The Ring That Paid for Her Nights

Three Twelve in the Morning

That night her monitor went off at 3:12.

I was down the hall before I knew I was moving. The number on my phone said 48 with two arrows pointing straight down.

Emma was sitting up in bed, which she never did. Her face was white and wet. Her hands were shaking so hard the sheet trembled.

I got the straw in the juice box and held it to her mouth, and she could not hold it herself, so I held it. I held the back of her head with my other hand like when she was a baby.

“Drink, bug. Slow. That’s it.”

She drank. I counted. I sat down on the braided rug with my back against her bed frame and the flashlight on the floor pointing at the ceiling, and I waited for the arrows to turn.

At 3:27 the number said 61. At 3:40 it said 79. She lay back down.

I thought she had fallen asleep. Then she said, very small, into the dark, “Mom?”

“I’m right here.”

“Am I eating wrong?”

I could not answer right away. I could not make my throat work.

“Dad said,” she started.

“I know what Dad said.” I got up on my knees and put my face next to hers on the pillow. “Listen to me. You are not eating wrong. You count every carb. You eat better than I do. Your body makes no insulin at all, and that is nobody’s fault, not yours, not anybody’s. Carol told you that and I’m telling you that.”

“Okay.”

“Say it back to me.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“Good girl.”

She was asleep in a minute. I was not asleep again that night. I sat on that rug until the window went gray and I made up my mind.

The Ring

I had not worn my wedding ring since the divorce. It lived in the little cedar box on my dresser with my grandmother’s brooch and Emma’s first baby tooth.

It was not a fancy ring. Brent bought it the year he sold more boats than anybody at the dealership, the summer before we got married. It was a wide band, eighteen karat, heavy as a washer. No diamond. He said diamonds were for people who wanted to show off and gold was for people who planned to stay.

I put it back on that morning just to see. It still fit. My hands had not changed as much as everything else.

I left work at noon. I told the clinic manager I had a family thing, which was true. I did not change out of my scrubs. Emma was on spring break, staying with my dad, and I picked her up from the farm on the way.

“Where are we going?” she asked, buckling in.

“Fort Dodge. An errand.”

“Can we get a Frosty after?”

“Maybe.”

It is about twenty minutes from my dad’s place into Fort Dodge, down past the grain elevator and the bare black fields, the snow mostly gone except along the fence lines. Emma had Gus clipped to her jeans. She kept checking his little screen like he might have something to tell her.

The pawn shop was on the north side of town, a low brick building with bars on the windows and a hand-painted sign. I had driven past it a hundred times. I had never once been inside.