nights?”
“Only if it’s essential for your health.”
“It’s essential for my mental health.”
“Then cab to and from your class. Take elevators, not stairs. Sit the whole time. Line up a sub and tell your class you probably won’t complete the semester.
“Another thing, Alice. You know I don’t accept your insurance plan. I’d like to keep you as a patient, but I understand if you prefer to see a doctor in-network. I can try to find somebody good for you. But frankly, I don’t know anybody who accepts Oxford Liberty.”
“I don’t want to change doctors.”
I canceled all my performances through the end of the year. Canceling twenty-five public library performances in South Jersey wasn’t too painful, except for the lost income, which was alarming. The call to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center was really hard. I’d loved performing at TBPAC three years earlier, and the theater had contracted me to perform my new solo play in their experimental theater, and one of my family shows on the main stage.
Having divested most of my responsibilities and ambitions in the world outside of my apartment, I lay down in bed on my left side.
It was a relief to lie down, to give myself over to sleep. I had been feeling sick for six months. Now that my exhaustion was validated, I lay in a stupor, in and out of sleep. I wanted to be unconscious until the pregnancy was over, but my sleep was fractured and incomplete.
It was not a good bed, not a real bed, more of an improvised sleeping arrangement you might find in a college dorm. Michael’s queen-size futon from his college life lay on a large sheet of plywood, supported by twelve of the wooden milk crates Brad found on the street twenty years before, when he was a penniless Juilliard student and his apartment was furnished entirely with milk crates. The futon was hard, and my left arm and leg kept falling asleep. Sue’s friend Erica gave me the body-length pregnancy pillow she’d used when she was pregnant with twins. It helped. I draped my finally huge belly, my right leg and right arm over the body pillow, and dozed and woke and drank Gatorade and dozed and woke.
When I woke, I thought about this baby who would be disabled by prematurity, and by all the terrible things it had been subjected to for six months. I wished I could end the pregnancy, to save her. Killing myself would be one way of aborting the baby. It might be the most humane thing.
But I had too many responsibilities. I couldn’t get the December issue of Play by Play out on time if I killed myself.
I couldn’t kill myself because I needed and wanted to be there for Julia, whom I loved, whom I had always loved, since two months before she was born, when Zoe chose us.
I couldn’t kill myself because I was in love with Michael, and, remarkably, he was still in love with me.
I couldn’t kill myself because I had to take care of this baby inside me. I felt less like its mother than its intensive care unit. A barely mobile ICU, lying on its left side, to be loaded into a taxi and delivered to a hospital when baby was ready to be born. Thinking of myself as an ICU gave me a sense of purpose, a reason not to kill myself.
When I woke from my fitful naps, I attended to the slim remains of my freelance work. It took longer to write and edit my theater publication while lying in bed on my left side, drifting in and out of sleep.
I called my supervisor, a friend and colleague of many years, told her in confidence about my pregnancy and made a request. “I don’t have access to an adequate insurance plan, and the baby might have special needs. Since I’ve worked for the organization for five years, do you think management might consider putting me on payroll, as an employee with benefits?”
“Gosh, Alice, this is just the wrong time to ask. The climate is all about belt-tightening, and benefits are a huge expense. I’m sorry, I just know what’s up with management right
“Only if it’s essential for your health.”
“It’s essential for my mental health.”
“Then cab to and from your class. Take elevators, not stairs. Sit the whole time. Line up a sub and tell your class you probably won’t complete the semester.
“Another thing, Alice. You know I don’t accept your insurance plan. I’d like to keep you as a patient, but I understand if you prefer to see a doctor in-network. I can try to find somebody good for you. But frankly, I don’t know anybody who accepts Oxford Liberty.”
“I don’t want to change doctors.”
I canceled all my performances through the end of the year. Canceling twenty-five public library performances in South Jersey wasn’t too painful, except for the lost income, which was alarming. The call to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center was really hard. I’d loved performing at TBPAC three years earlier, and the theater had contracted me to perform my new solo play in their experimental theater, and one of my family shows on the main stage.
Having divested most of my responsibilities and ambitions in the world outside of my apartment, I lay down in bed on my left side.
It was a relief to lie down, to give myself over to sleep. I had been feeling sick for six months. Now that my exhaustion was validated, I lay in a stupor, in and out of sleep. I wanted to be unconscious until the pregnancy was over, but my sleep was fractured and incomplete.
It was not a good bed, not a real bed, more of an improvised sleeping arrangement you might find in a college dorm. Michael’s queen-size futon from his college life lay on a large sheet of plywood, supported by twelve of the wooden milk crates Brad found on the street twenty years before, when he was a penniless Juilliard student and his apartment was furnished entirely with milk crates. The futon was hard, and my left arm and leg kept falling asleep. Sue’s friend Erica gave me the body-length pregnancy pillow she’d used when she was pregnant with twins. It helped. I draped my finally huge belly, my right leg and right arm over the body pillow, and dozed and woke and drank Gatorade and dozed and woke.
When I woke, I thought about this baby who would be disabled by prematurity, and by all the terrible things it had been subjected to for six months. I wished I could end the pregnancy, to save her. Killing myself would be one way of aborting the baby. It might be the most humane thing.
But I had too many responsibilities. I couldn’t get the December issue of Play by Play out on time if I killed myself.
I couldn’t kill myself because I needed and wanted to be there for Julia, whom I loved, whom I had always loved, since two months before she was born, when Zoe chose us.
I couldn’t kill myself because I was in love with Michael, and, remarkably, he was still in love with me.
I couldn’t kill myself because I had to take care of this baby inside me. I felt less like its mother than its intensive care unit. A barely mobile ICU, lying on its left side, to be loaded into a taxi and delivered to a hospital when baby was ready to be born. Thinking of myself as an ICU gave me a sense of purpose, a reason not to kill myself.
When I woke from my fitful naps, I attended to the slim remains of my freelance work. It took longer to write and edit my theater publication while lying in bed on my left side, drifting in and out of sleep.
I called my supervisor, a friend and colleague of many years, told her in confidence about my pregnancy and made a request. “I don’t have access to an adequate insurance plan, and the baby might have special needs. Since I’ve worked for the organization for five years, do you think management might consider putting me on payroll, as an employee with benefits?”
“Gosh, Alice, this is just the wrong time to ask. The climate is all about belt-tightening, and benefits are a huge expense. I’m sorry, I just know what’s up with management right
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