Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,58
offering too much information to this stranger. “Or, my dad and stepmom can’t. My mom lives in Europe and says she can’t help, but my dad really doesn’t have the money.”
The nurse clicked her tongue. Mia’s eyes had remained focused on her hands, which she’d folded and tucked between her legs. She must be cold. Or she needed to pee. Every time I asked, she shook her head no. “I don’t know how any grandmother could live so far away from her grandbaby,” the nurse said, then looked me in the eyes in a way that made me feel like I needed to answer, but Mia whispered in my ear.
“I need to go potty,” she said. Her breath had that twinge of infected snot to it, different from how it normally smelled.
The nurse pointed us down the hall as she left the room. I carried Mia and sat her down on the toilet. She bent herself completely over, her chest flat against her legs, and threw up a large puddle of green snot. One of the nurses stood outside our room, asking the woman at the front desk where we went, and I waved her down to show her what had happened. There’s your proof, I wanted to say. My baby is too sick for this.
“I’ll take care of it,” the nurse said. “Just go back to your room.”
We sat in there for only five minutes, or about as long as it took me to get fed up and reach for the bag to start dressing Mia in her clothes.
There was a knock at the door, and the specialist came in. He didn’t say hello—he never did—and sat on the chair in defeat. We all sat there looking at one another for a few beats, him sizing us up. “She’s probably sick from being nervous,” he said. “If you’re nervous, then she’s nervous.”
“I haven’t had time to get nervous,” I mumbled.
He sat back, crossed his arms, then rose and stood over us. “If you don’t want to do the surgery, then that’s fine. It saves me time, that’s for sure.”
“No,” I said, furrowing my eyebrows. I wondered if he’d speak to me this way if I was there with a husband or if Mia had insurance that wasn’t Medicaid. “I didn’t say anything like that. She’s been sick. She’s sick. I figured she was too sick to do the surgery today. I don’t even know why I came here. I’m too tired to think about this.”
“The surgery will help her,” he said. “I’m trying to help.”
I nodded. Frustrated, I tried not to cry, ignoring my overwhelming urge to drop down and sob into my arms, to give up and surrender to how hard it was to have a child this sick while fighting like a warrior to pay rent with a job that had absolutely no benefits at all, a job where if I didn’t show up, it might not be there when I finally could. Not that I expected any of those things. A lack of benefits simply came with the territory for jobs that paid close to minimum wage; it just seemed like an exception should be made for those who had people to care for. “I trust you,” I said, looking at Mia, my arm around her shoulders, knowing I’d have to let her go with him.
A different nurse came to take Mia into the surgery. Another came in the room with some paperwork for me: instructions on how to care for Mia over the next couple of weeks.
“You’re Dan and Karen’s daughter, aren’t you?” she asked. I nodded. “I thought I recognized you. Boy, Mia is your spitting image! She looks exactly like you did when you were little.” My confused expression prompted her to introduce herself fully. She was the wife of the lawyer who’d handled my lawsuit for a car wreck I’d been in at sixteen. “But I’ve known your parents since they started going to Bethany Covenant when you were still in diapers!”
“Still in diapers” made me think about the story my mom always told about the time they’d rushed to church one Sunday morning, getting there after the sermon started. Dad passed me to Mom, and her hand brushed past my bare butt. I was barely two years old, and they were only twenty-one. They’d forgotten to put a diaper on me in their hurry to get out the door and didn’t have any with them. I wondered if this nurse had