Through the Break in Her Hair

Chapter 32

It's amazing what a little bit of money can do to change a person's mind. Not all people, I suppose, are controlled by money, but some are. And the moment Rhonda heard that green stuff crinkling around my mom's purse, saw the tan leather checkbook come out of dad's pocket, her mind was changed.

Rhonda went from, "Absolutely no baby!" to "We're keeping the thing." My parents even talked about possibly finding an adoption agency that would work with us, but Rhonda came around to the idea of being a grandmother after listening to my parents. Which seemed highly unlikely, owing to the fact that my parents were in no way ready to be grandparents. Even Rudy was on board with the whole teen mom thing, under one condition. We had to front the bills.

Lindsey's parents main concern behind having a child, was the finances of it all. They didn't have the extra money to "waste" on a baby, but my parents did, and my parents didn't see it as a waste. An inconvenience, maybe, an added stress, but not a waste. Besides, I planned on helping out as much as I could.

There wasn't too much I could do in the winter time, to pull in some extra cash. Sure, I could shovel snow for all the elderly widows in our neighborhood, but that didn't pay much. And sometimes I got paid with food, snack cakes and such, which wasn't exactly helpful to my parents. So, instead of requiring monetary reimbursement, I was required to go to all of Lindsey's doctors appointments...as payment.

Appointments, appointments, appointments! Who knew pregnant women had to see so many specialists and doctors and nurses and blood-suckers—those were phlebotomysts by the way, I just preferred blood-sucker. Did my parents know that some of those appointments would take hours? And not hours of talking to an actual doctor, hours of sitting in a dangerously uncomfortable chair that could have been splattered with God knows what kinds of bodily fluids. Hours of listening to screaming, coughing, snot nosed kids, running mile high temperatures and whacking you in the shins with plastic toys as their mothers waited to see the same doctor you did! My parents had to have known about this torture— that's probably why they wanted me to go.

Since Lindsey was so young, and so small, she had to see a normal lady doctor and a high-risk specialist on a weekly basis. They were worried that she wouldn't be able to carry the baby to term, that the baby would be extremely small, and sickly. The high-risk doctor said that Lindsey might even lose the baby. I really hoped not. So, I did everything I could to distract Lindsey.

They had to measure her belly every week, to check her progress like a growth chart. And one week, in Lindsey's second trimester, the doctor came in staring at her chart, and shaking his head. By that look alone, I knew he wasn't happy.

"Hello again, Lindsey, John," he said, finally glancing up from the chart with the most artificial smile I'd ever seen a human make. "How are we today?"

Lindsey shrugged a single shoulder and tried to smile back. "Good, I guess."

Dr. Ebert shoved his hand into his white coat pocket, retrieving a small orange bundle. He motioned for Lindsey to lie back on the examination table, and began to roll her blue sweat shirt up over stomach. His lips pressed together in a tight line as he took a minute to unravel the orange measuring tape.

He held one end of the tape at the top of her ribs, then ran the rest down below her belly button. Picked it up and did the same thing from one of Lindsey's side to the other. Dr.Ebert opened his mouth, and I knew it was to say that Lindsey hadn't grown enough, that her body wasn't making room for the baby, but I didn't want her to stress about that, her body would balloon out in its own time.

"Will she fit?" I asked, cutting him off at the start. "In the hospital gown I mean. That's what you're measuring her for, isn't it?"

Dr.Ebert's puzzled look of confusion faded as he gave me a gentle, honest smile and laughed. "She's got a couple more months of growing yet to do, but I'd say she'll fit in one just fine."