Page 81 of Wish I Might
“So far.”She opened her eyes.Ohio was flying by through the windshield, Nash’s hands firm on the wheel.“Thanks.”
“For what?”
“This,” she said, gesturing.“Getting me home, not asking any questions.”
“I figured if it was my business, you’d tell me.And if it’s not?”He shrugged.“I don’t need to know.Unless whatever trouble Chloe’s in is going to come for you.”
That startled a laugh out of her.“That would be literally impossible.”
He looked at her briefly, then turned back to face the road.“Okay, then.”
For a moment, the only sound was the highway rushing by under the wheels.Then Nash said, “Can I ask you a personal question?”
Wiling to be distracted from worrying about Chloe, she glanced at his profile.“I might not answer, but you can ask.”
“Fair enough.How’d you manage the hysterectomy?”
“With excellent prescription drugs.”
He flashed a grin.“Good for you, but that’s not what I’m asking.How’d you get a doctor to finally do it?”
“It wasn’t easy,” she admitted, watching the landscape through the window, a green and brown blur.“It took me five years to find someone who would even consider it, another year to convince them I wasn’t going to change my mind, and six more months to wade through the bureaucratic bullshit and actually have the surgery.”
“Six and a half years?Jesus.”
“And I had to pay for it out of pocket,” she continued.
“You didn’t have insurance?”
“They wouldn’t pay for it,” she corrected.“I didn’t have cancer or fibroids or endometriosis, or any of the other conditions they deem terrible enough to justify getting rid of your uterus, so it was deemed ‘not medically necessary’.And not covered.”
His eyebrows jerked together in a scowl.“That’s fucked up.”
“Yep,” she agreed.
“How much was it?”
“Too much,” she said drily.“But I had them go through my vagina instead of my abdomen, and that actually made it cheaper.”
“Ow.”
His instinctive flinch made her laugh.“Healing was quicker that way, too.I was back at work in a week.”
“Jesus, why?”He signaled left, zipped around a slow-moving minivan, then slipped back into the right lane.“If I had an internal organ removed, I’d stay in bed for a month.”
“I’m self-employed,” she reminded him.“Not a luxury I have.”
“Still.A week?Weren’t you still in pain?Bleeding?”
“A little, but it wasn’t any worse than a shitty period at that point.”
“I’d stay in bed for those, too.”
She snickered.“Mom stayed with me after surgery, drove me to work for about a week, and that was it.”
“She was supportive of the surgery?Your mom?”
Bailey waggled her hand back and forth.“Yes, because she knew it was what I wanted.But there was some mourning, there.”
