Chapter Nine
He noticed that her plate had very little on it. “Why aren’t you eating?”
“I have a stomachache.”
“Why?”
“I started getting them … a while ago when I get stressed.”
“Have you had that checked out?”
She shook her head and put a little more on Corey’s plate.
“Why?”
“I don’t have insurance, and I hate spending money on me.” She shrugged. “It’s not a big deal, and it’s none of your business.”
“But it could be serious. If you don’t have insurance, how’d you have Corey?”
“Why all the questions?” she asked in a tight voice.
“I just need to know.”
She sighed. “I was taken to the hospital on the east side.”
He shivered. It was the worst hospital in the state.
She continued. “They have special rates, and I wasn’t there very long.”
He was trying to wrap his head around everything she was telling him. “What wasn’t long?”
“Since I had a normal birth, I could go home that same day.”
“Wait. How in the hell did you do that?”
“My cousin stayed with me for the first two days, and then I took over.”
“But you’d just had a baby.”
She nodded. “Yes, but welfare doesn’t care about that. It was worth it. I got a discount on the hospital, so the bill wasn’t horrible.”
“How much?”
“Why do you need to know all of this?” she asked in frustration.
“Tell me.”
“About fifteen thousand dollars.”
He relaxed before catching her expression because it wasn’t much to a man like him. He’d been rich his whole life and had never had to think about things like this. Fifteen thousand for him was a nice hotel room for a few nights. To her, it had to have felt astronomical.
“Did they let you make payments?”
She nodded and concentrated on Corey.
“How long did it take you to pay it off?”
He watched her stiffen. “Tell me.”