“Some.”
We waged a silent war, each trying to stare down the other. A few heartbeats later, I gave in. He was the one trying to help, and I was just being stubborn for the sake of privacy that I didn’t really need.
“The hospital in Denver where she had her surgery is out of network. That means that anything done there, every time she sees Dr. Hughes there, or has surgery, or a treatment there, it’s not covered by my plan.”
“Is this? What’s happening now?”
“Yeah, this is fine. But the MIBG wouldn’t be. Or the stem cell transplant Dr. Hughes has already suggested.”
“So what are the options?”
“Financially?”
He nodded.
“I don’t qualify for government care, not with owning Solitude. I went through my savings the first month of her treatment, and her surgery wiped out the last of Ryan’s life insurance. I mortgaged Solitude to the hilt last year for the renovations, so that’s not an option, either. Even selling 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.com.”
“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 his scent. I was literally expelling my fear and breathing him in.
“Did you hear that, Maisie? Looks like you’re not getting out of tutoring next week,” Beckett joked, his voice a gravelly, deep rumble against my ear.
He’d driven us here, taken care of me, of Maisie, of Colt. Uprooted his entire life to move in next door. He’d been steadfast every time I’d sworn I didn’t need him and there the moment I did without any hint of I-told-you-so.
I took one last breath and turned back to the doctor, who gave me the satisfied nod of a job well done.
“We’ll keep her here in the ICU another day, just to make sure, and then move her to pediatrics another few days for monitoring. Better safe than sorry.”
“Thank you.” There weren’t any other words to say.
“You’ve got a little fighter there,” the doctor said before heading out, leaving the three of us alone.
“I don’t have Colt,” Maisie said quietly, looking around her bed.
It took me a second to realize what she was saying. “I’m sorry, we left so fast that I didn’t think to grab him.” The bear was most likely sitting on Colt’s bed, the lone pink spot in a sea of blue.
“Don’t you worry, we’ll have your mom grab him when she runs home tomorrow for a little bit. Sound good?” Beckett offered.
“What? Me run home?” Hell no, I wasn’t leaving my daughter.
“Yep,” he said with a nod. “If you leave by ten, you can get home, shower the hospital off you, and get to Colt’s graduation by two.”
Colt’s kindergarten graduation. My mouth dropped, and my gaze flickered from Beckett to Maisie. How could I leave her here? How could I miss Colt’s graduation? Sure it was a little silly, but I knew how important it was to him. How could I leave her here when she was supposed to be walking across the stage with him? How was any of this fair?
Beckett cupped my cheeks, stopping the ping-pong battle with my concentration. “Ella. She’s stable. She’ll be out of the ICU. I am more than capable of hanging out with her for a few hours. You need to be there for Colt. Let me do this. Stop splitting yourself in two, and let me help. Please.”
“Yeah, Mom. You have to go. I don’t want Colt to be sad,” Maisie added.
“I don’t have a way to get back.”
“You take my truck.”
Wait. What? Trucks were sacred to guys. He might as well be offering his soul on a platter. “Your truck.”
“You do have a driver’s license, right?” he joked.
“Well, yeah.”
“Then it’s settled. You’ll grab Pink Colt when you go home tomorrow. In the meantime, Maisie and I will watch movies and hang out. What do you say, Maisie-girl?” He looked back at my daughter.
“Yes!”