#53: The Limits of Trust.
What Are the Odds? #6. Vicky and Chuck.
Recap: On Sunday September 30th, I wrote an essay called “What Are the Odds? Part 1,” about four of my friends who had the opportunity to make a major life change in the next 24 hours. I planned to write a follow-up report later that week. But it took me three weeks and three essays just to tell Melissa’s story, which ended when I visited her mom and learned her stories (and her goal) were largely fabrications.
Which brings us to Chuck and Vicky…ah, what a tangled web they weave.
As always, the names and some details have been changed—more than usual in this case since it was virtually impossible to keep track of them all anyway. Also, sorry for the length of this one—like I said, it’s a tangled web they weave, that’s hard to cut without getting tied up in knots.
When we left off in What Are the Odds? Part 2, Chuck was planning to move to the family farm in another other part of the state, where he could live rent free and make money to get them out of the cycle of poverty and homelessness they’d tumbled into. Vicky would either go with him or join him later.
BUT WAIT!!! First, we need to go back six months or so.
One day, early last Spring, Chuck told me Vicky was pregnant. But several people told me she’d said that before and then, a month or so later, say that she’d miscarried.
When Chuck told me how excited he was to have a baby, I mentioned the miscarriages. He admitted even he found them a bit curious because he hadn’t thought he could conceive. Now, to me, it seems only one of those facts could be true. But what do I know?
To be generous, perhaps Vicky just thought she was pregnant—a condition known as Pseudocyesis. To be equally generous, maybe Chuck couldn’t tell the difference between a very early term miscarriage and a very heavy period.
Then, one day, when back-of-the-envelope (or, I suppose, cardboard sign) calculations implied Vicky was five or six months pregnant, Chuck pounded on my door and told me that he urgently needed gas money because Vicky had just been taken to the medical center 60 miles away. He hadn’t been allowed to ride in the ambulance, but he had a friend who would take him. When I asked why she was hospitalized, he said that her cancer was spreading and getting too close to the embryo, so they had to do a Caesarean.
Oh yeah, her cancer. The verdict is out on that one. Most people now believe it. In fact, the more conspiracy-minded are suggesting that the small bump she appeared to be showing wasn’t pregnancy but bloating from the cancer.
The next day, Chuck showed up back in town and told me proudly that he was the father of a baby boy! He’d been allowed to stay with Vicky the first night and the hospital had a place for him to stay for a couple more nights. He was just back to pick up some things.
Oh yeah, he needed a little gas money. Again. No surprise there. For me, that kind of thing had become the price of admission into the slings and arrows of their outrageous fortunes.
I gave him a big congratulatory hug and listened with concern when he told me mom was in some pain and the infant was in the NICU, but seemed to be doing OK for a premature baby born to a mother in a methadone program.1
Oh yeah, the methadone. I was pretty sure Chuck had been clean for at least six months. I’m not sure about Vicky. She’d sworn to me several times that there’s no way she’d use while she was pregnant. But she’d behaved in ways that made me believe that even if she was opioid-free, she may have occasionally dabbled in amphetamines and/or crack. My friend Kenny told me he heard her screaming maniacally at Chuck one morning—and he tents on the other side of the river.
There were, however, a couple of odd things about this story. First, Chuck said he hadn’t actually seen the baby in the NICU. Allegedly, because they aren’t married so he hadn’t been allowed in.
Also, I knew that no general motion had been filed at the court regarding an infant born to a homeless mother addicted to at least methadone and perhaps crack.
Oh yeah, the court motion. When a child is born to a mother with an addiction, a homeless one in particular, the Department of Children and Families almost always gets involved. If possible, the child will be placed with a relative, but, regardless, there has to be a court hearing within 48 hours to see if DCF was correct in getting involved in the first place. At that point, the court has to assign a lawyer to the baby and find a volunteer Guardian ad Litem.2 Since I am one, I get all the emails looking for one of us to take a new case based on a general description like “2-day-old infant born to addicted and homeless mother in [name of town],” along with a few other details that might give us an idea how much time it could take for the child to be safely reunified with their parents or, if that proved impossible, adopted (a process that can take anywhere from a month to 18 years… Under the circumstances, I was surprised I hadn’t received an email with a description that might have some similarity, any similarity, to the situation of Vicky, Chuck, and the newborn. Not conclusive but curious.
