“I’m afraid that we might have to stop seeing each other,” I tried to break it to him gently.
“You’re absolutely fucking crazy if you think I’m giving up on you and that little girl in there.” He stepped forward, closing the gap in our distance until he was standing in my face. “You might not realize it now, but you need me. She needs me, and you can’t deny that.”
As I broke our glance by looking down at the floor, he grabbed my chin to turn my face back to him. Could he not see that it was tearing me up? The fact was, he was the greatest man who’d ever walked into our lives.
“Dale, I don’t want you to get hurt. I’m only thinking of you,” I said tearfully.
“Hurt? Who the hell’s going to hurt me? Your brothers? You think I’m scared of them?”
I stared at him in shock. He had no clue what my brothers could do to him. I spared him the stories of my brothers beating the shit out of two guys who tried to make a move on one of their friend’s little sisters. He also didn’t know that Terrance had only been out of prison for about a year, and he wasn’t afraid to go back. When my brothers were teens and in their early 20’s, they were straight up thugs. They stole cars at night—when they weren’t burglarizing places—and terrorized the neighborhood. My mom did everything she could to raise those boys right. Ever since my dad was murdered, they were out of control.
“Dale, please,” I pleaded with him. “My brothers are dangerous. You have no idea.”
“Kimberly, I never wanted to bring this to your attention,” he said pulling his shirt out of his pants, exposing a .357, “but I can pack some heat, too. You might not realize this, but as the owner of the gas company, I have to go to various developing areas to determine the best ways to run the gas lines. You’d be dumb to think I’ve never been mugged.”
“You would shoot my brothers?” I was appalled. Who the hell does he think he is?
“I’m not saying I would shoot them, Kimberly, but I would protect myself. Don’t worry about me. I’m a big boy, and I’m more than willing to deal with your brothers if it comes down to it. I’m not backing down.”
Oh shit, here we go. This was probably why my momma always warned me about crazy white guys. He was fucking crazy—for me and Nevaeh. It actually turned me on that he was willing to take an ass kicking if it meant winning my brothers over. My mom would take some work to win over, but it wasn’t anything that I couldn’t handle myself.
On Monday, I called Dr. Newton’s office to schedule the first appointment with the specialist. I was nervous, scared, anxious and excited at the same time. The potential for this doctor to pinpoint exactly how severe Nevaeh’s disease had grown was something I wanted to know but frightened me at the same time.
“I’m sorry Ms. Harris, but Dr. Newton’s schedule is booked solid for the next three months. The earliest we can get her is after the school year starts this fall.”
“There’s no way you can squeeze her in? Her pediatrician said it was important to determine how far the disease has already progressed so we can closely monitor it.”
“No, we don’t have any available openings. If you’d like, we can go ahead and schedule the appointment today. We can also put you on an on-call list if there should be a cancelation, we’ll call you to see if you can make the appointment.”
“Okay, let’s go ahead and do that.”
My next call was to MaxCare, the mail order pharmacy. The end of the day was drawing near and they still hadn’t contacted me from the prior week when my local pharmacy faxed over the prescription.
“Yes Miss Harris, we received the request for the prescription from your local pharmacy but have been unable to process the request at this time.”
“What? Why?”
“When they faxed it over, they failed to include any insurance information. All they sent was the prescription along with the patient’s name and date of birth. Do you have a few moments to create a patient profile so we can process the request?”
Could my day get any better? “Yes, that’ll be fine.”
I grabbed my purse and removed the insurance cards as the woman from the pharmacy quizzed me over my insurance details.
“Do you know how much it will cost?” I asked when we were finished creating Nevaeh’s profile.
“Let me run your benefits and I can tell you,” the woman said as she clicked around on her computer screen. “Okay Ms. Harris, it looks like, with your insurance, a 90 day supply will cost $242.”