“Mrs. Harman?”
“Yes?” I say coldly.
“Would that be any trouble?”
“I’m not sure why you’re calling me personally, Mr. Rogers. Don’t you usually just send a written request? Is there something in particular you’re interested in?”
“No, we just want to make sure we have a complete account of what went on with Mrs. Blandon.”
I can’t think what to say. How about Are you going to sue me, you shit? That comes to mind. I shouldn’t be talking to this guy anyway. He isn’t my lawyer. He doesn’t have my interests at heart. I can feel my pulse pounding. Breathe in … breathe out.
“Well, you know, Mr. Rogers, I am awfully busy. Why don’t you have your assistant return what we’ve sent and I’ll have someone go through the chart to see if anything’s missing. I rather doubt it. As I remember, Rae was not a patient here for very long.”
There’s a pause on the line. “Very well, if that’s the way you want things.” The voice has gone reptilian. “We’ll get that request in the mail tomorrow.” He hangs up.
When I finally stop shaking, I grab my coat and leave the empty office running. Driving up the hill into Blue Rock Estates, I’m gripping the steering wheel so hard I can’t swerve in time and crunch a baby rabbit under the right front tire and I start to cry again. When I open the front door, Roscoe tries to squeeze out and I hear that I’ve left the stereo on.
I miss Tom. What optimistic thing will he now say about the serpent Blake Roger’s call? Tom’s cup is perpetually half full. Mine is half empty, not even that. Sometimes I think that without him, I would spin into darkness.
Stripping off my tailored slacks and striped blue shirt, I notice a streak of red in my underpants. It’s the second time this month I’ve had bleeding. I’d thought I was through with all that. It must be the stress. Then I flop on the bed in my sweats. A Grateful Dead song fills the room. How many times has it played today?
We will survive, the song says. Things are bad and getting worse, but we will survive. The music is infectious, and I smile in spite of myself.
I take a deep breath. “Yeah? No matter what? We will survive?” Outside, the last of the sunset shows blood red over the mountains under dark clouds.
If I weren’t so wiped out, I’d get up and dance. I lie there on my back and dance with my arms. I can’t help it. It’s that kind of tune. We will survive. We will get by.
The song says so.
CHAPTER 10
Falling Stars
It’s a clear evening with the bare black branches silhouetted against a lavender sky. I sit waiting at the window with my Stress Relief tea. Tom and I were going to go riding, but he had a call from Dr. Leonard Noble, medical staff director and chairman of the peer-review committee at Community Hospital. All day, Tom’s been tense, worrying that Dottie Teresi’s case will be brought up and some kind of restrictions will be put on his privileges. Leonard Noble is a legend in the Torrington medical community. The former thoracic surgeon, who has Parkinson’s disease, is now the hospital’s chief of staff. I met him once and have never forgotten his intimidating, narrow dark eyes, the way he has of looking right through you. I don’t trust him, and I’m worried about Tom.
The front door opens, and Roscoe runs wiggling to her master. I hear Tom’s briefcase hit the tile floor. “In here,” I say. “How’d it go? Want some tea?”
“Yeah. I gotta use the john first.” I go to the kitchen and pour another mug from the still steaming red kettle. I’m biting my tongue, trying not to ask everything at once, as I usually do.
Tom comes up behind me loosening his tie and hugs me.
“So … ? How was it?”
“Not so bad. We didn’t talk about Teresi at all.”
“No? What was it, then? What was the meeting for?”
“It turned out it was about that new guy who’s interviewing for the CEO position. Noble wanted my perspective.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s pretty much it. I was the one that brought up clinical issues.”
“Like what?”
“I told him I planned to work with another surgeon as my assistant instead of an OR tech from now on. Most of the group practices already do. It will make it harder to get patients scheduled for surgery if I have to ask Dr. Hazleton or Parsons, but it’s better to do it voluntarily than to have limits put on my surgery. And I’m not going to take medical students or residents from the university into the Community Hospital OR with me anymore either. I was really worried after Dottie’s long hospitalization. The hospital lost money on that one. Want some wine?”
