Ms/Mrs: Tricia Webber

By Tricia Webber

What happens when a womans fantasy of love and acceptance crashes headlong into the reality of living with a chronic illness? Melanie Wilson pushes through a life of settling for second-best men, until the birth of her daughter becomes a pivotal crossroads where she chooses to look inward, and come to terms with the disappointment of past decisions and face her fear of an unknown future head-on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: May 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781452570839

Tricia Webber

Tricia Webber grew up in Northern California. She was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2001, but she’d rather make jam than worry about that. This is her first novel.

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PROLOGUE

Carefully, I placed the sleeping baby’s car seat into the base in the back seat. The car was crammed with boxes and things to move to the new house. I moved a stuffed elephant and a teddy bear to the side so I could see out of the rearview mirror. My husband waited impatiently in his car, the motor running.

Ready? He barked.

I nodded and looked around, trying to memorize this place to which I would never return. The sun beat on the back of my neck and I worried about the baby in the back of the car.

Follow me. Stay close.

I really wish you’d given me directions. I’m not sure I can get there on my own if I lose you.

I barely recognized the plaintive, pleading voice as my own.

Then don’t lose me.

My husband took off down the hill. By the time we reached the freeway, the nagging pain at the base of my skull exploded into a full-blown tension headache. I watched as my husband sped off, assuming I would zip in and out of traffic behind him. I tried to keep up, waving apologetically at the other drivers.

Where are we going? My husband drove south. Wait, was that right? This was moving me toward San Jose. I don’t want to live there! Up and down the hills I drove. The hills were getting steeper. Oh no, this hill is so steep I’m not sure my little car with all this stuff will make it to the top. I can’t see what’s on the other side. The baby stirred, sighing itself back to sleep. I’m losing him. I need to get to the top of this hill so I don’t get lost. What if my husband gets so far away I never find my way?

Slowly, my car inches toward the top of the hill, the temperature gauge climbing. I don’t want to turn on the heater to cool the engine because of the baby. I told my husband I needed a new car. I’m almost to the top of this roller coaster hill. As I crest, I search desperately for my husband’s car.

Wait. There are two roads at the top of this hill. Two roads, two choices. Which one did my husband take? Where do I go? My eyes dart back and forth. Which choice? What do I do? Someone, please tell me what to do! Suddenly I hear a voice. Inside my car. The radio is not on.

Breathe. Slow down. Look around you. Pick the road that feels right to you, not to anyone else. Just you. You can do this. You are a survivor.

My heart slowed. I looked around me and broke into a wide grin.

Thanks, God.

I did that a lot.

The road to the right was a series of hills. Up and down, up and down. I couldn’t see very far, but that way led toward the city and chaos.

The road to the left headed down into the valley. The grass was green, and lush. Purple lupine waved along the sides of the road and the fields were blanketed in a patchwork ocean of green alfalfa and yellow mustard flower. The road was mostly straight with a few leisurely curves, but I could see it and I was not afraid.

I knew where my husband went, but I drove to the left. I woke up. I peered into the gloom toward the far side of the California King-size bed. Back turned to me, I watched my husband’s side rise and fall as he snored softly. The clock read 4:43 a.m.

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CHAPTER 1

March 2001

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tick tick tick tick tick. Tap. Tap. Tap. The rhythm began again as I lay under the white sheet with my eyes closed inside the giant magnet of the MRI machine. I assured the technician I, Melanie Wilson, was not claustrophobic, but that was before I lay down on the narrow board that slid me into the machine like a human pizza being sent to a fiery furnace. It didn’t help that there was a cage over my head and neck to hold me completely still in the machine’s embrace like some medieval torture device. The cage held a tiny mirror, angled so I could see the outside world, but I preferred to lie eyes closed so I could imagine myself away from here. My yogic breathing is probably the only thing that saved me. I focused internally as hard as I could, deep breath in through the nose, modified with deep breath out through the nose because I had to avoid moving my body. If my images were blurry they would have to start all over. I was determined to be the best patient ever. After what felt like the day must have turned to night, I felt my body move forward. I stared up at the ceiling, where a poster of a tropical Hawaiian beach cheerily attempted to distract me.

You’re doing great, the tech said as she smiled down at me once I reached the outside.

