"What are you looking for?" she asked, holding a forkful of eggs in the air.
"Your car keys." He rolled open the desktop and whistled at the mound of bills. "Hon? These look like they"re getting out of control," he said gently.
Her chest tightened. "I know."
"Are we behind on our bills?"
"It"s all insurance stuff and doctors" bills. It"s all their mistakes. They still haven"t added Annabelle to our policy, so all her bills keep bouncing back."
"I see that." He leafed through the bills.
All this week, she hadn"t made a single call to Sounder. "I"ve been waiting until I feel better, and you know, I think I can face it now. I"ll get on it today."
"Do you want some help sorting this out?"
She put the plate on the coffee table. She would love help, but this was her job. She was supposed to take care of the bills so Leo could focus on work. Clients and commissions. "I can do it. I"ll call them today, during their Sat.u.r.day hours. I just think they secretly try not to pay, thinking that they"re going to wear you down. I bet a lot of people just give up trying to get through on the line and pay the d.a.m.ned bills."
"Could be," he said absently. "But we need to get this stuff resolved. Some of these bills are two months overdue. We don"t want to screw up our credit."
"You"re right. I"ll call Sounder today."
"Thanks, honey. And if you need a hand with it, I"m game. I"ve got the afternoon to set you up for the next week. I"m going to clean the house and stock up on groceries. You"ll be good to go for the week."
After Leo carried Annie out the door, Chelsea went straight to the shower. The hot stream of water was her only waking escape, and she sighed as she stepped in and faced the faucet. Often she sat on the floor and cried, letting the hot water wash away her tears. But today, she didn"t need to collapse on the floor.
Was that a sign that she was getting better? She hoped so.
Her hair was still drying when she opened her laptop. Last week, after she had come up with a mission, she had pushed herself to start researching the gas line installation. She wasn"t ready to jump into the project, but she could start some research.
As she waited for her laptop to turn on, the ugly pile of bills caught her eye. Leo would be so pleased if she made a dent in it. With a decisive frown, she clicked on the Web site for Sounder Health Care. There had to be some way to reset her pa.s.sword.
She tried logging in under her usual pa.s.sword, but it was invalid. She requested a new pa.s.sword and it sent her a link, but when she tried to use it, she was knocked off the site.
"Grr. This is why I hate you so much!" Fired up, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the phone and called the company"s eight-hundred number.
"Thank you for calling Sounder Health Care, where your health needs are our priority," said the man on the recorded message.
"I don"t think so." She paced from kitchen to living room.
"Do you know you can pay a premium or settle a claim using our online service?" the recording asked.
"Actually, you can"t, because the Web site won"t let me in." She knew she sounded like a raving lunatic, but it felt good to argue with the dummy voice.
"Your call will be handled in the order that it is received. You are currently caller number seven."
"Lucky seven. You"d just better answer before you close shop." On Sat.u.r.days the "helpline" was only staffed until one p.m. She wondered if Janet, her "personal rep," would really be taking her call on a Sat.u.r.day.
She sat down at the little desk and leafed through the invoices, trying to stack them in order.
One pile was for Annabelle. None of the bills from Annie"s pediatrician had been paid because Sounder claimed to have no record of her birth. Chelsea had sent them the birth certificate five times. Five maddening trips to the grocery store to use the photocopy machine.
And then there were Chelsea"s bills, rejected for a variety of reasons. Somehow she had been added to the policy as Chelsea Green-Leo"s last name-though she had always been Chelsea Maynard. The company refused to pay for the C-section surgeon, saying the procedure wasn"t preapproved, though it had been an emergency.
Chelsea nibbled on a cuticle as she waded through the bills. Eventually, the company would pay these; she knew that. The frustrating part was that she had to waste her time and energy taking them to task on every invoice.
After twenty minutes of waiting and pacing, her neck and shoulders ached and she fantasized about the scathing letter of complaint she would write to the president of Sounder.
After nearly thirty minutes, a female voice answered. "This is Janet. . . ."
My personal rep.
"How may I help you?"
"I have a mountain of medical bills that need to be straightened out because your company keeps rejecting all our claims," Chelsea said, trying to temper her anger. "There"s so much paperwork here, I don"t even know where to start."
