“Oh, I’m good. I have someone else doing my Sunday service tomorrow, so I get to go home and put my feet up.”
“Would you like to get some coffee, or a drink or something?” Bobbi inwardly groaned. How the hell had that invitation come out of her mouth? She liked Erin on some level, but still had not come to grips with seeing her as a romantic prospect. She was a priest. She got in her way with patients. She was…something Bobbi couldn’t quite identify. But that something irked Bobbi. Pushed her buttons. On the other hand, Erin’s eyes and bright smile faced her right now, and she couldn’t look away.
Erin looked a little surprised, but she then smiled. “That would be nice.”
“How about the new microbrewery out on the highway?”
“Great. I love craft beer. Good Irish, Chicago South Siders, we O’Rourke’s would never turn down beer.”
Bobbi caught herself mesmerized by Erin’s pert lips turned up in a dazzling smile. “I can drive, then bring you back for your car, if you want.”
“To get home, I need to drive back past San Sebastian, which is not far from the brewery. No need to bring me all the way back here.”
“I’ll see you there in about fifteen minutes?” Bobbi reluctantly turned from Erin’s smile and toward her Honda.
At the microbrewery, after they got comfortable at a table, they both ordered Hefeweizens. “So, you’re a wheat beer drinker,” Bobbi said.
“Oh, yes. Chicago has great wheat beers. I grew up on them.” Erin busied herself checking her phone. “Sorry, just in case of a pastoral emergency.”
“I don’t know much about Chicago. I’ve been there a few times for medical conferences, but I fly in and out in forty-eight hours and don’t have time to take in the city. I like what I’ve seen of it.”
“I love it. Jazz and blues music. Chicago hot dogs, deep-dish pizza, and, of course, Goose Island beer. The Cubs. Music at Millennial Park in the summer and ice skating in the winter. The neighborhood festivals and Gay Pride Weekend. Great restaurants of all types. I love going by L anywhere. I used to bike to grad school from my apartment in Rogers Park. I love to people watch down at the Lake.” Erin eyed Bobbi intently. “What about where you’re from?”
“Eastern Oregon? Not much there, but beautiful mountains and high desert. We have some great beer, too.”
“I know, I know. I love some of the Oregon beer. Deshutes comes to mind. And you’re from a farm, then?” Erin asked.
“Ranch, not farm.”
“Oops, my Midwest showing.” Erin laughed lightly.
“Dad’s a rancher. Mom’s a third-grade teacher. My brothers are both back there. Matt ranches with Dad. He’s married with two kids. Little brother Mike’s a barista in Portland, plays bass in a band. A new-age hippie.”
Erin listened attentively, nodding. “I’m the third daughter of four. All my sisters are service types. Two are nurses, one a social worker.”
“That’s pretty interesting. Why do you think y’all are into human services?”
“Not hard to figure out. Dad’s an Episcopal priest. Mom’s a retired nurse. We were surrounded.” Erin huffed a small laugh.
Bobbi sipped her Hefeweizen and absorbed Erin’s graciousness and witty conversation. She smiled back at The Elf, who became more and more attractive.
“And coming out? How was that?”
Erin inhaled deeply. “Gee. Not that bad. I think Mom was more upset when I told her I was being called to the priesthood.” She grinned at the memory. “One of Mom’s sisters is a lesbian, so it didn’t faze my folks. My sisters all have gay friends, especially the two who are nurses. Why do there seem to be so many gay medical types?”
Bobbi raised her brows. “Darned if I know. I think you’re right, though, now that I remember the number of gays and lesbians in medical school and my residency.”
“Did you have a girlfriend before coming out to Colorado?”
Bobbi studied the condensation dripping on her beer mug and cleared her throat. “Yeah. Short term. We lasted six months during my residency.”
“Sorry.”
“No, no. Not like that. I, um…” Bobbi cleared her throat again. “It’s good it’s over. We didn’t make the best couple, let’s say.”
Erin gazed at Bobbi, not responding.
She’s in her pastoral counseling mode, Bobbi thought. “Did you have a girlfriend in Illinois?”