Her blond ponytail waved back and forth as she turned toward me to gently remove my cage and then away to ready the giant syringe she was about to inject into my arm.

So what is that exactly?

I asked mostly to buy my body more time to relax. I knew I was only half finished with this ordeal and I needed to imprint the memory of how it felt to be here. As much as I pushed away how not-normal this entire ordeal felt on an emotional level, my inner self, the one that kept insisting I really must start getting to know Her, knew differently. This would not be my first or my only experience with the machine.

Gadolinium. It’s a dye that will show up as a contrast if there is any injury in your brain or spinal cord. The doctor will compare your first set of images to the next set with the dye.

Swiftly, the tech wrapped rubber tubing around my upper arm and swiped the crook of my elbow with alcohol.

You have great veins.

The glee in her voice was unmistakable. I wasn’t poked often, but when I was, it was always the same. My veins were happy to oblige with the constriction and hop right to attention. Even with compliant veins, I couldn’t watch. I carried too much trauma from standing next to my younger sister’s wheelchair as a child while the nurses endlessly poked her rolling veins trying to snatch one just long enough to take the samples they needed. Tiffany was the disabled one, not me. I was the normal one. Until now.

I thought gadolinium was radioactive.

I steeled myself against the pinch and burn as the tech slid the needle into my arm. The burn continued long after my exhale expired.

It is. You’re not pregnant or nursing are you?

No, you asked me that before, but now it makes more sense. How long does it last in my system after this? If I spoke normally and calmly about everything, maybe I could prevent the high-pitched wail hovering in my chest cavity from escaping.

It should be all out by tomorrow. Drink lots of water.

After the tech replaced the cage over my head and slid me back into the machine again, I mentally felt around searching for the presence of the dye. My insides now glowed but I didn’t feel different.

No one told me how loud it was inside the machine. I named it Hank. I’d immediately assigned a personality to the giant hulk that took up most of the tiny room in which it lurked. I concentrated again on the symphony of sound in the pattern of the ticks and tocks and whirs. And then, it was over. The reality of my ordeal was less than an hour, but I felt like I’d been intimate with Hank for days. I would even walk away with bruises on my arm. A huge purple bruise already covered the inside of my arm where the tech injected me with the dye.

So, do I have MS?

I handed the sheet to the tech, grateful for it after all. It was cold and breezy inside Hank. As he worked his magic, Hank stole all the cool air, blew it across my body, and spewed it hotly back out into the room.

Your doctor will call you after he reviews the results. The tech smiled cheerily, but her eyes slid away as I tried to pin her to an answer I knew she couldn’t give.

I walked normally out into the watery winter sunshine. The numbness that tightened around my midsection and made it feel like my ankles ended in nothingness when I ran every morning was long gone. Long gone but not forgotten.

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CHAPTER 2

August 2008

I sat in a therapist’s office. My baby girl, Cecilia, was with my mom, Ellie Wilson. The office was nicely furnished, with wicker chairs covered in blue fabric. Blue and green pillows sat on the cushions, with little beads down the center. I held a pillow and picked at the beads.

After the niceties and details were exchanged, just call me Val asked, So. Why are you here?

Well, I just had a baby a few months ago, and my husband is selling his house, well the house we all live in, but it’s his house, and we’re living with my mom for a few months while we look for another house, and his mom was diagnosed with cancer in February and died last month, and well, I stopped to catch my breath. There was so much I wanted to say. I guess the bottom line is I need to figure out if I should leave my husband.

Valerie Sirocco sat calmly, her legs crossed demurely at the ankle. She had a pleasant face, framed by medium length brown hair. She wore dangly earrings and a scarf around her neck. She smiled.

That is a lot to consider Melanie. Why don’t you tell me a little about that?

Where do I start? My mind raced as it had for months now. I was floating in an eternal holding pattern, waiting for the right moment to start my life. My real life, the one I wanted rather than the one I was in.

Start with why you chose to come and see me now. Val said.

I closed my eyes, remembering the sound of Ellie’s voice on the phone.

Stan attacked my mother, and now he’s disappeared. I’m afraid he’s going to come back and take the baby away to punish me.

Are you safe? Did you move to a safe location? Val asked.

I nodded, feeling numb inside. It was a relief to move the weight of the memories from my chest into the open.

