by Holly Rayner
didn’t get.” She gave herself a shake as she pulled into the driveway and parked the car.
Amie Campbell was outside, in the middle of watering the bedraggled front garden. Amie had always enjoyed gardening, and even in ill-health had never quite let her discomfort and fatigue prevent her from maintaining the carefully-planted gardens around her house. Weeds were multiplying in the front garden and some of the bushier plants needed to be trimmed back, but most importantly, everything was alive. Mia shut off the car and climbed out carefully. Her stitches had dissolved a couple of weeks before, but everything from her ribcage to her knees still felt ever so slightly unsteady, and not quite the way it had been before her pregnancy.
“Hey, Mom!” Mia closed the driver’s side door and hurried around the hood of the car to get to her mother, hoping that Amie’s presence in the garden meant that she was feeling a little better than she had been recently.
“Hey, baby girl,” Amie said, turning to watch Mia approach.
“How are you feeling today?”
Amie shrugged. “Like my joints are on fire and my nerves are doing a tango,” she replied with a sigh. “But everything needed a good dose of water, so here I am.”
“Mom, you knew I was coming over,” Mia said firmly. “You could have let me do it.”
Amie shook her head. “There’s more than enough for you to help me with. If I can do something, I feel like I should at least make the effort.”
Mia sighed, reaching out to take the hose away from her mother. “Well I’m here now, and I’m here specifically to help you around the house today,” she said, meeting her mother’s gaze. “So you can let me go ahead and get started, right?”
Amie turned the spray nozzle of the hose halfway towards Mia, raising a challenging eyebrow. “I’m almost done anyway,” she insisted. “I’ll let you get to work in a minute, but I wanted to do this part for myself.”
Mia relented, telling herself that if it made her mother feel better to get something done on her own, it was better not to try and argue her out of it.
After a few minutes, the two women went into the house. A peek in the fridge showed Mia that her mother had enough basic components to make a decent pot of soup—something she would be able to heat up and eat throughout the rest of the week. Mia set to work, gathering up laundry and sorting it for the washer, then going from room to room to empty the wastebaskets.
As she was emptying the basket beneath the desk in her late father’s study, Mia noticed the logo of one of her mother’s doctor’s offices on a sheet of paper that had been ripped through twice. “Huh? That’s weird. If it’s a bill, she shouldn’t be throwing it away.” Mia fished out the pieces and laid them on the desk, moving them around until she could work out the text on the page. Dear Mrs. Campbell, it began. I’ve consulted with several of my peers on the issue of your particular problems with finding a medication that works for you…
Mia read the letter slowly, trying to understand what it was saying and why her mother would have ripped it up and thrown it away. At this point, considering your rapid tolerances to steroids, NSAIDs, and other medications, the best course of action that I can see is chemotherapy. I’m concerned that if we don’t treat your disease aggressively, we will have to begin preparing for organ failure a lot faster than we normally would.
As she came to the end of the letter, asking that Amie contact the office within the next two weeks if she wanted to schedule her treatment, Mia felt anger flare up inside of her. Why had her mother hidden this? She had been so worried that nothing seemed to be helping her mother’s condition for more than a few weeks at a time—and here was a suggestion for something that could dramatically improve her quality of life. Mia collected up the ripped shards of paper and walked out into the living room where her mother was slowly folding towels.
“What’s this?” Mia asked with no preamble, thrusting the ripped-up letter in her mother’s direction.
“Paper?” her mother asked, apparently genuinely confused. Mia growled angrily. She arranged the paper fragments on the coffee table and pointed to them, meeting her mother’s gaze.
“This is not just paper. This is a letter from one of your doctors. Would you mind telling me why I found it ripped up in the trash?” Oh God, I sound like she did when she found me trying to burn my C+ essay in sophomore year. Mia pressed her lips together.
Amie’s eyes watered and she sat down heavily. “I ripped it up because I can’t do it,” she said, looking up into Mia’s eyes with such pain and regret that her anger dissolved in an instant. “I figured I might as well just forget that it was an option, since it’s never going to happen.”
