by Cameron Lowe
Malcolm usually filled in wherever he was needed most that week. Right now they were working with some new college hires, so he was overseeing them rolling out dough and dishwashing, the two most menial jobs in the place. In a few days, he’d move the dough roller into the rest of the cooking duties around the restaurant while the dishwasher would probably have to hit the road. Twice already Malcolm had to chastise him for taking longer breaks than he was allowed, and he’d showed up ten minutes late that morning. Malcolm used to try to keep on everyone who worked for him, to work through their problems and shortcomings, but as Dinah told him his first day as a manager, bad habits bred more bad habits. When he tried to give an employee a break because finding a babysitter for her kid was tough, she began to take advantage in other ways, like standing around the till and gossiping while customers were lined up, or just not bothering to answer the phone when they received orders. It was a harsh lesson for him to learn. The tears rolling down her face when he had to let her go seemed genuine, and he damn near quit right after, but for Gwen, he gutted it out and went through countless more firings just like it. Someone always had migraines. Someone always hit bad traffic. Someone always would get to the dishes later. Someone would always mop the floors better the next time. Sometimes the excuses were genuine, or seemed that way. For them, and especially for the parents in the group, Malcolm couldn’t help but feel his soul ache with the act of letting them go, but it had to be done. Someone had to be the one to say enough.
Just two days before the weekend, he was on edge. Gwen’s big EEG had just finished up, and they wouldn’t know the results until the morning she was scheduled to fly out. She was understandably scared, and he was pretty damned close to terrified. She would be back at the apartment in Denver, sleeping, and he was stuck at Matto Furio’s nearly seven hundred miles away. At once, it felt so close and so far. By plane, it was a short hop, an hour and a half at most. By car, it was a day’s drive.
Dinah finally approached him halfway through the double as he finished running the dishwashing genius through the long list of what he was doing wrong. As they watched the guy clock out for the day, muttering to himself about the job being bullshit, Dinah murmured, “I give him two more days.”
“I’ve got him not bothering to show up tomorrow.” When the guy left, Malcolm turned to his boss. “Was I too much of a dick?”
“You always ask that, and the answer is never yes. People come and go, Malcolm. But here’s a thought to cheer you up. Did you know turnover’s been cut in half here since you became manager?”
“What? That can’t be right.”
“It’s true. The people who can hack standing on their feet, they like you. And they’re sticking around. Which is why I’m gonna need to talk to you out at the tables.”
Oh shit. Was he in some kind of trouble? Why? For doing his job? Confused, Malcolm followed her out. The lead cook traipsed along behind them, carrying a coffee can. Two of the servers caught sight of Dinah, and she nodded to them. They told their customers they’d be rejoining them in just a minute.
“Dinah, what’s going on?” Malcolm asked as everyone gathered in a semi-circle.
“Well,” she said, “we know you’re anxious about your wife and that there’s nowhere else you’d rather be right now.”
The lead cook, Wilson, held out the coffee can. “There’s about a hundred bucks in there. We passed it around this week. It’s not a fortune, but maybe it’ll help pay for gas down there and back.”
“You guys…” Malcolm said, his throat jumping. He opened the coffee can. Inside was a small wad of rolled bills wrapped in a rubber band. “This is too much.”
“And I’m clocking you in tomorrow,” Dinah said. “You won’t miss any time.”
“Dinah, I can’t…”
“You can,” she said. “Boss’s orders. If you go tonight, you could be there in the morning.”
“You don’t even gotta break for food,” Wilson said. “I’ve got a pie ready to put through the oven. Get cleaned up and clocked out and I’ll have it cut up and ready for you.”
“But I’ve still got hours left on the clock. I’m not going-”
“Jay-zus,” Dinah said, shaking her head. “Quit being so damn stubborn and say thanks. Then get scrubbed up and ready to go.”
Malcolm laughed, and hugged her. “Thank you.” He hugged all the others in turn. “Thank you all.”
