the property right now would barely cover paying off the mortgage. So that leaves me with becoming a super-stealthy bank robber or stripping online for singlecancermoms.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not laughing.” A moment of silence passed between us as he digested what I’d said. He chewed slowly, like it was my words he was working over. “Look, I’m not the only one this happens to. Insurance companies deny treatments all the time. Or they tell you to go with the less expensive options they’ll cover. Generic drugs, different hospitals, alternative treatments, that kind of thing. There are payment plans and grants for those who can qualify, and some trials will cover drug costs.”
“Is there an alternative for the MIBG?”
“No.”
“And if she doesn’t get it?”
My fork hit the plate, and I slowly brought my eyes to his. “And if she doesn’t respond to these drugs?”
The muscle in his jaw flexed as his eyes turned hard. This wasn’t the guy who tenderly tied cleats or held my daughter—held me. This was the guy who killed people for a living. “You’re telling me that Maisie’s life isn’t just in the hands of her doctors…but her insurance company? They decide if she lives or dies?”
“In not so many words. They don’t decide if she can have the treatment, just if they’ll pay for it. The rest, that’s on me. I’m the one who has to look at her doctors and say whether I can afford the price tag on my daughter’s life.”
Horror flashed across his face, this guy who had seen and done things that would probably give me nightmares.
“Pretty screwed up, right?” I asked with a mocking smile.
“How much is it?”
“What part? The twenty-thousand-dollar chemo treatments that she gets once a month? The hundred-thousand-dollar surgery? The medication? The travel?”
He blew out a breath, dropping his hands to his lap. “The MIBG.”
“Probably fifty K, give or take an arm and a leg. But it’s Maisie’s life. What am I supposed to say? No? Please don’t save my kid?”
“Of course not.”
“Exactly. So I’ll figure something out. She’ll probably need two rounds of the MIBG, and then the stem cell transplant averages about a half mil.”
He paled. “A half a million dollars?”
“Yep. Cancer is business, and business is good.”
He pushed away his plate. “I think I’ve lost my appetite.”
“And you wonder why I’m losing weight,” I joked.
He didn’t laugh. In fact, he didn’t give me more than a one-word answer as we made our way back upstairs. I almost felt guilty for unloading on him, but it felt good in a weird way to share all of that, to acknowledge that so much of this wasn’t fair.
He sat by me through the night, never once complaining about the chairs or the monitors. He watched every level like a hawk, flipped through the MIBG brochure, paced the hall outside. He FaceTimed Colt and Havoc, brought more coffee, and read through Maisie’s binder, which at this point was more personal to me than a diary. He pulled his chair as close to mine as possible, and when I fell asleep around midnight, it was on his shoulder.
Beckett was everything I’d desperately needed these last seven months. What was I going to do when he inevitably left? Now that I knew what it was like to have someone like him in times like this, it would be a thousand times harder in his absence.
I woke with a start to find Beckett standing at Maisie’s bedside. He looked at me with a huge grin as the doctor walked in.
Stumbling to my feet, I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and gasped. Maisie was sitting up, her smile wide, her eyes clear.
“Hi, Mom!”
Blinking quickly, I looked at the monitors before responding. Her pressure was back up, her temp was down, her oxygen levels up. My hand flew to cover my mouth as my knees buckled, but Beckett caught me by the waist, pulling me to his side without missing a beat.
“Hiya, Maisie-girl. How are you feeling?”
“So much better,” she answered.
My mouth trembled as I looked back at the doctor, who was flipping through the chart, listening to the report of another doctor. It was seven fifteen in the morning. The night shift had changed to day while I was asleep.
“Well?” I asked.
“Looks like the drugs are working. She’s going to be just fine.”
I turned my face into Beckett’s chest before I lost it in front of Maisie. He wrapped his arms around me as I took deep, gulping breaths filled with