I wasn’t there; I was at the hospital, getting another MRI to see how my MS is now, after having the Solu-Medrol treatment.

I stopped, realizing Val didn’t have any of the background about my having MS. She waited.

I have MS. I need to explain to you a little bit about my Multiple Sclerosis ok?

Melanie, you are in charge of how this session progresses, you don’t need to ask my permission for what you choose to talk about.

You’ll have to remind me about not needing to ask permission because I’ve been doing that for just about everything for the last few years. I can’t seem to make decisions anymore.

I closed my eyes, debating on where to begin. Thoughts and memories swirled behind my closed eyelids like a tangle of seaweed being pushed and pulled by the incoming tide.

The first time I cut Cecelia’s fingernails when she was a newborn, I was high. Manic and high. It’s not what you’re thinking, although Val’s facial expression remained unchanged from the pleasant attentiveness it held before I began.

It was my first-ever Solu-Medrol treatment. That stuff is poison. My husband, Stan Hawkins, left us in Woodland with my mom, Ellie, after my treatment on the first of three days. Cecilia and I were alone at my mom’s house. Stan ‘had to work,’ he said. Yep, just like he had to work when I came home from the hospital after my Cesarean section and I had to wait for him come home from work to drive me through the Caldecott tunnel and back to the hospital to visit Cecilia every day. After traffic. Every one of the fourteen days Cecilia was in the neo-natal intensive care, the first glimmer of daylight woke me and started my brain racing like a hamster stuck in a wheel, endlessly churning over empty, pointless, uncontrollable thoughts. I waited and wandered around the empty freezing house, trying to summon resistant maternal urges as I pumped breast milk for a missing baby, counting the hours until Stan returned and I could pounce in anticipation of the painful drive to the hospital.

Cecilia was just over a month old the day I cut her fingernails, and had only been out of the hospital about two weeks. Birth slammed my Multiple Sclerosis into a nasty flare-up, rudely reminding me I had a chronic illness. My neurologist, Dr. Denker, was pretty pissed that I up and got pregnant without discussing it first. He said pregnancy can make MS symptoms improve, but sometimes immediately post-pregnancy you get a huge flare-up. Yep, sure enough, that’s what happened. Dr. Denker told me I needed to lose the denial and get a corticosteroid treatment. But against my better, post-partum-depression induced judgment, we were away from home for Christmas, at my in-laws. While we were there, my cellphone rang, jerking me out of my sleep-deprived stupor.

Hello?

Is this Melanie Hawkins? The nurse’s voice was brisk.

Yes. I tensed.

We have you scheduled for treatment at 11am.

Today? I can’t make it today, I’m in Redding.

The nurse’s voice softened.

No sweetie, day-after-tomorrow. We have to do the treatment for three days in a row, and the soonest we can schedule is day-after-tomorrow. Day-after-tomorrow was Wednesday, December 26.

I motioned to Stan. He stared back unmoving from his place on the couch. I glared, eyes narrowed. I put my hand over the phone.

I have to be there Wednesday morning. I have to do this treatment. I clutched Cecilia’s sleeping body closer, and she burrowed into my neck.

Stan exhaled, jaw twitching. What time?

I spoke back into the phone, what time?

Can you still make 11am honey? It’s going to take longer the first day because we have to get you all hooked up. You’ll have lunch and be home by 2.

I answered, staring at Stan. 11am is just fine, I’ll be there.

After I hung up, Stan stood up. I’ll just go tell my mom that you have to cut our visit short and she’ll need to visit her granddaughter today because there isn’t going to be another day.

You were the one who insisted we come up here in the first place, I hissed. And she’ll have all day tomorrow because it’s not like you’re actually going to give me time to travel.

Stan’s eyes narrowed, and he disappeared wordlessly in search of Doris Hawkins.

I shook my head and attempted a couple deep cleansing breaths, trying not to let the waves of anger disturb my precious cargo. Too late, she began to stir. Maybe it was just hunger. Cecilia let out a wail and my breasts immediately let down.

Fine, tell her, I called after Stan’s retreating form. But just remember, it’s not like I’m doing this on purpose.

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CHAPTER 3

December 2007

You can’t take the baby in with you.