* * *
Gwen couldn’t go back to sleep that night. The EEG test had left her cranky and exhausted, and she’d slept damn near twelve straight hours when she got back from it. That left her waking up in the earliest hours of the morning, before the sun had even given thought as to making an appearance. She nibbled on a granola bar, paced, exercised. She flipped on the TV, flipped it off again. She thought about walking down to a gas station for no good reason other than to get out of there, but wound up in the tub instead, trying to relax and not think about more pointless tests ahead.
There, in the hot water, she found some solace and relaxation, and drowsed, her head crooked to the side. How long she might have slept like that, she had no idea, but the phone rang and made her jump. The water had cooled and her skin was left pruned. She shivered as she leapt up and out of the tub. It was still early. Was there an emergency back home? Was Malcolm okay? Winnie?
Pulling on a thin cotton robe provided by the hospital for the apartments, she hustled out to the living room just in time for the phone to stop ringing. But it started up again right away, and she grabbed it, holding the robe closed.
“Malcolm?” she asked frantically. “Is everything okay?”
“Hey, everything is good,” he replied cheerfully.
“You gave me a heart attack.”
“Were you sleeping?”
“No. Well, kinda. But I was mostly awake.”
He laughed. It sounded breathless. “Can you do me a favor? Come down and get the front door. It’s freezing out here. Winnie’s handling it like a champ, but I forgot a coat.”
“Huh? Yeah, sure, I’ll… wait. Wait wait wait.” Gwen slammed the phone down, stared at it a long moment, and sprinted for the door, her bathrobe flapping. She darted for the elevator first, but decided that was too slow and shot for the stairs instead, taking them as quickly as she dared. On the first floor was a communal space and a desk usually occupied by a hospital staffer who oversaw the place. That early, it stood empty and she hurtled past it towards the glass doors, where her husband waited for her outside, Winnie tucked in against his neck.
She pushed open the doors, and Malcolm rushed inside. “Hear me out. I know we shouldn’t be spending the money but my coworkers-”
Gwen wrapped her arms around him, kissing his chest, his neck, finally his lips. Winnie woke and started crying, and she kissed her too.
Chapter 32
It was a mark of why Gwen loved Malcolm that he remembered everything Winnie would need for the trip and forgot so much for himself.
The coat was just the start. Socks? Missing. Shirts? Nope. Shampoo? Soap? Any bathroom necessities whatsoever? Left on the bed.
Neither of them cared much. Once Winnie calmed back down and went to sleep, they made slow, quiet love in the early morning hours. They cuddled in the afterglow, Malcolm stroking her hips as he related the story about his coworkers giving him the money to come down and the trip itself. He’d borrowed a cell phone from Hugh, and made Gwen’s brother swear to secrecy, but apart from gas, that was his only stop on the way out of town.
“Does he look okay?”
“Better than I’ve ever seen him. Sad, but he seemed with it. Focused, if that makes sense.”
“Mm hm.”
“He was my rock last night. Called me four times on the road just to make sure I was okay. Apart from everybody at work, he’s the only person who was in on it.” He leaned up on one elbow. “You’re not mad at me?”
“No. Not a bit. I’m so glad to see you I could burst. This whole thing, it’s… it’s…” She
frowned, trying to think of the right word. “You talk about creeping dread, that’s what this is. I feel like some kind of hammer’s going to come down and I don’t know when.”
“I wish I could have made it sooner. I’m sorry you had to go through that test alone.”
She shook her head. “You couldn’t have been in there with me anyways. It’s okay. Just glad you’re here now. And speaking of, I’d better get ready.”
“I’ll help you in the shower. Gotta make sure your boobies get enough attention. You know, with suds. And whatever.”
Gwen slapped his chest. “I think you just gave them all the attention they can handle for a little while. But I wouldn’t mind the company.”
Despite her protests that he should stay and get some sleep with Winnie, they came with her at least for the first couple hours. That day they were drawing cerebral spinal fluid to check it for irregularities and she was grateful for the company both because it was Malcolm and she never wanted to be apart from him, and because the test terrified her. Because of Winnie, he stayed out in the waiting room while she underwent the draw, but she was comforted a little anyways knowing he was just fifty yards away while a needle was jammed into her spine.
