Medical Kidnap Files 1-6, page 139
Kiara rolled her eyes but, eventually, did what Jamal said and sat down beside him. He rubbed her back, his long, slender fingers strong but gentle, kneading the muscles, trying to find all of the knots and to get them to release. Kiara closed her eyes and shrugged her shoulders and circled her head. Jamal was right. She needed to show Mrs. Lewis that she was confident. She was doing everything she needed to do to prepare for the baby and to get Malachi back. Mrs. Lewis would see that.
There was a knock on the door. Kiara startled and tried to get up, but her body refused to cooperate.
“Sit,” Jamal told her, putting his hand on her knee. “Stay there. I’m going to answer the door.”
“I should do it,” Kiara fussed, trying again to push herself up.
“No, you don’t need to. Stay there.”
Kiara didn’t have much choice if he wasn’t going to give her a hand up.
Jamal walked over to the door and unlocked the series of locks. He pulled the door open and saw that it was, of course, Mrs. Lewis.
“Poppy, hi,” Jamal said, as casually as if she were one of his band buddies. “Come on in. Kiara’s been working really hard to make sure that everything is all ready for you.”
Kiara winced. Mrs. Lewis wasn’t supposed to know that she’d been working hard to get ready. Then she would think that Jamal’s apartment hadn’t been a suitable place from the start, and Kiara was just trying to make it look good. That as soon as Mrs. Lewis left, it would return to its natural state, a dark, dirty, dangerous apartment not suitable for a couple of little children to live in.
Mrs. Lewis smiled her tight-lipped, disapproving smile at Jamal. She slipped by him into the apartment, taking a quick look around as if someone might try to escape or was trying to pull something over on her.
“Kiara. It’s nice to see you again.”
Kiara decided it was probably best not to lie and say that she was pleased to see Mrs. Lewis too. She reached out her hand to shake. She didn’t usually shake a social worker’s hand but, since she hadn’t been able to get up to let Mrs. Lewis in, it seemed like the polite thing to do.
Mrs. Lewis raised both eyebrows and reached out her hand to give Kiara a brief, dry handshake. Her hand was so bony that Kiara felt like she would break it if she squeezed too hard. Then when she let go, she wondered if she had given Mrs. Lewis a dead-fish handshake and wished that she could do it over. But it was too late. Mrs. Lewis had already made whatever judgment she was going to about Kiara’s social skills and was sitting herself down in one of the upholstered chairs. She glanced around the apartment.
Kiara wished she could see it through Mrs. Lewis’s eyes and know how it measured up. It wasn’t a slum. Jamal made a good living with his band and his internet following.
“It’s just the right size,” Kiara said, launching into the apartment’s good points before Mrs. Lewis could start criticizing it. “We’ve got a room all set up for Malachi and the baby. And when they get too old to share a room, we can move into something bigger. And the washer and dryer are right in the apartment…” Kiara pointed to the appliances. “I don’t have to haul everything to the laundromat or even down to a shared utility room. I can do everything right here while I’m taking care of the kids. That will be a big time saver. And they’re both those energy-efficient green appliances, too. I thought I might even do cloth diapers for the baby, since it would be really easy to wash a load or two of diapers every week with them right here in the apartment. Cloth are better for the environment, right?”
Mrs. Lewis looked at Kiara. “I’m not sure that’s the most important thing to focus on right now.”
“Oh, I know that. I just mean… it’s going to be really handy. And we might do that. Use cloth diapers.” Kiara glanced around, looking for other things to point out. “There aren’t any stairs. There’s an elevator, so I don’t have to be hauling strollers and baby things up and down the stairs. Jamal knows all of the neighbors. They’re a really nice community here.”
“Those things are all good,” Mrs. Lewis agreed. She looked at Kiara for a few seconds. “How are you feeling?”