What do you mean? Where’s she going to go? I wanted to wail. I wanted to shriek and scream at the top of my lungs and throw myself on the ground and have a good long toddler tantrum. My hair was barely brushed, my shirt was stained with milk and snot, and I was still post-birth lumpy. And now I had to leave Cecilia with Stan? Stan who never once before had changed a diaper or gotten up in the night with her, or bathed her or even cooed? No. Unacceptable.

The nurse was unmoved. She pointed to the sign: Carcinogens Present, No Children.

Stan put his hands on the stroller. My throat filled with bile. I resisted the urge to strangle him. Barely.

I’ll take her, we’ll be fine.

Go to my mom’s house, ok? She’ll help you; you can leave Cecilia with her if you need to go. I know you need to go to work.

We’ll be fine. Stan turned with Cecilia, my child, oh how I hated the thought of sharing her with him at all, and walked away.

Come on honey, let’s go. The nurse opened the door.

I’ll call you when I’m done, I called after him. Without turning around or slowing, Stan lifted his hand and waved.

I followed the nurse down the hall. Again I endured the weight and blood pressure drill that was so desperately familiar from monthly pre-natal check-ups. Shockingly, I was already down to 125 from my maximum pregnancy weight of 160 the day I checked in to the hospital to give birth the month before. At least now I knew that I hadn’t sleep-eaten myself into that huge pregnancy weight, it was all the unswallowed amniotic fluid from Cecilia’s Little Problem. I followed the nurse into a large open room scattered with big brown vinyl armchair recliners. There were a few beds too, occupied by women wearing head scarves and hooked up to IV’s. I picked a chair with no neighbors nearby and sat down. Another nurse appeared with a warm blanket.

Here you go sweetie, she said, wrapping it around me.

The wave of warmth wrapped me in a cocoon of comfort and soothed me. The room was hushed, and smelled of Hospital. The sprinkling of armchair patients were all female, ranging in age from very old to well, me. They all looked so normal.

Another nurse arrived. Let’s get a look at those veins, which arm do you want this line in?

I looked at her blankly.

We’ll keep it in for the whole treatment so you don’t have to get restuck.

But I have a baby, and I have to bathe her and what if she grabs it?

The nurse was about my age I think. She nodded. We tape it down, but you can decide to leave it or not later. For now, which arm? She grabbed my left hand, and cooed. Oh you have nice big veins!

Yeah, I’ve always been easy to stick.

Until now that is. Even though I’d been giving myself daily Copaxone injections right through the first trimester, and let’s not even go there because I was still wracked with guilt over making that now seemingly ill-fated decision, I couldn’t look when she stuck the needle in my arm. I noticed how enormous it was and almost fainted. The pain was intense.

Uh oh.

Uh oh what? What is uh oh, that is never a good thing to say when you’re jamming a needle in someone’s arm. I scolded. She chuckled.

Well, you rolled. That little bugger rolled right away from me. I heard rustling. I need to stick you again sweetie, sorry.

I tried to find a focal point in that cheerless brown and white room while she poked and prodded. I guess pregnancy changes everything, including one’s perfect veins. I exhaled loudly after attempting yet another deep cleansing breath.

So you’ve got MS? The nurse finally asked.

Yep. I was diagnosed my first year out of law school and I’ve been great for the last six years, but I guess having a baby threw me off.

That happens. She nodded sympathetically. Do you have a picture?

I did actually, the Christmas picture card that I’d insisted on sending out as if nothing was out of place in our new family. I showed the nurse my little pink and wrinkled old-man newborn baby. Cecilia was smiling and wearing the little pink tulip hat that my co-worker Nicole knitted for her.

Oh, she’s beautiful!

Thanks. She was in the hospital for two weeks, and came home just before that picture was taken. I tucked the picture back into the book I brought for distraction.

What happened? The nursed asked. She was still fiddling with needles and tubes. I tried not to pay attention.

She was born with a tracheoesophageal fistula and she had surgery the night she was born. I swallowed the knot of guilt in my throat. They took her to Children’s Hospital in Oakland and she was there for two weeks, but she’s doing great.

I smiled, forcing cheerfulness.

I guess that was why I ended up living in the Bay Area. The hospital where I gave birth was just a mile down the road from the Children’s hospital so Cecilia didn’t have to travel far when they took her.

The nurse patted my arm. That’s great sweetie. You know, babies are amazingly resilient, she’s going to be fine.

