24. Monday
CHAPTER 24
MONDAY
B y Monday, Maggie had perfected an unholy combination of coffee and ginger chews that seemed to keep her body on a tenuous equilibrium of functionality. She sent Daniel a gif of the episode of Alf where he’s sick on the couch. It was one of the only options she could find that didn’t imply she was teetering dangerously on the brink of early death. Plus, it was her father’s favorite show. Becker sent back a link to a recipe for chicken noodle soup and the text Just say the word . Since she had determined that words were fundamentally not working for her at the moment, she didn’t say anything at all. He probably wasn’t serious anyway.
When she stopped in to the camp kitchen for her regular mid-morning caffeine refill, Chuck looked relieved to see her.
“You are alive!” he said, with a level of exuberant surprise befitting a melodrama. “Jeanette was in despair. But I told her not to worry: Maggie will be back.” The chef patted the rickety coffeemaker like he was comforting a grieving widow.
“I missed you, too, but it’s only been, what, two days?” Maggie tapped the coffeemaker awkwardly before beginning the complex and delicate process of getting it to actually brew coffee.
“And you have not come to dinner. Chuck was beginning to think there was something wrong with the food.”
“Of course not,” Maggie said, still focused on the mechanics. It was odd having someone keep tabs on her and not her timesheet. She wasn’t sure she liked it. Turning her face so he could see her reassuring smile, she said, “You know I would tell you if there were something wrong with the food.”
“Yes. This I appreciate about you.” Then he handed her the now customary glass of water. “You look pale. You are sick?”
“A little.” Then, realizing that she should probably not give the impression that she was casually infecting her entire kitchen staff with a summer flu, she quickly amended, “April said it’s not contagious.”
He looked at her appraisingly for a moment. “Ok. You drink.” And then he walked back to one of the busy prep counters to help ready lunch.
When the time came, Maggie did her best to eat, and then headed back to the cottage to be available for the two-hour window around her scheduled 2 p.m. call with the clinic. Naturally the call came at 3:30 p.m. She was briefly annoyed about the delay, until the woman on the other end greeted her warmly and then began blandly reading from a pre-written statement in a tone that could only be described as subtly sarcastic. It was the “counseling script” that Maggie knew, thanks to her charming legal research assignment from Uncle Sam, came directly from the esteemed self-styled medical experts elected to the North Carolina legislature. No one was more disgusted by this entire charade than the woman on the other end of the line. So, at the end of the call, Maggie thanked her, very sincerely, for her assistance, and hung up, already looking forward to the other mandatory pre-appointment phone call she’d been asked to schedule for 24 hours out. Then she set up a monthly recurring donation to a local abortion fund and tried to focus on literally anything else.