Kiara wrapped her hands tightly around her belly. She closed her eyes. “Tired. I’ll be so glad when the baby is ready. I can’t imagine having to wait another week or two. I so much want him to come now. I’m so sore all the time. It’s hard to get around when you get this big.” Kiara massaged the big, hard belly. “Do you have kids? Have you been pregnant?”
“I have two children,” Mrs. Lewis admitted. “A boy and a girl.”
She said it as if she had planned it that way. She had decided on a boy and a girl, so that was what she’d had. Kiara and Jamal both kept saying “he” for the baby, even though they had asked the ultrasound technician and the doctor who had reviewed her amnio results not to tell them what they were having. They had both just fallen into the habit of saying “he” and had stopped correcting themselves to “I mean, he or she” every time. But the baby could be a girl. They didn’t know.
“What was it like for you when you were pregnant?” Kiara leaned back, rubbing the small of her back, which got so sore by the end of each day. She didn’t know how those moms with six or ten kids ever handled it. All of that time pregnant. All of those months and months of backaches.
“My children are adopted, actually. I wasn’t able to get pregnant.”
Kiara grimaced. She wished she had never asked. She was trying to establish a connection between them. To humanize Mrs. Lewis and think about her as a woman and a mom instead of just the dragon social worker. “I’m sorry. That must have been really hard.”
Mrs. Lewis nodded. “A lot of people would say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter how you get your kids.’ But… it does matter. I still feel like I failed. And it was a long, long time before I stopped regretting it, and being jealous of all of the women I met who were pregnant, and not to think every month or every year ‘maybe there will be a miracle, and this time I’ll get pregnant.” She shook her head briskly and made a face like she had a bad taste in her mouth. “Infertility is difficult. Even though it would be impossible for me to love my adopted children more, being unable to conceive and have a child grow inside me is still a painful wound. Scarred over and tough now, but one of those wounds that still aches from time to time.”
And, Kiara was sure, Mrs. Lewis would be especially irritated by the young mothers she dealt with who had found it easy to conceive. Teen moms, pregnant by accident. All of those people she met who couldn’t take good care of the children they had and yet kept having more.
“That must make this job really hard.”
“That is one of the hard things about being a social worker. But it is also a very rewarding job. I may not be able to conceive children of my own, but in a way, all of the children that I help are my kids.”
Kiara looked away from Mrs. Lewis and tried to school her expression. She was not Mrs. Lewis’s kid. And Mrs. Lewis hadn’t helped her, but harmed her. She couldn’t very well claim to be a good mother to Kiara with all of the damage she had done.
Jamal sat back down beside Kiara and took her hand. It was a gesture both protective and proud.
“Kiara’s a really good mom,” he reminded Mrs. Lewis of his opinion of the matter. “She has some stuff she wants to ask you today.”
Mrs. Lewis met Kiara’s eyes. “What do you want to ask?”
“I… I thought you would want to look around first. I can take you around, if Jamal can help me to get up…”
“You stay here,” Jamal told her. “Poppy can walk around the apartment herself. It isn’t like she’s going to get lost. She can come back here to ask you any questions she has.”
Mrs. Lewis nodded her agreement. She rose to her feet in that effortless way people without a huge basketball belly and extra weight seemed to have. Not like an old woman, either. She just decided that she was going to get up, and then she did it. No struggling or rocking or groans over it.
Kiara took deep breaths, trying not to let anxiety get the best of her. It would only take a few minutes. Then Mrs. Lewis would be back, and Kiara would tell her about her requests, and… then it would be time for Mrs. Lewis to tell her no. That her requests were denied and there was a new plan, a new outline of the things she thought that Kiara should do if she ever wanted to see Malachi again.
Jamal rubbed Kiara’s nearest shoulder. “It will be okay. She’s fine.”
“I had to go and ask her about being pregnant when it’s her biggest regret in life? A painful scar that won’t ever stop hurting?” Kiara closed her eyes and shook her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe I just did that.”
“She’s the one who asked you how you were feeling. You were just carrying on the conversation. Being polite.”