“No. I dated a few women in grad school. But since seminary, I haven’t dated much. The work of seminary contained both emotional and intellectual challenges, not to mention challenges to your faith. I had a pretty intense time of it, so didn’t feel very much like dating, although I bonded with seminary friends through the experience. I imagine in the same way you may have bonded with medical school friends.”
“The competitiveness of medical school makes bonding and being friends hard. Everyone’s trying to outdo the other person, so no. I didn’t bond with people then. In my residency, I felt closer to friends. We had an emotional component to our training but nothing like seminary, I’ll bet.”
“In seminary, they challenge you to explore your emotional reactions to situations and people. You know, birth, death, and every family emergency parishioners go through. You’re trained to have a neutral response, to keep yourself well-balanced, and to respond, not react, to people. I’d already had that training in pastoral counseling. That was a no-brainer for me. I actually like doing funerals, where I can be pastorally present for families. And I enjoy Sunday worship. I talk to people and catch up on their lives. It’s what I do best, what I enjoy best.”
“Not weddings?” Bobbi was intrigued.
“Oh, no. Many—thankfully not Gen and Yancy’s wedding—but many weddings are filled with family angst. Mother and mother-in-law dynamics and what-all. Weddings seem to bring out the dysfunction in families. It drives me a little crazy. And don’t get me started on photographers and videographers who want to stand up on the altar to get their best shots.”
“On the altar?” Bobbi asked incredulously.
“Well, I may have exaggerated a little. But, yeah, they want to get right in the action. I have to remind them that the wedding is a ritual of the church, a solemn occasion, and that I’m in charge of the choreography, not them. I’ve had a few run-ins in my short time as a priest.”
Bobbi grinned and shook her head. “I like that, your ‘short time.’ Erin, you certainly make up for your lack of height with a powerful presence. I can see you now, bossing around some hulking guy as he lugs his video equipment.”
“Hey,” Erin huffed. “You’re disparaging a priest of the church here.”
Bobbi laughed outright. Between chuckles, she said, “Sorry…Mother Erin.”
“Since we’re being brutally honest, you don’t hesitate to throw your medical degree around, Doctor.” Erin eyed Bobbi with a smirk.
“Touché,” Bobbi, still laughing, said, then added cheekily, “Elf.”
They both drank their beer, chuckling.
“Gosh, what time is it?” Bobbi took her phone out of her breast pocket. “Wow, nearly midnight.”
“I need to get home before I turn into a pumpkin. I’m never out this late on a Saturday. I’d be a wreck on Sunday, and the sermon would sound like it was coming from aliens.” Erin stood. Bobbi helped her with her coat.
In the vestibule of the brewery, Erin turned to Bobbi, beaming. “Thank you, Doctor. I had fun getting to know you tonight. No matter how insulting you were towards the clergy.”
“Sorry. It was meant with the utmost respect for the clergy.” Bobbi shuffled her feet. She pondered her next move, but sailed full speed ahead. “Yeah, I had a good time, too. Would you like to go out to dinner some time? I, um, know you’re busy, but if—”
“I’d love that. Do you have my number?”
They exchanged phone numbers and said goodnight in the parking lot.
On the twenty-minute drive home, Bobbi smiled to herself. The Elf had been pleasant company, engaging even. She found hers
elf charmed by her laugh and easy manner. Was it only Chicago friendliness or did she treat everyone like this? She was a priest after all, and acceptance of everyone was in her toolkit…er, the Bible. Something like that, surely.
Ah, crap. What difference did it make? She’d call to schedule a time for dinner. They’d go out to eat, converse politely, then Bobbi would dutifully take her home. Erin, probably a goody-two shoes priest, was not likely to have casual sex, like Amanda. Erin was not the friends-with-benefits type.
Chapter Sixteen
It was Ash Wednesday.
Erin entered the church at five-thirty to finish readying for the six o’clock service. The liturgy lasted only a little longer than a normal Sunday, but always profoundly affected her, as well as those who came to participate. How could it not, when someone placed ashes in the shape of a cross on your forehead, and intoned the words, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return”?
