Chapter 4: Money and the Body
Obstetric appointments became checkpoints of a different kind of safety.
Blood pressure. Weight. The question—any stress we should know about?—answered with a careful yes and a referral to a counselor who understood legal trauma layered on pregnancy. I took the referral. Strength was not the absence of help.
Vendors released what they could. The venue manager, a woman who had seen every version of family theater, quietly refunded a larger share than the contract required after I explained, without theater, why the date was dead. “Keep the rest for someone else’s joy,” I said. She squeezed my hand once.
Ethan’s mother attempted to contact my doctor’s office as “family.” The office, warned, refused. Margaret’s respectability had always been a costume for local rooms. Costumes failed against HIPAA and a staff that had been shown a protective order.
May you like
I worked. Campaigns still launched. Clients still paid. The agency did not collapse because a man and his mother had mistaken my operating account for their wedding fund. On a Thursday I closed a contract that covered three months of nursery costs and felt, for the first time since the deadbolt, something like solid ground under the pregnancy.
At night I placed a hand on the curve of my stomach and spoke aloud the only promise that mattered: No one gets to price you as leverage against me.