“Why not, Mom?” Mia stared at her mother in astonishment. “What’s wrong? It sounds like they think it’s the best—maybe even the only solution on the table right now.”
Mia’s mother sniffed, wiping at her running nose with the end of her sleeve. “It’s not going to happen because I can’t afford it—and neither can you,” she said, her voice surprisingly firm. “It’s too expensive. I called and asked…” Amie shook her head. “It’s thousands of dollars, Mia. So…” she shrugged. “I’m going to keep on with the old medications, and either they’ll help me or they won’t.”
“No,” Mia said, shaking her head quickly. “No, that’s not right. You have to do this, Mom. If you keep taking the medications they’re going to screw up your liver and kidneys!” Mia crossed her arms over her chest and felt the ache in her breasts, but couldn’t bring herself to change position. Her cheeks flushed as she realized that she was yelling at her own mother; treating the older woman almost like a child. “How could you keep this from me?”
Amie looked up at her and smiled weakly. “How could you expect me to tell you about it?” Amie shook her head. “You have to take care of the baby, Mia love. You’re responsible for him. You have to make sure he gets what he needs—you don’t have the money to spare to spend on expensive treatments for me.”
Mia tried to maintain her anger—but she couldn’t. She stepped around the coffee table and wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders, holding the older woman tightly. “I’m sorry, Mom,” Mia said, feeling tears running down her own cheeks. “I just—I just worry about you so much. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”
Her mother gave her a playful pinch on the cheek. “You’d keep going, that’s what you’d do. You’d take care of your baby and do what was right to keep yourself afloat.” Amie Campbell looked her daughter in the eye and held her gaze in spite of the tears that streamed down both their cheeks. “You’d survive. Because that’s what your Dad and I taught you to do.”
Mia sighed and nodded, hugging her mother tightly once more. “Okay,” she said finally, wiping at her face. “Right, I’m going to make you some soup, then I have to get back to my baby. Based on the way my breasts are aching, either he’ll need to eat or I’ll need to pump in an hour or so.” Mia glanced at the living room window and saw that it was rapidly approaching twilight; it was definitely nearing time for her to get back to Rami’s family. Her fiancé would be home soon, and Mia needed to talk to him.
FIFTEEN
As she drove home from her mother’s house, Mia tried to focus on how nice it would be to hold Aziz in her arms again; how much she would enjoy crawling into bed with Rami and cuddling with him until she fell asleep. She had prepared the soup for her mother before she’d left, her feelings still turbulent. Finding out that there was a procedure that could potentially benefit Amie—and being unable to help her mother access it—made Mia miserable. “I know she’s right,” Mia said to herself as she turned onto the highway, heading towards the family home. “But why couldn’t she at least have told me? There has to be some way that she can get it. There has to be.” Mia caught her bottom lip between her teeth, worrying the bit of flesh and sighing.
Traffic was heavier than she had anticipated, and Mia found herself thinking in circles as she inched forward in her old car. She still ha
d some money from when Rami had been paying her to be his surrogate; but that was money that she needed in order to take care of Aziz until she was able to go back to work—or get a new job. With her debts paid off, too, she could—in theory—get a better teaching job. But that would have to wait until Aziz wasn’t so dependent on her; in the meantime, she would need to rely on the money she’d set aside in savings.
“There has to be some kind of organization that helps patients like her,” Mia said, thinking out loud as she finally managed to get off of the highway. Her stomach was roiling inside of her, her mind torn between conflicting loyalties. “Some kind of charity or something that can help pay for treatment, right?” She shook her head—who was she asking? Mia sighed again, turning off of the exit ramp. She would figure something out for her mother. It wasn’t fair that there could be a solution to potentially improve her mother’s health—and yet her mother be denied it because of something as petty as money. “Money’s nothing when you have plenty of it,” her father had liked to say.
As she pulled into the driveway at the house, Mia saw with relief that Rami’s car was there already. She parked and got out, intent on finding him as quickly as she could. If nothing else, Mia reasoned, telling Rami about her mother’s situation would at least make her feel better—she wouldn’t be only one of two people who knew about it.
