Page 31 of Baby Blue
“You need a different job,” she said, her eyes still wide.
“Nobody would want me. I don’t have any real training, and no money to get any. It’s the best I can do.”
“No. You can do better. I’m sure of it. By the way,” she said, “we need to talk about SNAP and WIC. You probably qualify for something, and that would help you with formula and cereal and stuff for her.”
Blue shook his head. “No. I don’t take charity.”
“It’s not charity. It’s designed for people who work but don’t get paid much. And you should take advantage of it. Your taxes are paying for other people to use it. You should use it yourself.”
“Yeah, well, you never had to do that,” Blue said in a huff.
Anne gave him a snarky smile and planted her hands on her hips. “Oh, yeah? I wasn’t always a nurse. When my ex walked off, I was a stay-at-home mom. I had no skills. My kids and I lived on pennies a month for two years so I could go to nursing school. I got a little government assistance, but not much. It was a horrible time for me, but I made it. I did what I had to so my kids would have food to eat and clothes to wear. Charity is what you give someone who can’t or won’t help themselves. You’re not a charity case, Brent. You work hard, but you don’t get paid for what you do. And we’re going to talk about all of that, okay?”
He felt like such a failure. Sure, he’d never had much, but it hadn’t mattered. It was just him. Now there was a child involved, and he had to do better, but he didn’t know how. “Yeah, okay. We can talk about it,” he said. “Go get some sleep.”
Anne sighed and gave him a tiny smile, then leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Okay. You too. Night, Brent.”
He was a little surprised, but he liked the feel of her lips on his skin. “Night.” The door closed behind her and he was alone again.
But he wasn’t alone. There was a little person in the next room who depended on him for everything. He made up hismind right then that if he had to take a day off work without pay, he was going to make it count.
In the quietof her house next door, Anne looked in on her sleeping children. They were little angels. So was the little one next door. And Blue?
Oh, god, if he had grabbed her and kissed her before she walked out the door, she wouldn’t have been able to say no. Everything inside her yearned to feel his arms around her, but she knew that was a silly fantasy. She’d seen the women he’d paraded in and out of the house. Big boobs, round asses, tight bellies. They weren’t thirty-five-year-old moms. Instead, they were girls in their twenties, beautiful girls, girls who’d turn the head of a guy like Blue. He’d never want her.
She poured herself a glass of sweet tea and sat down on the sofa in the low lamplight. As she sat there, memories from her earlier years flooded her mind, of her and Joel, her ex, and all the things they’d done together. He’d been such a gentleman, so kind and thoughtful. And apparently she hadn’t been the only one he’d treated that way, scum-sucking rat bastard. She thought about when Polly was born, how excited they’d both been when they brought her home.
Then she thought about when they’d brought Toady home, and she remembered Joel getting them in the house, getting them settled, and going out to play golf with a buddy. He’d left her there, straight out of the hospital, with a new baby and a small child. If her mother hadn’t been able to come and help her out, she didn’t know what she would’ve done.
But her mom had a job, and so did the rest of her relatives, and no one really had time to help her out much. Then she’d started school, and that had been horrible. Long hours, trying to work and go to school at the same time, running the kids here and there, leaving them wherever she could find childcare.
She’d had a good life, and then there’d been a huge rough patch before everything leveled out again. But Blue had never had that. He’d had a rough time all his life. What kind of person did it take to survive against those odds? Being tough was all that had saved him. But didn’t he deserve to have things just a little easier? It seemed the guy just couldn’t catch a break.
What if I’m his break? What if I’m the one who finally gives him a life that’s a little easier?More than anything else, she wanted to be that person, the one he could depend on, the one who made his evenings pleasant, instead of a constant struggle to have food, clothes, and a roof over his head. She wanted Indigo to have the support network her kids never had.
But would Brent want her to be that support network? Maybe eventually. All she could do was hope.
It took him a couple of minutes, but he figured out how to strap Indigo into her car seat. Armed with a list of places Anne had written down for him early that morning as she was getting her kids off to school, Blue set out to go from office to office until he found out what he could get in the way of assistance.
And he got a huge surprise. He not only qualified for a small amount in SNAP benefits, but also for quite a bit in WIC vouchers. They wouldn’t completely pay for Indigo’s formula, but they’d come close. He stopped at the career center downtown, but they told him he didn’t qualify for any kind of training assistance because he had a full-time job. That was disappointing.
All of that took the entire morning. At noon, he stopped by the shop and picked up his check from Judy, the woman whoworked in the office. Turner was nowhere to be seen, and he was glad. When he’d cashed it, he bought a ninety-nine-cent meal at a fast-food place and ate it in the truck so he didn’t have to take Indigo out. She was sleeping, and disturbing her was the last thing he wanted to do.
He realized too late that he hadn’t thought to pack her a bottle, so he had to go back home and feed her. By then, it was just a couple of hours until her appointment. On the way, he stopped at a few thrift stores. To his surprise, he found a small chest, as well as a changing table, for just a few dollars. They were dirty and dusty, like they’d been sitting in someone’s garage, but he could clean them up. They’d also had a couple of framed pictures of kittens and puppies for just a few cents, so he took those too. They were old and a little faded, but they’d cheer up the room a bit. On his way out, he set Indigo’s carrier on the floor as he rummaged around in a bin and found a curtain panel with multi-colored ponies on it.Why not?he asked himself and paid the quarter they asked for it.
Once everything was packed into the back of the truck, he headed to the pediatrician’s office. He was about thirty minutes early, but he figured that was better than being late. Taking the clipboard they gave him, he answered the questions as best he could, considering he really didn’t know anything about her care before she’d turned up on his porch. Fortunately, he had her birth certificate and Social Security number with him?he’d needed it to apply for assistance?so he was able to put that on the forms. When he went to the window and returned the clipboard, the woman in the office looked it over. “Oh! I see you put her birthdate and Social Security number on here,” she said.
Blue was a little confused. Wasn’t he supposed to? “Yes. I had all that with me.”
She pulled out another paper. “Okay, fill this out and sign it. It lets us get her records from her old pediatrician.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know who that was,” he said, taking the paper anyway.
The woman gave him a wide smile. “Doesn’t matter. If they’re in the system, and they probably are, we’ll be able to find them. If we can get on it right now, we might even be able to find them before you leave.”
Blue grabbed the paper and worked furiously to fill it out, then handed it back to the woman and waited. In less than ten minutes, they called Indigo’s name, so he grabbed her carrier and followed a nurse down the hall.
Minutes later she was measured and weighed. The pediatrician was friendly and kind, and Indigo seemed to like her. She was telling Blue how unfortunate it was that he had no idea what kind of care Indigo had received prior to coming to him when there was a tiny knock on the door. The doctor opened it and a hand shoved something through the door. Taking it, the doctor looked it over and smiled. “We’re in luck! We found her old medical records. She was taken to a doctor here in the same building,” Dr.Malone told him. “And it appears she was taken for her two-month checkup but nothing more.”
