The furniture came from various consignment shops. The color scheme, turquoise and white, evoked a feeling of living in a beach cottage, because that was where she longed to be—an ocean community, replete with artsy people who valued acupuncture and holistic healing. Clutter, she kept to a minimum. Everything about our home was peaceful, like Ruby before her disease.
“You know what’s weird?” Ruby said as she gazed absently up at the cracks in the ceiling, her arms bent at the elbows, hands interlocked and resting behind her head. “I don’t feel sick, just tired.”
“Hopefully, after that drug, we won’t have to know what cancer feels like.”
Ruby sat up and got cross-legged on the bed. “That drug sounded worse than the cancer.”
“That drug is the most important thing in our lives.”
“Liver problems. Irregular heartbeat. Skin rashes. Upset stomach. Fuck this, John. I mean it. Fuck having fucking cancer. I can’t stand it.”
I got up from my chair and plunked myself down on the bed beside Ruby. I put a hand on her knee but knew not to hug her. Ruby could be like Ginger that way. At times she wanted to be petted and scratched; other times she was too prickly to be touched. But I kept my hand resting on her knee, knowing she’d eventually cave in to wanting comfort. When she fell against my chest, I wrapped her in my arms and wouldn’t let go.
“Are you ready to tell your mother?” I asked, brushing Ruby’s hair from her face and eyes.
Ruby pulled away and sighed. “Sure,” she said, “but I’m not expecting anything.”
“She might surprise you,” I said.
“How? By getting sober and buying a plane ticket?”
“Something like that.”
Ruby shrugged off her mother the way I had the cost of her medication.
“I won’t hold my breath.”
The phone call from Atrium came an hour later. Ruby was fast asleep in the bedroom, cocooned within a burrow of blankets. Ginger was nestled up next to her and making that super-loud “I’m the happiest cat in the world” purr.
The agent from Atrium, a whiny-sounding man, introduced himself as Leonard Tate. “How are you doing this afternoon?” he asked.
I thought he sounded young—maybe just a few ticks past his frat party years. I told him what was going on with Ruby and how her doctor was going to prescribe her a course of treatment for Verbilifide.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tate said, not sounding all that sorry to me.
“I wanted to make sure that everything checks out okay for my wife’s treatment as far as our insurance coverage goes before we start,” I said.
“Of course,” Tate said.
The line went uncomfortably silent. I could hear fingers tapping away at a keyboard. He seemed to make an impossible number of keyboard clicks for the information he’d set out to retrieve. Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack.
Following an interminable amount of time, Tate asked for my health insurance account numbers, which I already had given to the annoying phone tree disguised as Julie, a saccharine-sounding computerized agent who couldn’t have been less helpful if she spoke only Yiddish. I didn’t bother asking Tate why Julie couldn’t pass along my account numbers to a living, breathing person. It’s been my experience that most large companies have antiquated technologies. And Atrium, both large and anonymous, trumped all other insurance companies with the lowest customer satisfaction ranking according to Ranker.com, which compiled such lists from actual customers. The Internet was a powerful equalizer that way. If you failed to meet customer expectations, you’d be sure to hear about it. Atrium knew to offset their prickly corporate culture and rankled consumer base with the lowest rates going. The bottom line was, we couldn’t afford better insurance coverage.
Tate keyed in the numbers as I read them. More silence. More fingers tapping away, but this time I could hear Tate make a couple deep sighs—disconcerting, to say the least—immediately followed by yet more finger tapping. I imagined Tate was seated inside a cubicle somewhere. Maybe he had a plant on his desk. A picture of his girlfriend, perhaps. Did this stranger understand the importance of our conversation? Did he realize lives were at stake? Could he relate to me as more than just a health insurance account number on the other end of his headset?
The answer, according to Ranker.com, left little doubt.
“So, Mr. Bodine, I’ve pulled up your health-care policy, and I’m afraid there’s a problem with the coverage.”
I felt the floor drop out from underneath me. “What do you mean, a problem? My payments are automatically