The Storm (Fairhope) by Laura Lexington

Author:Laura Lexington [Lexington, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: novel
Published: 2014-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

A BLOOD PRESSURE monitor, no sodium, and small meals every two hours were my prescription for survival after a day in the hospital. Twenty-four hours of poking, prodding, ultrasounds, blood work, and flurried visits from worried family and friends left me exhausted. Dr. Wilson was concerned about Calla’s lungs, and since there was miraculously no protein in my urine, decided an induction could wait a few more days.

Julianne, armed with chocolate donuts and my favorite Coke, the kind with the crushed ice from Sonic, discovered me semi-conscious in my driveway after making the trip from Biloxi. Her spontaneous visit was meant to take away the sting of losing my job at what might have been the worst possible time in my life, and instead, she found herself panicked and dialed 911. I had gone all day without eating, again, too distressed over the morning’s finality of losing my job to think about food.

I tried feverishly to obey Dr. Wilson’s bed rest demands, but my desperate need for distraction sidetracked me. Nesting is a tame word for the act I performed in my home. I could have served dinner off the toilet, licked the patio floors, or had sex against the sink in the utility room. When I ran out of Clorox, I propped myself up to paint, but sadly realized I was out of most of the primary colors.

Swelling rapidly, I reluctantly wobbled to our spotless bedroom and popped my cell phone off the charger, scrolling carefully through the dozens of missed calls to decide who to face first. I prepared myself for sympathy (job loss) and worry (after third hypoglycemia scare).

Sympathy was not the primary reaction of most of my friends. All they heard was the word “severance,” and even my sister-in-law reeked of jealousy.

“You’ve won the lottery,” doll-faced Jessica said. “How wonderful, Jana! You get to be a stay-at-home mom! What a gift.” Jessica and Daniel had been trying to conceive for at least a year.

I pondered her reaction, a humongous bite of a chocolate chip cookie beckoning me to indulge myself. “Jessica, I am actually very upset. I loved my job, and the money was unbelievable.”

“God has a plan! Besides, Andrew’s doing great, right? Daniel was bragging on him the other day. Once Calla arrives, you will see that this is a blessing! When she gets in school, you could always teach, like me. I think you’d love it!”

What I thought is that I would rather have been even Brooke Bennett’s associate, sentenced to a career of ass-kissing and fudging data, than a room stocked full of runny-nosed, back-talking elementary students.

“Thanks for the suggestion. It’s scary reading about how people cannot find comparable jobs. I feel depressed every time I hear about the housing crisis, and this ‘affordable’ health care is not so affordable.” I’d cried after seeing the figures quoted for my family of three.

Jessica hesitated. “Will you try to sell in that industry again?”

The thought of breaking back into the male-dominated world of medical device

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