As it turned out, they numbed her with a local anesthetic and she had nothing to fear, but when it wore off later, she was sore and irritable, and Malcolm wisely chose that point to head back to the apartment for some much-needed sleep.
* * *
“All those tests,” Gwen said, her eyes wide, lost somewhere between fury and a numb horror at all the money they’d just spent needlessly.
Dr. Palumbo smiled at her apologetically. “I’m sorry, but in this case, nothing registering on the tests is good news, as Dr. Ditmore has said to you.”
“So this just keeps going on forever?” she asked, her voice rising. Malcolm reached over and squeezed her knee. Winnie was curled up in his other arm, snoozing the news away peacefully after she’d thrown a monster of a fit in the waiting room.
“Well, in youths, absence seizures usually lessen and eventually cease early in their adulthood.”
“Do I look like a teenager? How does that help me?”
“Gwen,” Malcolm said, trying to bite back his own anger with the doctor. She grabbed his hand and squeezed like it was a stress ball.
“My point is, with time, the seizures might stop. In the meantime, I’m going to recommend you start back on your previous medications-”
“-which aren’t covered by insurance,” Gwen snapped.
Dr. Palumbo paged through the case notes on the computer next to him and frowned. “Huh. That’s… well, then, we can try to up your dosage again, but with the stress of a new baby, and what you’ve told me about your work situation, this might just be a temporary increase in seizure activity. I’d say let’s give it another six to twelve months before we adjust the medications.”
“You’re saying I shouldn’t drive for another year?” Gwen leaned forward and grinned. It was the most savage, angry look Malcolm had ever seen on her face. “That’s not going to happen. I work.”
“I understand that-” Dr. Palumbo began, but Gwen continued unchecked.
“I do not live in a fantasy land where I can rely on my husband’s income alone to get us through. We are partners. I have to bring something to the table. That means driving, Dr. Palumbo. So tell me a different medication that my insurance will cover. Tell me how I can fix this and I’ll get surgery. What the everloving shit do I have to do to get out of this office with more than just a shrug and a recommendation to see you or Ditmore again in a year? Tell me. Tell me!”
“Mrs. Caplan, I am sorry,” Dr. Palumbo said, and there was a coldness now in his voice. “I truly am. But the people administering your tests did their job precisely. There is no surgery because we don’t know what it is we’re supposed to be operating on. You have the best medication your insurance will allow, I promise you that. So I’m going to repeat what you’ve already heard, and you may not like it, but it’s what I have to offer. Reduce your stress. Take walks. Breathe. Relax. Get better sleep.”
“You have no idea how much coming down here has hurt us,” Gwen whispered. “The time I took off, the money we spent that we didn’t have on a plane ticket, asking for help when we promise ourselves never to do that.”
“I understand, but-”
“No,” Gwen said, and stood up. “You don’t. I know this isn’t your fault. But I’m not apologizing either.” To Malcolm, “Let’s go. There’s nothing left here to say.”
“I’d like to have you speak to a dietician-” Dr. Palumbo said, but he was talking to a closing door.
* * *
The bill hit the edge of their scarred coffee table and fell off.
“That bad?” Malcolm asked.
Gwen nodded, the tears sliding down her face. They’d been expecting the letter for weeks. He came around and held her head to his stomach. She sobbed into it, whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over again. He knelt and picked up the bill, and glanced through it. The number had to be wrong. But no, this was the figure after insurance was billed.
Twenty thousand seven hundred forty-two dollars and sixty five cents. Payments could be made as low as five percent of the bill. First payment was due in a month.
“Jesus,” he whispered.
* * *
They had no chance of paying it off in the requested chunks and called up the billing department immediately. Within another week, they had an application for financial assistance, which would cover almost everything, but only if they were accepted. The first bill would still be due.
