Fallen Woman(49)

“He was really tied up in the mob?”

I shrugged. The truth was I didn’t know and never wanted to know the details. It was safer that way.

“So Emmy—what happened?”

“I finally managed to get myself together enough to apply for Medicaid. If nothing else, it gave me the ability to take her to the doctor. Or so I thought…and initially, it did. We went for countless visits before it was finally determined somehow she’d contracted Lyme disease.” I bit the inside of my cheek trying to keep from crying.

“Isn’t that caused by a tick?” he asked and I nodded. “How the hell would a baby have been bitten by a tick? I don’t see you out camping with three babies alone?” And therein lies the million-dollar question.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I can’t answer that. We didn’t have a dog, which every doctor always asked. The only conclusion I can come to is we lived in a crappy place, and I didn’t take care of it.” I paused to compose myself—unwilling to allow myself to cry anymore. This was my fault, and I owned responsibility for it. If I had to spend my remaining days making sure she knew how sorry I was, I would, because I hadn’t taken care of her the way I should have. As a result, she would be affected for the rest of her life by my poor decisions and Ryan’s stupidity. Maybe if he hadn’t been killed, if he’d just done his time and come home, maybe I wouldn’t have been in the fragile mental state I was. I wouldn’t have been consumed by depression at the loss of my other half. But those were all what ifs, and I didn’t really know if anything would have been different.

“She had to get it somehow.” He was bothered, understandably.

“I’ll never know, Jase. All I know is she never went anywhere she could have picked one up, so I have to assume it came off the carpet in our apartment.”

“Okay, so she got bit by a tick. People get bitten by them all the time.”

“She was bit and it went untreated for months. The ointment for the rash just masked the visible symptoms. It did nothing to treat the actual Lyme infection. As a result, it’s unlikely she’ll ever be completely cured. The hope is to get her into remission again so she’s not struggling with symptoms, but there are people who deal with it every day.”

“Like this? She could be like this forever?” The words rushed from his mouth in a fiery rage as he stood, towering over me.

I grabbed his hand to pull him back down. If he wanted to know the truth, he’d get it today. I wouldn’t do this again. It was now or never. “Jase, you have to stop overreacting. You wanted to know what’s going on—I’m trying to tell you, but you have to listen. I can’t change the past and I can’t fix any of this. I can only try to help the doctors manage it.”

He sat back down, his jaw clenched. I knew he’d be mad at me. The man loves her, and I’m the woman who has caused irreparable damage in her life.

“After the first few visits, when we finally found out what it was we were dealing with, those visits were covered by Medicaid. They prescribed a couple of heavy antibiotics for almost a month and told me she’d be fine. I took them at their word.

“Toward the end of the antibiotics, I started to see exactly what you see now. Flu-like symptoms, lethargy, fever…overall a very sick baby. I raced her back to the doctor’s office with two other toddlers in tow. Things started to spiral out of control from that visit on. She’d had a herx. As the antibiotics prescribed to treat the Lyme worked, they pushed the toxins into her bloodstream, and her little body couldn’t process them out fast enough—hence the illness and all the symptoms surrounding it. It’s a horrible detoxification process for an adult, but a child can’t communicate any of it.”

“Okay, so you’ve been here before…how do you treat it?”

“That’s just it. It’s different for every patient, and every herx is different from the last. She’s been too young to tell me what works and doesn’t, so I’ve had to work by trial and error. She’s just now reaching an age where she can tell me she’s feeling bad and give me an idea of the symptoms she’s having so we could try to stave off the side effects with herbal treatments, proteins, etcetera, but she won’t tell me anything.” My voice cracked.

“Why not?” Jase was incensed, and he was about to be pissed off.

My lips pursed as I chewed on the bottom one before answering him. “Because she knows I can’t pay the doctor and don’t have any money.”

His silence bothered me more than the accusation I assumed was coming. He was judging and that hurt. I knew it would happen. I knew the moment he found out what a horrible mother I’d been to her as a baby and continued to be, he’d cast me aside. It stung, but maybe it was for the best. Removing the temptation of Jase Lane would remove the desire.

“Explain to me, Gianna, why, when you have resources available to you, you haven’t used them. I need to understand that.” He bit out every word, desperate not to raise his voice, but the accusation was there.

“I don’t have the resources you do, Jase. You obviously haven’t been listening. Once she was diagnosed with Chronic Lyme, doctors either wouldn’t touch her, knowing they wouldn’t get paid because the insurance company covers nothing, they didn’t believe it was a disease that existed, or they couldn’t find anything that worked. Everything is considered experimental—everything! Every visit racks up hundreds, sometimes thousands in medical expenses. I’m doing the best I can!” By the end of my diatribe, the tears were flowing freely, and my voice had risen above a normal tone, but not quite to hysterical.