“Sure,” I say, giving up on the tea. I’ve been trying not to drink alcohol other than my sleep medicine except on special occasions, but I guess this qualifies.
After dinner, sitting close on the porch in our pajamas and robes with a thick down quilt over us, we finish the bottle of chardonnay. It’s a clear dark night, no moon yet. I slip my hand between Tom’s legs under the cover. He’s staring straight down into the woods at the reflection of the lights across the cove. “What are you thinking?” I ask.
“Oh, just how much I like the quiet. You know. Just fantasizing about what it would be like not to have to worry about this stuff, just imagining another life.” He grins.
I’m feeling a little light-headed and move my hand up his thigh. Not much reaction. I fool around a little. “Remember, I suggested before that we could quit. I’m still willing. Maybe you could get a job teaching anatomy at the medical school.”
Tom raises his eyebrows. “Spend all day in the lab cutting up cadavers with the smell of formaldehyde?”
“Well, there wouldn’t be any complications! No peer-review committee watching over your shoulder. No lawyers ready to sue you!” This cracks me up.
Tom smirks at me sideways into the dark. “Right.” He finally notices my hand. “Let’s not talk about work now, okay?”
We kiss in the dark. He’s been so low lately. I’ve been looking forward to doing something nice for him. It turns me on. Laughing, we spread the quilt on the porch floor and throw the other half over us, squirming around to get comfortable.
Then I hold on while we soar through the night. Afterward, lying on our backs, looking up, we see three falling stars.
HEATHER
I’m sitting at my desk reading, with relief, a long overdue e-mail from our accountant, Rebecca. I returned from France last week, she says, but now have the flu. Don’t be concerned about the quarterly taxes. I applied for an extension before I left. There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll work on them next week.
When I look up, I find Linda from the front desk standing at my office door. “Yesssss?” I draw this out in a comical way like the evil boss on a TV sitcom. I’m in a good mood.
“Did you see my note?” she asks, not clowning around. There’s something stiff about the way she stands there.
“What note?” I turn back to my keyboard. I’m finishing my reply to the accountant, asking for a meeting to discuss the practice’s finances. My desk is a mess, covered with unopened mail and little yellow stickies to remind me of all I should do.
“I left you a note this morning. It’s about Heather Moffett. I was looking at a week-old Torrington Tribune and there’s an article in the obituaries. I think it’s Heather’s boyfriend.”
Linda leans across me in her pink gingham-checked scrubs, her red ringlets falling, and rummages around on my desk. “Here.” She pokes a piece of white paper at me. The sheet has an obituary neatly cut out and taped to it. A question mark is scrawled on the side and Heather Moffett printed on top. I carefully read the short notice. Thomas Joseph Morris, nineteen, died at Torrington State University Medical Center. He is survived by … It was ten lines.
“Shit!” I shake my head. “I just can’t believe it. First Heather loses the twins and now this … And she’s still pregnant with his new baby. Have you guys heard anything?” Linda and Donna grew up in Torrington and are acquainted with or rela
ted to half the people in town.
“Nope, not really. I knew he was into drugs though. Big time. It was probably an overdose. The paper doesn’t say, but I bet it was an overdose. I’ll get you the chart.”
“Yeah, I’ll have to call Heather.” Shit.
After lunch I find Linda has clipped Heather’s phone number to the young woman’s yellow chart and placed it in the middle of my desk. I try five times to reach her but can’t. There’s a fast beeping sound, like the phone’s off the hook. Later my receptionist leaves a different number and note on my desk: Call Heather Moffett. I notice there’s an unfamiliar area code, and I remember that the girl’s parents live out of state.
This time it’s answered on the first ring. A woman’s crisp voice. “Moffett residence.”