Still, I didn’t see Chuck for a while, so I figured there really was a baby and Chuck had found a place to stay near the hospital while Vicky recovered, and the baby needed to be in the NICU.
A couple of weeks later, however, Chuck began reappearing like the proverbial bad penny or, I suppose, proverbial $10 bill. Now, he needed money for this and that—you know, the kind of things a new mother needs. He also began making a brand-new series of promises he didn’t keep—a bad habit of his I was pretty used to. Including one involving a check he’d been paid for some work he’d done that he was going to sign over to me. I was pretty sure that banks don’t cash third-party checks if the party of the second part doesn’t have a bank account. Still, I figured since the alleged check was from a local business, I could get the guy who’d hired him to write it to me instead. When I showed the check to the shop owner, however, he didn’t recognize it.
Traditionally, Chuck’s favorite reason for saying he needs money has been for Medicaid co-pays for his Suboxone. Now he also had to deal with prescriptions for his chronic Lyme as well as heavy-duty pain killers because he had just broken his clavicle coming down a hill on a “borrowed” bike. Vicky also now had co-pays for the steroids she was taking to slow the progression of her, alleged, terminal cancer. [Co-pays for Medicaid recipients? See the footnote if you like trying to make sense of things that don’t really make sense.]3
Oh yeah, the bike accident. Well at least I saw some road rash that indicated either Vicky drew some rashes on his elbows and forehead or he’d had a bike accident.
But wait! A month or so later Kenny, my resident semi-unreliable source, came by and told me that Vicky was pregnant. I said that was impossible. She’d had a Caesarean the month before. In response Kenny, who loves knowing something I don’t know even when he doesn’t, said that time in the hospital had just been about the cancer combined with a false labor, but that Vicky was definitely pregnant now. 7½ months. Kenny said he’d even felt the baby kick.
The next time I saw Chuck—before he could even come up with some reason he needed money—I said, it was time for him to tell me what really happened…that pretending to have a baby, any baby, who didn’t exist was a bit over the line. I mean he could say Vicky fooled him—although I doubted it. Regardless, he must have known the truth at some point and never bothered to tell me. He kind of admitted she hadn’t really had the baby the first time, but this time she really had…just a week ago! He even had a picture of the baby, or some baby, to show me. But when I started asking details, he switched to asking me for a few bucks like the good old days. I just said, “Are you out of your f-ing mind?”
I didn’t know what to think except that even after I heard a month a later they were back in town with a baby, some baby, and that the baby, some baby, had been placed with her parents, I never saw Vicky and rarely saw Chuck and, when I did, he just gave me updates on the baby and sometimes didn’t even finish his patented, “Could you do me a huge favor?” before I cut him off.
Either he knew I suspected he’d conned me the first time and didn’t want to push his luck or, hey, maybe this time they really had the baby and they’d moved in with her parents and he didn’t need to try to hustle me as much any more.
To be continued. That’s a long enough for now. But you won’t have to wait long! It’s hard enough to follow the plot as it is. So, I’ll get the next episode up tomorrow or the next day. Although, it might take me yet a third one to relate the surprise ending to the story of Chuck and Vicky making a major life change. I mean what are the odds?
Even if a mother is off opioids, the baby still has to be weaned from the methadone. But I guess there’s a better-established protocol for that since they can be pretty sure how much she was taking. Regardless, it has to be better than to be born with fentanyl in your system.
Being a Guardian ad Litem (called CASA—Court Appointed Special Advocate—in some places) is one of the most fascinating and fulfilling volunteer jobs out there. Every case is different and you don’t have to sit on a board!! Be in touch if you want more info.
There are co-pays with Medicaid? Who knew? I didn’t. I made stab at explaining this in my post Falling Through the Safety Net (where there’s also a bit more about his bike accident.) You can find a more official explanation on the Government Medicaid website. The key fact here is that, yes, there are minor Medicaid copays. You can’t be denied a prescription if you don’t have it but “enrollees may be held liable for unpaid copayments.” Also, Vicky’s Medicaid was somewhat screwed up because she was supposed to have switched from a parent’s insurance. And Chuck’s was screwed up because he had been accused of something that I don’t understand and he claims he hadn’t done.
You are a kind and patient man with an open mind, an open heart, and a talent for story-telling. Thanks for being you, David.
Great writing. Looking forward to the other projects too.