The Boy I Covered By Noon

In the parking lot

I got him buckled and I sat in the driver’s seat of the Malibu with my hands on the wheel at ten and two like I was taking a test.

Here is what I understood and what I did not.

I understood that Cole’s coverage had been Brad’s. Brad works at the elevator, decent benefits, the kind you keep a bad marriage civil over. When we split last spring we kept it simple. He kept Cole on his plan because Cole’s insulin and his pump supplies and his endocrinologist in Des Moines run into real money, and Brad’s plan covered it better than anything I could get. We shook on that at the kitchen table. No lawyers. Just two tired people agreeing the boy comes first.

What I did not understand yet was why a plan Cole had been on his whole life said terminated.

I did not call Brad again. I want to say that part plain, because the practical women I know would have. I did not call him because the one thing that mattered in that hour was getting my son onto coverage that could not be taken away by somebody at a kitchen table in another man’s apartment. And I have my own insurance. I work at the pork plant on the edge of town, eleven years on the cut floor and then in the line office, and the plant carries a family plan I had never put Cole on because Brad’s was better.

Better does not matter when better gets canceled.

I looked at the clock on the dash. It was nine forty in the morning. I had dropped Cole’s backup supplies at the nurse’s office last week, so he had enough at school to get through the day, and I had the three day box from Mr. Ngo in a paper sack on the passenger floor.

“I am going to run by work,” I told Cole. “I will drop you at school on the way. You have gym today?”

“Second period.”

“Tell the nurse to check you before gym. I mean it.”

“I always do.”

“I know you do.” I pulled out onto the highway toward town. “You are a good kid about it. Better than I would have been.”