Godmother

The death of Keisha wasn’t a surprise, but rather a long awaited event. Keisha expired in the county hospital at 7:24 pm on February 24th, 2021 having succumbed to an illness she had been fighting for a little over two years. Two years, four months, and seven days to be exact−two weeks after she gave birth to Michael and started treating the stage 4 ovarian cancer found during a routine ultrasound in her first trimester. So, Keisha’s death did not simply mean that she shed her mortal coil, but she also shed her motherly duties and gave full parental control to Melissa, her best friend who had already been helping with Michael’s childcare throughout his entire twenty-eight months of life.

As unsurprising as the death was, Melissa found her bereavement and struggles to be quite surprising. It had been exactly one year since the words peritoneal carcinomatosis entered her psyche and she learned that the cancer metastases had spread into the membrane covering Keisha’s abdominal organs and Keisha was given the bleak prognosis of having roughly one year left to live. That means Melissa had twelve whole months to prepare for the loss of Keisha and the gain of Michael, but somehow she found herself in the county hospital on February 24th, 2021 shortly after 7:24 pm struggling to keep it together. Despite being only 26 years of age, Keisha had purchased long-term disability insurance through her work. Melissa was terrified. Michael’s father had died in a car crash shortly after Michael was born. Not only was Michael an orphan with Keisha’s death, but the disability checks were going to stop. Melissa had no idea if she would be able to give Michael the life that he deserves or if she would be a good replacement parent at all.

The sickness had washed out Keisha’s complexion so much that her usually rich, mahogany skin tone had turned into a murky yellow that just sort of melted into the white hospital gown, leaving her hardly recognizable. Michael was sitting beside his lifeless mother and nervously toiling with the crisp edges of the white sheet beneath her that covered the blue hospital mattress with tears streaming down his brown cheeks, making it apparent he understood the gravity of what had just happened. An array of doctors and nurses rushed over to quickly shut off the machines that were making that awful sound that alerted them Keisha’s heart was no longer beating. In the chaos, Melissa notices a little black book sitting on the table next to Keisha’s bedside and puts it in her purse.

The air in the car on the ride home, heavy with melancholic grief, chokes Melissa and Michael. This air seems to follow them inside the house and tightly swaddles them like a blanket constricting their breath. Without saying a word, Michael walks straight to his crib and gets in without the usual bedtime fight. Despite the fact that Michael had pulled the covers all the way over his nappy hair, hiding his face, Melissa tucks him in and quietly whispers, “it will all be okay,” she pauses, “we will be okay. I promise.” She retreats to the kitchen and grabs her favorite pinot grigio from the refrigerator to pour herself a much needed glass. She grabs the little black book out of her purse and moves to the couch to look it over while drinking her wine, curious to see what Keisha was always writing in her notebook. Keisha held onto her moleskin like it was treasure.

As soon as she opens the book, a yellow post-it falls out and lands on her lap. The post-it is addressed to Melissa and reads “for Michael” followed by what looks like online banking information. She scrambles around the house to find her always elusive computer, which this time was hidden under a pile of dirty clothes on her bed. Sitting on her bed, she quickly opens the internet and navigates to the online banking site and enters the information from the post-it. To her surprise, she finds a checking account in her name with a $20,000 balance. “Keisha always thinking of us,” she says, now with a smile on her face.

Melissa returns to the couch to gleefully consume the glass of wine she left sitting on the coffee table when she once again sees the little black book. Upon flipping through the book, she discovers that Keisha logged all her doctor’s appointments with a detailed itemization of every medical ailment, symptom, medication, and treatment plan that she had undergone. To Melissa’s surprise, the notebook is dated and starts thirteen months before the ultrasound that led to her diagnosis. She reads all the early symptoms and finds that Keisha was going to the doctor for all those months and complaining about various problems with her bowel movements, a lump in her abdomen, bloating that was strangely accompanied by weight loss, pain in her pelvic region, and fatigue but the doctors kept turning her away and telling her that it must just be problems related to her menstrual cycle. They kept offering her birth control, but she was actively trying to get pregnant at the time and would not take it.

As Melissa read on, she found out that Keisha incessantly requested more tests and was met by even more incessant refusals from the doctors. She was being dismissed. After a quick google search to confirm the signs and symptoms of ovarian cancer, Melissa’s body started to burn. She keeps reading what Keisha wrote in the notebook, becoming more and more enraged with each passing sentence. She now understood why Keisha purchased long-term disability insurance at such a young age. Melissa starts to wonder if she should contact a malpractice lawyer for a lawsuit against the county hospital. She only has $20,000 dollars to pursue the suit. Would it be worth it to sue or should she just use that money to buy Michael all the ice cream he could possibly eat throughout the years? She decides to go to sleep and figure out what to do the next day but she feels hopeful. She knew they were really going to be alright.