"Let"s start with your name and policy number," the woman said smoothly.
Chelsea paced impatiently as she recited reams of personal information. Insured"s name. Policy numbers and Social Security numbers. Dates of birth and employers. Address, phone, and cell. "Do we really have to go over all this, when I have a stack of claims to straighten out?"
"We need to confirm that you are who you say you are, Mrs. Green."
"Well, for starters, I"m not Mrs. Green. My name is Chelsea Maynard."
"Mmm. I see some doc.u.mentation about a name change here." A pause, and then Janet added, "I"m not sure who handled this before, but there"s a note from the underwriters saying that you need to supply us with a copy of the court order changing your name to Chelsea Maynard."
"I have always been Chelsea Maynard."
"Is that your maiden name?"
Maiden name was such an archaic term. "You people were the ones who insisted on calling me Chelsea Green, just because Green is my husband"s last name. It was your mistake and you need to fix it."
"Where I was raised, a woman changed her name when she got married." The Sounder representative sounded smug, judgmental. "Are you and Mr. Green legally married?"
Chelsea pressed a hand to her head, trying to keep her comments in check. Yelling at Janet would only slow down the process.
"Next claim . . ." Chelsea picked up the stack of claims for Annabelle and asked if she had been added to their policy yet.
"Annabelle"s birth certificate was scanned in, but not processed yet," Janet said, as if she were proud to have found the information.
"What does that mean?"
"Processing takes two to four weeks."
"Another four weeks?" Chelsea tossed Annabelle"s claims into the air. "She"ll be four months old! The kid will be out of diapers by the time you pay a cent for her!"
"That"s our procedure." Janet"s voice was deathly calm. "We have to authenticate a doc.u.ment before adding a child to a policy."
"It"s ludicrous!" Tears stung Chelsea"s eyes. "Just as insane as refusing to pay for an emergency C-section!"
"If you are referring to a claim, you need to give me the claim number."
Through her tears, Chelsea read off the number on the printed form.
"It"s the coding that"s the problem," Janet explained. "This procedure wasn"t coded as an emergency surgery, so we"re not contractually obliged to pay for it. Elective surgery requires thirty days approval time."
Defeated, Chelsea collapsed on the sofa. "I was splayed open on the operating table like a filleted fish," she said, her voice low and hollow. "My uterus was outside my body. Inside out. And I was awake and shaking and sick when I should have been welcoming my baby into the world."
A sob rolled from her throat, and for a moment she forgot about the woman on the phone and cried for the woman who felt like she was dying while the object of her dreams, the baby she had carried inside and tried to nurture, was beyond her reach, experiencing the world away from her mother.
She cried for herself. She cried for the baby who had been taken from her womb and somehow had never reconnected with her.
Her thoughts were far distant when the voice on the phone brought her back.
"Listen to what I am saying." Janet spoke slowly, like a condescending first grade teacher. "The charges and procedure need to be properly coded and resubmitted."
"Why can"t you change the code yourself? Just fix it, please."
"I don"t have the authority to do that. Your doctor needs to sign off on it."
"Are you f.u.c.king kidding me? The doctors don"t even sign these bills when they"re submitted electronically."
"Let me remind you that I don"t make the rules. I am an employee of Sounder Health Care."
"This is how the contract goes. I pay my premiums and you pay my medical expenses. You pay to take care of my baby and me when we have medical needs . . . and you can"t withhold payment."
"We"ll be happy to pay when the coding is corrected."
"Oh, it will be corrected. And then, then you"ll pay through the nose. You"ll be paying for my shrink, because I"m depressed and delusional." The fury frightened Chelsea, but she couldn"t stop now. "That"s right. Your company has driven me crazy! I keep seeing my baby die a hundred different ways, and I"ve considered ending my own life. I almost crashed my car into a concrete post. How would Sounder like that? Maybe I won"t die and . . . and your company will have to pay to keep me suspended in a vegetative state. How about that? Or do you not have a code for brain-dead?"
After a pert silence, the rep continued. "I see here that you"re on Nebula for postpartum depression. How is that working?"
