Chapter One
Indie
* * *
“Mommy, I’m sick.”
“I know, baby.” I kiss my son’s forehead, noting that it feels warmer than average, and hold him closer. “It’ll be our turn soon.”
The woman sitting next to me and my three-year-old son coughs loudly. She didn’t even cover her mouth. I narrow my eyes at her, but she just turns her head to look in the other direction and ignores me. The waiting room of our pediatrician’s office is crowded this morning, parents and kids filling nearly every chair. We’ve been here for close to an hour, but I can’t complain because they worked our appointment in at the last minute when my son woke up with a fever this morning.
“Nolan Garrison?” the receptionist calls out.
I grab my purse and Nolan’s diaper bag in one hand, keeping my other arm wrapped tightly around him. I stand from my seat, expertly balancing everything, and walk up to the receptionist desk.
“You’re Nolan’s mom?” The receptionist looks up from her computer and I nod.
“Yes. Indira Garrison.”
“And what’s going on with Nolan today?”
My son moans softly and buries his face in my chest.
“He has a runny nose, a sore throat, and I’m pretty sure he has a fever but my thermometer at home is broken.”
“I’m hot, Mom,” Nolan says weakly.
I drop my purse and the diaper bag to free up a hand so I can pull up the back of his shirt. He’s soaked with sweat and burning up.
“Still at the same address?” The receptionist asks me.
“No, I moved in with my sister recently.” I give her the new house number and street name.
“Zip code?”
“Sorry, I’m not sure what our zip code is.”
She frowns. “Is it here in Vegas?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. Let me see if I can find it for you.”
Nolan whimpers, and my aggravation flares. My normally active toddler is lethargic and has a fever. Who cares what zip code my sister lives in?
The phone rings, and the receptionist answers it.
“Oh, hey,” she says into the phone, smiling. “Yeah, we’re slammed…I’ll see if he can reschedule…oh, she did? Girl or boy?…Aw, congratulations to her…okay, I’ll call back as soon as I get a chance to ask him…” She laughs. “I know. It seriously might be afternoon…okay…thanks, Dee. Bye.”
The phone rings again and she immediately answers the call. I glance at her name tag. Joan. Joan is making her way to the top of my shit list. She makes an appointment for the person on the phone and turns back to me after she hangs up.
“Okay, I guess we’ll have to work on that zip code later,” she finally says. “Let me just click to this other screen…okay, here we go…insurance. Do you still have the same insurance?”
“I don’t know.”
She lowers her brows disdainfully. “You don’t know?”
I curse my husband Dean for the thousandth time and then tell Joan the ugly truth. “My husband left me three weeks ago. I don’t know where he is and honestly, I don’t care. His boss told me he quit his job, and I don’t know if Nolan and I are still covered by the insurance.” My throat wells with angry tears. “But my son is sick, and this is his doctor’s office, so…can we see the doctor?”
“Oh, dear.” Joan looks over at another woman, sitting at a computer, behind the receptionist desk. “Nhira, can you call and check on a patient’s insurance status for me?”
I look at the round clock on the wall beside Joan. It’s 10:50 a.m., and my shift at the job I just started begins at noon. By the time we finish here and I get Nolan back to my sister’s house so she can take care of him, change clothes, and make the drive to work, I’ll be pushing it.
“Can I just pay for it?” I ask, leaning my cheek against Nolan’s head the same way I do when I’m rocking him to sleep. “I have a credit card.”
“Well, an office visit is one hundred and thirty dollars, and that’s without tests or labs.”
“I can’t be late for work. And if he’s still covered by my husband’s insurance, I’ll get a refund, right?”
Joan taps some keys on the computer and furrows her brow. “I’m not sure.”
“Excuse me,” a man says, leaning in front of me to address Joan. “I’ve been waiting for thirty-five minutes for my daughter’s appointment. How much longer is it going to be?”
“What’s her name?” Joan asks.
I roll my eyes, and Nolan whimpers again. I’m on the edge of losing my patience.
Waking up three weeks ago to a note from my husband of four years, informing me that he withdrew every penny from our joint bank accounts and was leaving town, had thrown my whole life into a tailspin. All I’d had in my wallet that day was a ten-dollar bill. There was no time to cry, because without money to pay rent, I immediately had to pack our things and sell the furniture. Then I’d been forced to use that money to pay the car payments and the utility bills I found out Dean had let lapse. I was broke now, with less than fifty dollars to my name until I got my first paycheck from the coffee shop.
There had been a lot of shit days in the past few weeks. But today, when my little boy woke up hot all over, too sick to even get out of bed, was by far the worst.
“We’ll get to her as soon as we can,” Joan says, trying to placate the man in front of me.
He sighs heavily. “When will that be?”
I finally lose it and snap at them both. “Hey, get in line. You can’t just cut in front of me.”
He scowls, opening his mouth to respond, when Nolan lifts his head slightly and vomits all over me. It’s warm and wet, sliding from my chest down into my bra. I close my eyes, not sure whether to laugh or cry.
“Oh,” Joan says, her eyes wide. “Why don’t you go ahead and bring him back to a room?”
Two hours later, I’m working the main cash register at Just Brew It, the coffee shop near my sister Rue’s apartment. I’ve been working here for the past two weeks. The shop had a “Help Wanted” sign in the window on the first day I went job hunting, and since the manager needed someone to start immediately, it was a good fit. I don’t have much work experience and I’m still learning about coffee, though, and it’s hard to concentrate on anything but Nolan. He was diagnosed with the flu earlier and is home with his aunt.
“I’ll take a grande quad-shot nonfat extra-hot caramel macchiato upside down,” the man at the front of the line says.
“Upside down?”
I scan the register screen for an “Upside Down” button, wondering why the hell someone would want their drink turned upside down. That just sounds like a mess. But what do I know? I’m just a twenty-six-year-old mom, with a worthless art history degree and a mountain of debt my piece-of-shit husband left me to deal with.
“It means they pour it in the reverse order,” the customer tells me. “There’s no button. You just tell whoever is making the drink and they’ll put the coffee in first and then the milk on top.”