“But I stuck my foot in my mouth. Made her remember how much it hurts.”
“That wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known anything about it. I doubt she even thinks about it anymore.”
Right. She hadn’t stopped thinking about it in the last forty or more years. Why would she stop thinking about it now?
She could hear Mrs. Lewis going from one room to the other. Checking out the master bedroom, the children’s room, the bathroom, Jamal’s sound studio. What would she think of all of the musical equipment and electronics? That they were a danger to the children somehow? That he would be playing loud music at all hours, keeping the children from getting to sleep?
It didn’t take her long to look at the few rooms and return to the open kitchen and living room space. Did she think it was stupid? Too small? Too expensive? Kiara hadn’t had a chance to explain the financial situation and was sure Mrs. Lewis would want to know.
She took another minute to look around the kitchen, actually checking out the fridge and the cupboards. Looking for alcohol? Making sure that Kiara had her medication? Food? Bottles for baby? Kiara supposed it was all of that. Every little thing she saw had a special meaning to her, good or bad.
“It’s very nice,” Mrs. Lewis said in a dry expressionless voice. Did that mean that she really did like it? Or was she just saying that? Would she have said that no matter what she felt about it?
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
You can see it’s a good place,” Kiara suggested. “We’re getting all ready for the baby.” She rubbed her protruding belly. “It won’t be much longer before we’re welcoming this little guy, and he’s going to have a nice, safe home to come to.”
Mrs. Lewis nodded but didn’t say whether she agreed with Kiara’s assessment or not. She had to see that it was a good place for Kiara to be. Better than being with her mother, where she was so stifled. It was good for her to be with the father of her baby, a nice nuclear unit to raise a baby in. That was what social services wanted, wasn’t it? For the baby to be in a home with a mother and a father. Not with a single mom depending on someone else for support.
Kiara swallowed. “So… do you think that I could see Malachi? I’m supposed to be able to get visits with him, right? DCFS is working on reunification.”
Mrs. Lewis’s lips pressed together and there was a long pause before she answered. “I’m not sure you’re ready for that.”
“I’m ready!” Kiara protested. “I’m doing everything I’m supposed to.”
“You’re taking drugs. Until you can come up with a clean bill of health…”
“I’m not taking drugs. Look.” Kiara motioned for Jamal to hand her a few papers folded together on the side table. “My medications can cause a false positive on the drug test. That’s what happened. I’m not taking anything illegal.”
She passed the papers she had worked on with Renata over to Mrs. Lewis, who didn’t even unfold them.
“Look at them,” Kiara insisted. “You can’t accuse me of taking drugs based on the testing you did. You need to do the other kind, the gas chromatograph, because it will show that you’re just looking at my medications, not illegal drugs. The testing you did can’t tell the difference.”
“We don’t have the money to be running expensive testing like that. We have a standard testing procedure, and you failed that. If you are taking medications that are so close to illegal drugs that they trip up our testing, then maybe you should reconsider that. See if there is something different you should be taking. Feeding your addiction with legal drugs isn’t any better than feeding it with illegal drugs.”
Kiara’s jaw dropped and she looked for the words to counter Mrs. Lewis’s suggestion.
“She’s taking antidepressants, not speed,” Jamal growled. “It’s not the same thing.”
Mrs. Lewis just raised her eyebrow at him as if he were not allowed to be part of the conversation.
“Look,” Kiara said desperately, “All kinds of things can show up as a false positive on that test. Not just my prescriptions. Things like aspirin and ibuprofen too. Benadryl. Cold medicines.”
“If you’re taking enough cold medicine for it to show up as a positive on your test…”
“No!” Kiara dug her knuckles into her forehead, trying to keep her temper and defeat Mrs. Lewis’s logic, “That’s not what I’m saying. Just taking a normal dose because you have a cold can cause a false positive. There are a lot of things that I was taking that could have caused it. It doesn’t mean that I’m abusing anything.”