Reminders of mortality bombarded parishioners all the time, as the news of death, whether someone close, or a catastrophe across the globe, found its way onto smart phones in a millisecond of its occurrence. Mass shootings, bombings, war, drug-overdose deaths of celebrities. Erin suspected that the over-exposure to death created a ho-hum reaction, an immunity from its reality, since death happened “over there,” to “them.”
Erin lamented that, in modern society, people handled death, even personal deaths of nearby loved ones, with a hands-off distance. They never really touched the body of their loved one; they didn’t dress it for viewing or spend a night vigil with it, in prayer. These old traditions died out with the rise of the embalming of bodies after the Civil War. When Erin’s grandmother, Bridget, died five years ago, the funeral home staff refused to let her dress her. Erin so wanted merely to have a last contact, a last bit of service she could do for Bridget, who had suffered so much in her final months from multiple problems and unrelenting pain. After seeing Bridget die such a death, Erin knew that hospice held the key to helping families and their loved ones go down the path toward death together, and she supported their work whenever she could.
She performed Mrs. Meredith’s funeral last week, about ten days after her hospice admission. She’d talked with the family about their wishes for the service. And, even though Mrs. Meredith couldn’t participate by speaking her wishes, the family had talked at length about these things with her before she entered into her coma. It was a good death, Erin thought.
These images of Mrs. Meredith’s death and funeral flowed through her memory this evening as people gathered in the nave. Later, as she marked each of their foreheads and said the words reminding them of their mortality, she felt she was doing her bit to assist her parishioners to treasure life because they understood their own eventual death.
****
That same evening, Bobbi took a call from the Cordero family with an eighteen-month-old child, Addison, who had contracted the flu. She admitted her to BCH with a very high fever and dehydration. The parents stayed in the girl’s room, while Bobbi waited on lab work.
Suddenly, Marty, Joe Manning’s wife, and one of tonight’s pediatric night nurses, found Bobbi in the doctor’s cubby around the corner from the nurses’ station. “Child convulsing in room 121.” She hurried off.
Bobbi leapt up from her chair and trailed the nurse to 121. “Mr. and Mrs. Cordero, we need you to exit please, so we can do our work with Addy. We’ll do everything we can to get her better,” Bobbi reassured them.
The mother and father, whose eyes were wild, clutched each other and left the room.
Bobbi called out for an anti-seizure medication, which Marty had brought with her. She injected Addy, whose little body continued to thrash in the bed. Marty held her softly to keep her from harming herself, while Bobbi placed a small safety guard in her mouth.
After five minutes, the seizures waned and the Addy’s body stilled. Too still. Bobbi took her stethoscope quickly to Addy’s tiny chest. No heartbeat.
Bobbi called out for cardiac stimulation drugs and Marty rushed out of the room. Meanwhile, Bobbi performed CPR on Addy, counting out the rhythmic downward pumps of her hand on her little chest.
Marty handed Bobbi the syringe and she quickly stabbed the needle into Addy’s heart. Bobbi checked the heart beat again. Nothing. She continued CPR.
“You can bag her, Marty,” Bobbi rasped.
Marty began to artificially pump air into Addy’s small body.
Bobbi and Marty continued the CPR for a long thirty minutes. Addy still did not breathe on her own.
With perspiration running down her forehead, Bobbi looked up at Marty and shook her head. Tears formed in the corner of Marty’s eyes.
“Time of death, one-forty-seven a.m. Will you clean her up? I’ll go talk with the Corderos.” Bobbi took off her gloves and tossed them into the bin, her heart steeling itself for her job.
The young couple stood huddled together down the hall. Bobbi gathered herself, breathed deeply, and led them into one of the consultation rooms, where they all sat around a small round table.
Bobbi looked intently at them, a smallish woman and her taller, but thin, husband, both in their late twenties. Too young, Bobbi thought. What a crappy thing.
Bobbi took a moment to steady herself. “Mr. and Mrs. Cordero, I am very sorry to tell you that Addy did not make it.”
Both the mother and father gasped. The mother paled and began to breathe rapidly. Bobbi carefully put her hand on top of Mrs. Cordero’s hand.