"It"s helping a little . . . I don"t know. Are you a doctor?"
"Ms. Maynard . . . Chelsea . . . I understand that you"re upset. You sound absolutely overwhelmed. Maybe your husband should handle these insurance matters. Can you put him on?"
"My husband has a full-time job and he"s leaving town Monday and . . . I"m trying to handle this if you would just do your job and help me."
"I would like to help you, but I can only process what I"ve been given. You need to get your doctor to resubmit some of these invoices, and then there"s the matter of your name change."
"I never changed my name!"
"I"m simply telling you what the procedure is to correct these issues."
Chelsea had two words for Janet from Sounder, but she didn"t want to waste her breath. She took dark pleasure in cutting off the connection and tossing the phone onto the couch. Curled up in her familiar spot on the couch, she sobbed into her sleeve.
The disk had beckoned to her from the drawer when she was tucking away some paid bills, and now Chelsea sat mesmerized, hugging her knees to her chest, as she watched her old self and her handsome husband talking to their unborn child.
The woman on the screen glowed with happiness.
Her blue eyes sparkled like sapphires and her dark hair framed her heart-shaped face perfectly as she rubbed her belly and looked right into the lens of the video camera. She had worn her favorite maternity outfit for the video-the black-and-white houndstooth with a black velvet collar and b.u.t.tons.
Leo sat tall beside her in a b.u.t.ton-down black shirt, and she thought his broad shoulders and lean belly were such a nice complement to her round, very pregnant shape.
"I have always wanted to be a mother," the old Chelsea told the camera. "It"s always been the number-one thing I knew I had to accomplish in life. Ever since I was a little girl playing with dolls."
Leo sat beside her, his goofy smile indicating he was about to spring a joke. "And I never really played with dolls," Leo said, "but I"m looking forward to playing with you."
"He means it," Chelsea added. "He"s like an otter. If it"s not fun, he won"t do it."
"Don"t tell her that." He nudged her. "She"ll think her old man is a couch potato with no work ethic."
"Between the two of us, she"s going to see plenty of work getting done." Chelsea smiled at the camera. "So we"re in our eighth month, but we haven"t decided on your name yet. I"m in love with Chloe."
"Isn"t that the name of a perfume?"
"I also like Samantha."
"Sam." Leo rubbed his chin. "Perfect name if she"s going to sell used cars."
She turned to him. "And what"s wrong with selling cars?"
"Nothing at all. But wouldn"t you rather she sold brand-new Mercedeses than used Plymouths?" Leo squinted, then snapped his fingers. "Wait! How about Mercedes? You can"t argue with superior quality."
"You might as well call her Beamer or Porsche."
"Then we could have our own version of Leave it to Beamer."
Chelsea rolled her eyes. "As you can see, your father has name issues. But don"t worry, sweet pea. I won"t let him name you after a car. We"ll work it all out before you get here."
The front door opened and Leo"s greeting boomed through the downstairs just as Chelsea was watching the beautiful couple on the monitor wave good-bye.
"Whatcha watching?" he asked, depositing Annie"s carrier on the coffee table. He tilted his head at the screen and brightened. "Hey! I know that couple! Play it again so that Annabelle can watch. I don"t think she"s seen it yet, has she?"
"She"s three months old. She doesn"t even tune in to Baby Einstein."
"But she might get something out of it. Play it again, hon. I haven"t seen it in a long time."
His down jacket still on, he sat on the couch beside her and watched, his mouth slightly open in awe. Did he notice how beautiful she used to be? That glimmer in her eyes before her mind had become dead s.p.a.ce?
"Look at us." He squeezed her thigh. "Are we a cute couple, or what? See, Annie? See how we talked to you even before you were born? Mommy and Daddy recorded a message, just for you."
"Back in the day when Mommy could string more than five words together in a coherent sentence," Chelsea muttered.
"What? What are you talking about? You"ve got a better vocabulary than anyone I know."
"But I don"t need to use it anymore. I don"t need to talk at all. When you leave for Boston, I could go for five whole days without talking to anyone at all."
"Not true. You gotta talk to Annie. And there"s your sisters. And the man behind the deli counter."