Alice
“This way, mom.”
Mom blinks long and slow and then shuffles towards my outstretched hand. She takes it in her too-weak grip and smiles at me. Today’s not one of her better days.
“Oh? Do I have another appointment today?”
I nod and keep the exasperation out of my voice. This is the fourth time this morning that she’s asked me where we’re going. Right now, we’re in the parking lot of her clinic. Even something simple as looking out the window would tell her where we are.
“Yes, mom. It’s time for another treatment. That’s why I’m here; I took the day off work and I even put a few episodes of that show you like on my phone. I thought we could sit and watch them together. It’ll be fun.”
Her curious blinking turns into a considering squint.
“Have I seen them?” She says.
I shrug.
“How should I know? But there’s so many episodes, that show has been on for years, and I’m sure that even if you’ve seen them, you’ve probably forgotten them. Even if you haven’t forgotten, I’ll probably never have seen them, so you can explain to me what’s going on,” I say. “We can share it together.”
She pats my hand.
“Alright, sweetheart. Well, thank you for getting them for me.”
I lead her into the clinic — a squat brick building on the outskirts of Crescent Falls. It’s the kind of place that specializes in outpatient care. The building is a little run down, looking like it was last given a makeover in the nineties. It’s the best that I can afford. If I had the money, my mom would be down at the UCLA Medical Center or someplace at the forefront of medical technology, instead of a place that looks like it’s still using treatments from three decades ago.
“Come on, mom.” I squeeze her hand just a bit tighter — not too tight, the treatment’s made her so fragile. I always get nervous taking her here. There’s always that nagging worry in the back of my mind that, somehow, some way, something is going to go wrong and her health problems will come back and the word ‘remission’ will be just another memory.
I sigh. My life lately is just one long fight not to drown.
Our regular nurse, Paige, is waiting in the front lobby when we walk in. Paige is in her forties, she’s heavyset, but she always has a smile on her face and she’s got hair that is always so voluminous and shockingly red that I get jealous of it sometimes. She’s standing next to the front desk, with a clipboard in hand, and she’s checking off boxes on finishing paperwork while talking to an older patient.
As we enter, my eyes do a quick scan of the little coffee table in the lobby, spying the same magazines as the last time — months-old golfing and senior-living magazines — and I worry for a second that Paige is going to be a while before she can see us and we’ll have to occupy our time with this non-entertainment.
Fortunately, she looks up right away, scribbles a quick signature on the papers in her clipboard, and hands the sheet over to the outgoing patient.
Paige comes over to us with a pleasant smile on her face.
“Hello, Mrs. Riley. How are you feeling today?” She says.
My mom smiles at her and she and Paige hug gently.
“Good, thank you, Paige. Though I’m sure I’ll tell you different later. You know how cranky these treatments make me.”
“Well, let’s get you sit down and set up. Have you eaten this morning, Mrs. Riley?” She says, taking my mom’s hand and leading her through the lobby to the room in the back where they administer the chemotherapy.
I follow along just a pace behind.
“No, she hasn’t. She hasn’t had much of an appetite lately and she’s been complaining that most foods don’t even have a taste anymore. Plus, she always gets an upset stomach on days I tell her she’s going to have treatment.”
“Well, the taste issue is normal and should recede with time,” she says. “I’m going to bring by an apple and a banana and some high-fiber wheat crackers. I’d like you to eat a little; it’ll help with some of the side effects. Can you do that for me, Margaret?”
My mom nods. “I’ll try.”
Paige and I work together to get my mom comfortable in her seat and then I pull up a chair beside her. While Paige sets up the IV drip for my mom’s treatment, I put a blanket over my mom to help with the chills that I know she’ll start to feel, and I get my phone out and hook up a set of earbuds.
“Hold still, mom,” I say to her as I pop one of the earbuds in her ear while Paige administers the IV.
“What’s this, honey?” she says.
“It’s so we can watch the show together.”
Once we’re settled in, I turn on the show.
These aren’t just random episodes that I put together — I spent a lot of time putting together a playlist after I found some article online about the show’s best episodes and storylines. I want to know why my mom likes this show so much — aside from the handsome older guy who always has a leg up on everyone else — so I can share it with her. It’s going to be a long road to full recovery and there are going to be many times we’ll spend together on the couch watching this show. I need to like it.
We’re halfway through an episode about solving a Navy Cadet’s murder by anthrax letter, when something in the corner of my eye catches my attention. It’s Paige, and she’s waving subtly to draw my eye. She has a frown on her face, which is something I haven’t seen from her before and instantly makes my stomach drop a foot or two with worry about my mom.
Maybe her treatment isn’t going so well.
I take off my earbud and pat my mom on the shoulder to let her know I’ll be right back. She hardly notices.
“What is it?” I say as I get closer to Paige.
“Alice, I’m really sorry to have to do this, but Janet at the front desk needs you to stop by.”
I shake my head. “Can it wait? We’re kind of in the middle of something.”
“No, I’m really sorry, it can’t.”
My stomach drops even lower. The only time I’ve heard Paige be firm is when she’s corralling a patient. That she’d be that way now has me nervous.
I head back to the front lobby after taking a look back at my mom. Janet runs accounting for this little outpatient center. She has a desk behind the receptionist’s and, though she’s a somewhat-pretty woman in the conventional sense, she’s always got an upset expression on her face, like she’s always constantly discovering it’s Thursday and not Friday. Which is probably why there’s a small cubicle wall that separates her desk from the receptionists — they don’t want any of the patients or visitors to see the dour-looking woman who holds their financial future in her hands.
I’m familiar with Janet.
I don’t like her. At all.