Fine. That’s what everyone kept telling me. Fine. But what about me? Was it all my fault she was born that way?

The nurse finally found the vein. I had to wait awhile for the bag of medicine to arrive from the hospital. Dr. Denker stopped by to explain to me that yes, he really felt I needed this boost to jumpstart my immune system again, but I might experience periods of mania from the drug. I showed him Cecilia’s picture too.

All newborn babies are ugly. Dr. Denker said.

She’s beautiful to me. I snapped, slipping the picture back into my book.

Congratulations on your baby girl, Dr. Denker said quietly as he stood to leave.

Finally, I was hooked up to my drip just like all the other armchair warriors being filled with some kind of poison. I made eye contact with another women, and smiled. Her face was grey under colorful head scarf, and she looked like she had black eyes, the circles under them were so pronounced. We were a club. A club of mothers, and wives, and women facing life’s most difficult challenges. They were all so brave. I felt very alone.

Val smiled gently. Melanie, it sounds like your Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis was something you handled very well, but I also hear a lot of negative self-talk in how you attribute Cecilia’s medical problems directly to you.

I sniffled and dabbed my fingers into the corners of my eyes to wipe away tears without smearing my mascara. Val handed me a tissue box and I dabbed my eyes again.

I wanted to be normal. I was diagnosed with MS during my second semester of my first year of law school. I thought I was a freak law school student with phantom stress symptoms. I started taking daily injections during second year, and my clinical supervisor at the family law clinic gave me a bunch of books about managing MS naturally. I took a bunch of vitamins and was kind of an exercise freak before and after the diagnosis, so other than that first major flare-up where my midsection was numb and my ankles felt like they poked into nothing, I felt fine.

You gave yourself a shot? Val asked.

I nodded, yes, in a different location every day, legs, stomach, hips. Not my arms though, they were too skinny and every time I did that it hurt like hell.

So you had problems again after Cecilia was born, is that why you had the Solu-Medrol treatment? Val had a very good memory for names of things and people, I was impressed.

Yep. While I was on maternity leave I transferred offices up to Sacramento from San Francisco—I’m a deputy attorney general with the state-because-I stopped again, it was all so confusing and convoluted. Stan owned a house in Moraga, he refused to pay for daycare near where I worked in San Francisco because ‘he wasn’t paying a mortgage payment for daycare’ and I should just stay home and we could move to the middle of nowhere in Idaho or something so the cost of living was cheaper. One night, when I was still pregnant with Cecilia, there was a pretty good little earthquake that hit while we were sitting on the couch.

Stan just shook his head and said I’m going to have to sell this house soon before another earthquake hits and it falls down the hill.

Stunned, I asked, don’t you have earthquake insurance? You grew up in the Bay Area; I thought everyone had earthquake insurance. I didn’t even think it was an option not to have it.

Of course I don’t have earthquake insurance, why the hell would I pay for that?

Uh, so you can rebuild your house when it falls down?

The land this house sits on is worth more than enough to buy somewhere else and build a better house than wasting my money on insurance I might never use.

That seems really risky.

I wanted to move back to Woodland or Sacramento and escape the whole situation. By then, even though I was pregnant, I knew I needed to get away from Stan. I didn’t know who I was anymore, and I felt trapped. Stan ended up telling me, yes, telling me he wouldn’t pay for daycare in the City. Our relationship quickly evolved into him ordering me around and me behaving as if I had no voice.

By the time I transferred, I never even bothered to question Stan anymore, on anything. It was easier to avoid confrontation. Stan told me I would transfer offices. I left a job working as an associate in a family law firm after about eight months, once I’d passed the bar on my second try. After I left I got a job with the Attorney General’s office, I think partly because I was honest with them about taking the bar twice and having no expectation of getting hired. I let go of any expectation of getting the job, and it happened. Because Stan wanted to unload his Moraga house, the plan was to move in with Ellie while he closed the house deal and then he would join Cecilia and me at Ellie’s. After that, we’d buy a house nearby. Stan dragged his feet, and every house I found no matter how perfect it was, had something wrong with it. I knew what was wrong, me. Me, the baby, the location, everything. He didn’t want this. I didn’t want this. But he wouldn’t admit it. Any problem was entirely my fault.

I shook my head, collecting my thoughts.

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