“I think she may have had some previous heart damage. The fever had been going on several days, you say?”
Mr. Cordero nodded, his face a pale mask of shock. “She began to have a fever about three days ago. We didn’t think anything was very wrong, just a cold, you know?”
Mrs. Cordero let out a small wail. “Oh, my God. My God. This can’t be happening.” She clung to her husband’s shirt and buried her head, sobbing. “This can’t be. My little Addy,” she said in a voice muffled by his shirt. “I need to see her. Be with her.”
After Bobbi had comforted the Corderos and seen them off into the night with their grief, then taken care of the paperwork on baby Addy, she walked down the stairs into the clear, cold night in a fog of emotional and physical exhaustion. Her first pediatric death.
Bobbi drove home into a rising sun. She didn’t have time to think or to feel. She quickly hopped in the shower in a daze, got dressed, and got on her way to the clinic. Her day began all over again.
Chapter Seventeen
She wasn’t on call the next night but answered a call from Dr. Garcia-Brown on one of her own patients. At seven, Jaime admitted seventy-four-year-old Mr. Nelson for cardiac telemetry when he complained of chest pain. His enzymes showed he’d had a minor heart attack. Bobbi worried about him, a long-time smoker with high cholesterol and high blood pressure, so she drove over to BCH at nine that night to check him out.
Jaime was glad to see her, as he was busy admitting another patient for pneumonia. Bobbi waited until more blood work results arrived, looked over the EKG, checked the patient’s vitals again, his meds, and talked with his wife briefly. Bobbi went home around two-thirty Friday morning.
Bobbi saw her full complement of patients on the clinic roster for Friday. She felt as if she was sleepwalking through the day. Her mind was sluggish, her reactions dulled. Several times, she asked patients the same question. No one complained. Maybe they thought the doctor checked on their answers by repeating the same question. Late Friday afternoon, Bobbi remembered she was to have dinner that night with The Elf.
A text came in just as she finished with her next to last patient. Erin wanted her to come to her house for dinner instead of going out. Bobbi didn’t know what she thought of that plan. It struck her as less safe than being together in a restaurant, where she wouldn’t be tempted to kiss her. But she was too tired to really care, and texted back that she would arrive at Erin’s at the appointed time. Erin answered her query about what to bring with th
e word, “Nothing.”
It was well after clinic closing hours when Bobbi finished her chart work. She rushed to the liquor department of the local grocery to buy a bottle of wine, then let the GPS guide her to Johnson County and Erin’s house. The road had cleared with the warmer temperatures, but the March weather had yet to become spring-like. Bobbi easily found the brick, two-story house next to a small white clapboard church.
****
Erin answered her door. Bobbi looked a wreck. Deep purple ringed her eyes. Her blue oxford button-down sported wrinkles and white stains graced the right lower hem of her navy cardigan. Even her normally in-place short hair stood up in the back. Erin’s heart went out to her, but she held back her instinct to gather her into her arms for comfort. The good doctor, a grown woman, certainly could take care of herself.
“Hi,” Erin said. “Come on in out of the cold.”
Bobbi stood rooted to the doorway. “Here’s a bottle of wine.”
Erin guided Bobbi by taking her forearm and pulling slightly. Bobbi shook her head, seeming to come out of a trance. “Sorry. I’m a little slow on the uptake tonight.”
Erin took her coat and pointed to a very warm and cozy living room. “Let me check on dinner. I thought it might be nice to eat here and not have to go out in the March weather. I hope you like Moroccan flavors. It’s a vegetable stew,” she called over her shoulder as she walked into the kitchen.
She stirred the stew, made the last preparations for a salad, then grabbed some cheese and crackers from the counter and reentered the living room. Erin placed the cheese plate on the coffee table, then brought some napkins from a sideboard on the opposite wall.
Bobbi walked the perimeter of the room, peering at Erin’s artwork. “You’re an impressionist lover,” she said, pointing to one of the prints.
“Yeah. The Art Institute of Chicago has a lot of impressionist art, and as a member, I’ve gone to several lectures there. I pick up prints here and there. Are you an art fan?”
Bobbi and Soul Page 10