“Hi Ms. Riley, how are you this morning?” She says. Her voice is hesitant. It’s enough to set the alarm bells in my head ringing.
“My mom’s taking chemotherapy and trying to recover from breast cancer. How do you think I feel?” I blink as soon as the words come out of my mouth and my complexion, I’m sure, goes a shade ashen. It’s probably not a good idea to be mean to the woman who handles billing. “I’m so sorry, Janet. I didn’t mean to sound like a bitch right then; It’s been a rough week and I just started this new job bartending… It’s hard to adjust to the hours and care for mom at the same time; I think I’ve averaged maybe four hours of sleep a night.”
Janet makes a face like a weasel. She doesn’t look hesitant at all now to break the bad news I’m sure she’s been holding onto.
“I am so sorry to have to do this to you right now, but your mom’s insurance is disputing some of the charges.”
“Did you explain to them that it’s all essential and she could die without it?” I don’t hold back any of the bite in my words. I should be at my mom’s side right now, holding her hand through her treatment. Not here at this desk, with this woman who looks like she’s constantly eating lemons.
“Of course I did. Listen, I don’t mean to put this on you, I’m really sorry, but we need to get that part of the bill covered.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
“How much?” I steel myself for bad news.
“Seven hundred dollars and eighty-two cents.”
I didn’t steel myself enough for this. I slump a little and put my hand on the desk. Even counting the extra money I’ve made working for the Reaper’s Sons, this is going to put me a hair’s breadth away from broke.
“And that’s for the last session? What about this one?” I say.
“Well, I’ll talk to the insurance company again, and I’ll argue your case — sometimes they change their minds — but there’s a chance you’ll owe the same amount for this one.”
Somehow I get the feeling that she’s not going to try very hard.
The walls in this lobby feel way too close and, when I try to take a calming breath, it feels like I am drowning.
“Is there anything else we can do? Please, Janet. I really need some help here.”
It kills me to have to beg her. I know she’s gloating on the inside, miserable shrew that she is, but I would do anything to get just this one victory and feel more secure right now.
If she told me to get on my knees, I would.
“I’m sorry, Alice. I really am.”
I sigh and it comes out more like a shudder and I know I’m on the verge of breaking down. I give her a quick, dismissive wave and turn my head away and make for the front door.
I need air. I need to get away from her. I need to think.
I step out into the parking lot.
The clinic is on the outskirts of Crescent Falls, with forest on one side and cleared, up-for-development plots of land on the other. I head to the forest side and take a seat on a wooden bench with a view of the forest. There’s a tiny garden in front of me, something the clinic put together for patients and people waiting to relax and enjoy and feel a little bit closer to nature while they’re getting injected with chemicals and doing everything they can to prevent turning into dirt and dust.
In the garden, there’s a little water feature — a circulating fountain and a tiny pond with a couple of Koi that come to the surface every once in a while to snatch a stray bug. I watch it for a while, almost meditatively while I look for calm inside myself. Among the quiet ripple of the burbling water, I hear the passing roar of a motorcycle; it’s not an unusual sound in and of itself, but it’s a little out of place in this part of town, so far from The Smiling Skull and the other part of town where the other motorcycle club, the Rebel Riders, has their tavern.
How the fuck did I get here?
And why the fuck does everything seem to be going wrong just as my mom starts on the path to recovery and I start to get my finances together?
This is going to break me.
I’m never going to get ahead. I’m going to keep treading water until I get too tired to fight it. And then I’m going to drown.
A few tears start to flow, but I work hard to keep them inside. I can’t let my mom see me crying, and I refuse to give Janet the satisfaction of knowing that I’m suffering. If there’s one thing that helps me to keep it together at the moment, it’s hating that shrew-woman’s self-satisfied face.
A beep from my phone interrupts my self-pitying reverie.
It’s a text from my cell company.
The credit card for my auto-billing has been declined. I’ll need to come in and pay in cash to continue receiving service.
That does it.
I let myself have a good cry. The kind that leaves my ribs hurting.
It doesn’t help much, but I need those couple minutes I take on the park bench to really let out all of my frustration. I feel helpless and locked in; I’m the only person my mom has to take care of her, she can’t do this on her own and she doesn’t have the kind of insurance to cover all of her care, but, no matter what I do, I feel trapped.
The best I can do is hold on and hope that this doesn’t break me so much that I can’t recover. But even that seems foolish.
When I pull myself together, I take a trip to the ATM and take out the cash I’ll need; almost eight hundred dollars, enough to take my bank account frighteningly close to zero.
I stop by my cell company’s little service center, take my ticket to wait in the molasses-slow line, and pay my bill with a few precious twenties. I don’t say a word to the person behind the counter, other than to give them my name and account number.
After, I head back to the clinic.
Janet takes the remainder of my cash and mumbles something approximating a ‘thank you’. Dazedly, I walk back into the treatment room and take a seat next to my mom. I hold her hand while I try to catch back up on the show — it all looks the same to me.
“Oh, honey, where have you been?” She says.
“Just had to take care of a few things, mom. Did I miss anything?”
“Our hero just caught these bad guys who were smuggling people using fake military IDs. But now he’s got to chase down the people who were funding them,” she says. Her voice is hushed like she actually finds the show exciting.
I sigh.
“It’s just one thing after another, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so, dear. But it’s entertaining.”
“You think he ever gets tired of treading water?” I say.
She makes a non-committal noise and turns her attention back to the show.
No matter how much I fight it, the best I feel is treading water, and even then, I know that one bad wave could sink me.
I can’t keep doing this. I need to find a way to get ahead.
My thoughts drift to earlier in the day.
Maybe there is a way I can get ahead.
Were Richie and Lucky serious about their offer?