“In my experience, if a person fails a drug test, it means there is a problem. That problem needs to be addressed if you want to move forward.”
“But I’m not taking drugs. If you get the gas chromatograph testing, it will prove that.”
“Are you going to meetings?”
“Meetings? Like AA?”
Mrs. Lewis gave no indication, waiting for an answer.
“Well… no. I never got into AA. It wasn’t the right thing for me. I got clean and sober without it.”
“AA or NA can help to give you the support you need to stay clean and sober. A sponsor, a peer group you can talk to about addiction and substance abuse, instruction on dealing with other emotional challenges, or getting back on the wagon when you have a setback. Don’t you think you owe it to your baby to do everything you can to address this problem?”
“No. I mean, there isn’t a problem. I’m clean. You can ask Jamal. You already looked around the apartment. There’s no sign of any drugs around here, is there? Neither of us uses.”
“I think it would be helpful and appropriate for you to attend meetings regularly and get a sponsor.”
Kiara was about to protest, but Jamal gave her a slight shake of the head, warning her. Kiara had said that she would do whatever DCFS told her to. She would do whatever it took to get Malachi back. She closed her eyes, pressing her fingertips against them for a moment, trying to get her thoughts straight. She held her hands up in surrender. “Fine. Okay. I’ll start going to meetings. I don’t need to, but if that’s what you need me to do to prove that I’m clean, I’ll do it. If I go to meetings, can I get a visit with Malachi?”
“You need to be doing more than that. From what the foster mother has said about Malachi’s food issues, it’s clear that you need some parenting and nutrition training. You need to be shown how to care for him and feed him properly.”
Kiara looked at Jamal. She couldn’t believe that Mrs. Lewis was saying she didn’t know how to take care of her own son. She had never done anything to endanger him. And she had done everything the doctor had said to do, had tried to push high-calorie foods, restrict formula, feed Malachi more often, to give him meat. And now she didn’t know anything about nutrition? She took Malachi to playgroups, talked with the other mothers and listened to what they had to say about milestones and behavior and discipline. She read books. She was the one who had gone to the doctor in the first place and said that she was worried about his weight. She had expected the doctor to simply reassure her that Malachi was fine and would catch up to the other babies his own age in time, as he had before.
“I don’t—” Jamal’s hand was on her knee, giving it a gentle squeeze.
Stop and think.
Don’t blow it. You said you would do whatever they asked.
Kiara swallowed. She shook her head, unable to simply accept what was being required of her. But she wouldn’t argue.
“If you have courses you want me to take, of course I’ll take them,” she said, in as calm a voice as she could muster. “I want to do whatever is best for Malachi.”
Jamal nodded his agreement. But Kiara could feel in his grasp on her knee how much he was seething, just like she was, over the social worker’s presumption. They would comply, but they didn’t have to agree that it was necessary.
“Good.” Mrs. Lewis nodded briskly. “We will get you signed up and started as soon as possible. I don’t know how much you’ll be able to get to in your current condition or after the baby is born. Still, we’ll try to set something up that is reasonably convenient.”
Kiara nodded. “If I go to AA and go to these classes, you’ll let me visit Malachi?”
There was another pause, another silence that seemed to take hours, during which Mrs. Lewis considered her answer and the notes she had made. Then she eventually nodded.
“I will set something up.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Adela watched Malachi playing with the toys in the waiting room. At first, he had been happy, but he was whining and crying more, probably getting tired or hungry. It had been a longer wait than she had expected. But that’s the way things were with doctors. She set up an appointment and then waited for them to get around to it, knowing that they had only scheduled ten or fifteen minutes for appointments that would take them twenty-five or thirty and that, by the time they got to her, they would be far behind in their schedule and not want to spend any time with her. She tried to get appointments at the beginning of the day but, unfortunately, so did everyone else.
“Hey, fussbudget,” she singsonged to Malachi. “What’s the matter? Are you hungry?”