Mia found Rami in the living room, holding Aziz. The infant was—for a change—wide awake, eyes open and smiling in reaction to Rami’s antics. Mia smiled to herself, watching as Rami cooed, lifting Aziz into the air in his strong, capable hands; if she had ever entertained any doubts about Rami’s ability to deal with a child, they had evaporated within hours of her delivery, after seeing him confidently and lovingly hold Aziz, murmuring to the newborn about all the things they would do together.
“You know, he’s too young to understand peekaboo,” Mia said, half-laughing.
“Or maybe he’s just extremely gifted and understands it very well—but isn’t impressed with me disappearing,” Rami countered with a grin. “How’s your mother?”
Mia’s upturn in mood disappeared. “She’s still having a lot of problems with medication,” she said quietly. “This afternoon we got into…not a fight, exactly, but kind of an argument.”
Rami’s expression turned serious, his brows knitted with concern. He cradled Aziz close to his body and gestured for Mia to sit next to him on the couch.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Mia smiled at her son as she approached, leaning in close to kiss both him and Rami before she sat down.
“There’s a procedure—a treatment—that would really help her,” Mia explained. She felt her throat tighten as she remembered the details of the letter, and her subsequent confrontation with her mother.
“That’s wonderful, though,” Rami said. “Why would that be bad news?”
“It’s chemotherapy,” Mia replied. She pressed her lips together for a moment before continuing. “The issue is that she can’t pay for it. It’s so expensive; it will cost thousands of dollars.” Rami’s face contorted and Mia almost regretted telling him; he looked almost as upset as he had when he had announced the news of his father’s failed business empire to his family.
“I just cleared out my savings paying for the lawyers who are going to liquidate my father’s businesses,” Rami said with a cringe. “I wish I had known…I might have been able to put them off for a while longer, or I could have offered them a cut of whatever might be left of the estate once everything’s sold off.”
Mia shook her head. “I wouldn’t want you to get into the same situation your father was in before he died—owing people without a clear way to pay them off. I just wish that there was some way I could help her.” Mia explained her mother’s situation, how her body had built up a tolerance and the doctors kept having to increase dosages and change her medications. “Basically she’s in a situation now where she’s going to either run out of medications that work, or destroy her kidneys or liver.” Mia sighed.
“I hate this,” Rami said, jiggling Aziz as the infant began to fuss. Mia gave him a quick, almost sardonic look and reached out for the child, taking him in her hands and arranging him in the crook of her arm as she began to unbutton her blouse.
“He might not be hungry,” she told Rami, pulling her breast free of her nursing bra, “but that has never stopped him nursing yet.”
Rami smiled as he watched the one-month-old latch onto Mia’s nipple and begin to nurse eagerly. “I do hate it though,” he continued. “I promised you that I would take care of you—that I’d treat you like a princess, like the queen you are—and now I can barely even keep a roof over your head.”
“I didn’t get involved with you because you were rich, Rami,” Mia said firmly. “I fell for you because you’re kind, smart, funny, and sweet. Because you have a good heart.” Rami seemed to relax, sighing. “I was thinking there might be some kind of organization—a charity or something—that we could talk to about helping Mom pay for the treatment. It’s worth a try, right?”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Rami agreed, nodding. He leaned in a little closer to Aziz. “This is why I love your mommy so much, son: she’s got an answer for everything.”
Mia laughed, shaking her head. “I do not!” She looked down at Aziz lovingly. “I’m just a little more used to not having money to throw around.”
Rami laughed. “Well you’re right about that,” he conceded. “In any case, I do think you’re the smart one in this relationship.”
Mia rolled her eyes, grinning with pleasure in spite of her embarrassment. “We’re both smart. Think of what a genius our little boy will be.”
Rami nodded, smiling. With the three of them together, it felt as though they could push their worries to the back of their minds—for a moment, at least.
SIXTEEN
While Mia could never fully forget the issue of her mother’s situation, the next day, having resolved to figure out what organizations and charities she might be able to talk to about getting help with funding, Mia was somewhat relieved at the possibility to lose herself in the needs of her son. She cuddled him late into the morning; she held him in his sling while she ate breakfast, and then, since Aziz was spending more and more time awake, she spent a little while playing with him before he nursed again.
