He Let Our Baby Die Over a Hospital Bill novel · Chapter 4 of 32
Chapter 4: Her Name
"Get out of the nursery," I said.
Marla blinked at me.
"Dear, I'm only helping."
"Get out of the room I painted, or I'll call the police and tell them you're stealing a crib."
"It's Holden's crib. Holden's house."
"I paid for half of it. Check the app."
She looked at Gina, who was holding the tape gun, and she decided the crib could wait.
She left the box half full and went downstairs. A minute later we heard the front door.
Gina put her hand on my back.
"Deenie. I will dig that grave with a soup spoon before that baby goes in a county pile."
"I know."
The next morning there was a voicemail from a number I didn't know.
It was Holden, on his new phone, calm and kind, the voice from the ads.
"Babe, Mom says you were upset. I get it. But I'm not going to keep pouring money into a cost center. The baby was a cost center from the start, and that's okay, that's just how it is. Pay your half and we're square."
I listened to it three times, and then I saved it in three places.
Gina had an idea. It was a pickle jar.
She washed it and wrote BABY PREWITT on a strip of masking tape.
At eight o'clock Wednesday morning she carried it into the billing office in the hospital basement.
She texted me a photo at noon.
The jar was full of crumpled bills, and somebody had put a little stuffed lamb on top.
At six that evening Abe knocked on Gina's door in his navy scrubs, on his way in for the night shift.
He held out a bank envelope with a rubber band around it.
"From the unit," he said. "Labor and delivery, nights. And two of the surgeons. And the guy who mops."
"Abe, I can't."
"You can. Nobody's asking for it back. Nobody's going to log it."
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