Besides working every hour he could at Matto Furio’s, Malcolm picked up work bartending with Nic, who was now long free of his probation. Most nights Malcolm didn’t even have time to come home, but drove straight from the restaurant to the bar and changed in the parking lot. Nic taught him the ins and outs on the fly and it took a while for him to develop enough confidence in the work to really start earning tips.
Gwen returned to work at the shelter. They could not afford for her to quit driving – bus passes per month weren’t terribly pricey but they had to fight for every dollar they had and she still had occasional bad dreams about her last time riding the bus to work. Malcolm took over driving Winnie to Daphne and Elliot’s, and both prayed nightly Gwen didn’t wind up in a wreck. With what they managed to hold onto from the trip to Denver, they still needed to come up with nearly five hundred dollars. She took a second job at a diner, trying to endure the come-ons and pinches from her customers without bashing them in the face with a coffeepot. Even in a relatively tame area near her folks’ house in Morristown, the shitheels came out in droves. This was still the Flats, after all.
With just days to spare, their first paltry paychecks came through. They made the base payment to the hospital in Denver, and received word a few days later they’d been accepted for financial aid and their debt with the hospital’s labs had been cleared. They celebrated that night with a bottle of five-dollar champagne and a pair of movies from the library. They planned to keep working like this until they had the credit card paid off, but for the moment, they breathed easier.
In a week, they realized the mistake they’d made when three more bills showed up all at the same time. Their original bill had covered the cost of the general labs and hospital visits, but not the specialists and some of the specialized lab work. One bill was for a whole fifteen dollars after insurance. Another a hundred more than that. The third was nearly three hundred. Not huge amounts taken one by one, but lumped together, they added up, fast.
Again, they raced to pay the bills, to stay ahead. They wound up paying the bare minimum on the credit card, promising to get to it as soon as they could. The specialists had to come first – except the bills weren’t done coming. Another two weeks later, Ditmore and Palumbo’s offices both sent outrageous bills for consults and phone conferences to the rough tune of ninety dollars apiece.
F
or nearly six months, they barely saw each other except to crash into the same bed at night. Malcolm came home at one each morning, stinking vaguely of spilled booze and cigarette smoke. Montanans had never exactly been fond of the law that said you can’t smoke in bars and most places in the Flats pointedly ignored it. Gwen stumbled out of bed every morning just after four to brush her teeth, grab a quick shower, and rush to work opening the diner before she had to run to the animal shelter at eight, only to come back to the diner to close that evening.
Through all of this, they missed Winnie’s first spoken word – “ganma.” They missed her standing up for the first time, tentatively and warily balanced on the edge of Daphne and Elliot’s coffee table. They missed her first stumbling steps and the glee when she realized she was free of her crawling constraints. They missed the first time she jammed a fistful of Cheerios into her mouth and munched on them with great concentration. Malcolm missed months of the nightly story Gwen read to her faithfully, even if Winnie was already asleep, and Gwen missed the morning songs Malcolm would sing to her in the car.
Those were months they could not get back. Those were memories they could never call their own. But they stood together and in the end they paid off the hospital in Denver, the credit card, and the deposit on a new apartment.
Gwen and Malcolm survived.
And then the cycle started all over again.
Chapter 33
Gwen’s constant struggle with pneumonia started with a proposal.
Nic and Alicia had been living together since a few months after his release from prison. He seemed to take her not-quite-naked jibes about him putting a ring on her finger as some sort of challenge, and drew out the relationship nearly to its breaking point. Alicia finally broke down and asked him point blank if this was going to go any further. She loved him, but she didn’t want to be strung along.
Nic tried to reassure her but she almost walked out anyways. Before Alicia cut herself off from him, Nic showed her his laptop, and more specifically, his email. There was a chain of replies and back-and-forth talk between him and a traveling mariachi band they saw play at a bar a few years into their relationship. They’d both loved the silliness and heart of the music, and Nic asked them if they were ever in the area again if they wouldn’t mind helping him propose to his girlfriend. They readily agreed, but the timing never synced up, particularly with the nasty eastern Montana weather. They’d started to work out the details on maybe doing something online, a live performance on YouTube or something similar, and that was when the chain ended.