you were born? Mommy and Daddy recorded a message, just for you.”
“Back in the day when Mommy could string more than five words together in a coherent sentence,” Chelsea muttered.
“What? What are you talking about? You've got a better vocabulary than anyone I know.”
“But I don't need to use it anymore. I don't need to talk at all. When you leave for Boston, I could go for five whole days without talking to anyone at all.”
“Not true. You gotta talk to Annie. And there's your sisters. And the man behind the deli counter.”
“Titillating conversation, discussing the merits of turkey over ham.”
“See that? Titillating. That's a word I would never come up with.” He put his arm around Chelsea's waist and nuzzled her neck. “Just how much titillating conversation are you planning to have with that deli guy?”
She closed her eyes, wishing she could communicate how broken she was inside. “I love you,” she said quietly. “But I'm so alone in this. So alone and scared.”
He stopped teasing her neck and pulled away so that she could see the sadness in his smoky eyes. “I know that. You know I'm worried about you.”
She nodded.
“You know I love you. But I don't know what more I can do to help besides getting you to that new doctor.”
Stay home! Don't leave me here alone. . . .
She was so scared to let him go, even for a day . . . so scared of what she might do.
But Leo had a job to do. He was their sole provider.
And it was up to her to pull together and take care of Annie for a few days. This was the baby she had always wanted . . . hadn't that bright replica of herself just gushed about it in the video?
This was her dream come true.
But somehow, it had also become her personal nightmare.
All day Sunday Chelsea dreaded tomorrow when Leo had to leave for his business trip. Since Annie's birth he'd been away for a night here and there, but never for a full week.
While Leo was out doing errands with Annie, Chelsea pulled herself off the couch to fold the dry laundry. A week was so long, and this was a bad time. The twisted mass of socks and T-shirts was overwhelming, especially when she was blinded by tears. She needed help. She needed her mom.
If only Mom were here to help . . . to show Chelsea how to be a mother. But Mom was gone . . . and Chelsea still felt terrible about not having a chance to say good-bye or mourn her.
“It's probably better that you're not here,” Melanie had told her when she called from Judith's bedside in those last days. “It would be really hard on you, and Mom is completely out of it. She doesn't recognize any of us.”
But she would have known I was there.
Chelsea was convinced that a person on the threshold to the next world could still sense the presence of loved ones around them. Torn between the desire to be with her mom in her last hours on earth and the doctor's orders to avoid air travel and stick close to the hospital, she had stayed. Of course, she had to take care of her unborn child. The light of her life!
But sometimes, it still felt wrong. The jumble of anger and loss and blame and regret that surrounded Mom's death was still a tight black lump in Chelsea's chest. People said that time healed all wounds, but this one—this dark stone of anguish—would never melt away.
Later, after Leo disappeared into the bedroom to pack, she knew she had to try one last time to stop him. She carried a pile of his clean T-shirts into the room, setting them on the bed beside his open duffel bag.
“I don't think I can be here alone.” There was a tremble in her voice, and she hated herself for having to beg. “Can't you tell your boss that your wife and baby need you?”
“I don't think Mark will buy that anymore.” He didn't look up as he stuffed balled-up pairs of socks into the bag.
“But it's true.”
Leo shrugged. “I already asked him if someone could sub for me. He kind of laughed it off and told me to have a nice trip.”
“That's mean.”
“He's got a business to run. And really, he's doing me a favor by sending me to Boston. I made a lot of connections at this gig last year. Leads that turned into lucrative deals. I gotta go, hon.”
He told her he'd been talking to Emma, who'd be coming around to help out. He'd worked out some sort of plan with her, but the details faded as Chelsea stared at the duffel bag he was packing.
How easy it would be to tuck Annie inside.
Her little body would fit in the canvas between the stack of boxers and the rolled T-shirts. If she stayed quiet Leo could stow her under the seat and no one would ever know. And if he checked her through with his suitcase . . . She imagined the cold, dark belly of the plane. It was no place for a baby.
I belong there,
she thinks.
Cold and dark and airless. No more sorrow and guilt. No more.
“Emma is going to stop in every day after work,” he was saying when she tuned back in. “And don't forget, you've got that appointment with Dr. Chin on Wednesday. Maybe you should hire a sitter for that afternoon. Mrs. Rosekind is great.”
“But she works during the week,” she reminded him. “And I'm not going to call Eleni again.”
“Eleni isn't a bad sitter,” he argued. “I trust her, as long as the skateboard stoner boyfriend doesn't come along.”
Chelsea shook her head. She couldn't leave Annie with that girl.
“Maybe Emma can get out of work that day,” he said. “That would solve the problem.”
Chelsea stretched out beside his duffel bag on the bed, wishing she could be as hopeful as Leo. When he saw solutions, she saw a mass of twisted socks and shirts with their sleeves tangled in a knot. She thought of the cold mornings ahead and the long, dark nights she would spend pacing with a crying baby in her arms. Right now a week was a lifetime. Leo might as well say he would return in seven years.

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