“Yes. Hi. This is Patsy Harman in Torrington. Is Heather Moffett there?”
“You are … ?” Said suspiciously.
“Patsy Harman, nurse-midwife, in Torrington, West Virginia. I used to be Heather Moffett’s OB provider, her midwife. I was given this number to reach her.” I’m cleaning up my desk with the phone tucked under my ear.
The woman’s voice brightens as she recognizes the name. “Oh yes, one moment please … Heather!” she calls.
An extension’s picked up in another part of the house and a soft, low female voice comes on cautiously. “Hello?”
“Hi, Heather. It’s Patsy, Patsy Harman at the women’s clinic in Torrington. How are you doing?”
“Oh, hi.” Even lower, giving up all pretense of cheerfulness.
“I heard what happened to T.J. I’m sorry …”
“Yeah, T.J. is dead.”
Heather’s voice is so faint, I have to strain to hear it. My hands grow still and my heart very quiet. “I just read about it this week. Linda found the notice in the newspaper. I’ve been trying to get hold of you but there was no answer at your old place. Where are you, anyway?”
“I’m with my folks in Georgia.”
“Are you okay? I mean, I know you aren’t okay. But are you hanging in there? How’s the pregnancy going?”
“Fine, I guess. Everything’s fine that way.”
“And the baby is growing? Kicking and everything?”
“Yeah, it’s good. It’s moving a lot.” There’s still no enthusiasm. “I just feel so bad. It’s his baby and he’ll never get to see it.” There are tears in her voice, and for a moment the silence hangs on the phone lines. “T.J. overdosed. I never even got to say good-bye.” You can tell that she’s crying. They say it’s therapeutic to cry but sometimes there’s a limit to how many tears you can shed.
“You told me you were afraid something would happen to him.” I picture the lean, graceful T.J. “He’d been in the hospital before.”
“I knew it would happen. When I left Torrington, I just knew, but I couldn’t stay with him. I was working my butt off, remember? I worked at the Discount Supply Depot, the warehouse down on the river. I liked my job, but I was six months pregnant and sometimes I was so tired I would almost faint. He told me he couldn’t get work, so I was supporting us. No matter how tired or sick I was, I showed up. We needed the money.
“Then I found out he had a job. Can you believe it? All this time he was working, spending his money on drugs, and I was busting my butt to pay rent.” She takes a breath. “I found his pay stub one day, and I let him have it.
“Well, that was the last time I saw him … He stormed out, slammed the door. I just sat there and cried.” She pauses to blow her nose and clear her throat. “I was working so hard and all that time he had a cake job, getting ten dollars an hour at an auto-body shop and spending his money, money we needed, on dope. I never even got to say good-bye—”
Someone from a distance says, “Heather?”
“I’m all right, Mom.” Then the girl’s voice breaks again. “I blame myself. I knew it would happen, but I just couldn’t stay. With a baby coming, I just couldn’t live with him anymore.” There’s another silence.
“Oh, Heather,” I say, cradling the phone as if I held her, “I know you feel guilty. Anyone would. But it wasn’t your fault. You know that. You have to forgive yourself.”
We talk some more. “I have a good doctor,” Heather tells me. “He’s the same one that delivered me. I just feel so sad that T.J. will never see his baby. I think it will look like him. It’s a boy, by the ultrasound … I just feel so sad.”
I take a deep breath and let it hang.
Celeste comes into the office quietly and sets the timer on my desk for three minutes, alerting me that a patient is ready in exam room 2. She pats my shoulder, noticing my tears and knowing by the chart open on my desk to whom I’m talking.
“Well, I gotta go. They have a patient waiting.” I wipe my eyes. “Heather?”
“Yeah.”
I want to tell her that the pure light within her will guide her way on, but instead I say, “Will you call me when the baby comes? Or anytime. Tell the nurses I said you can interrupt me if I’m seeing patients. It’s okay.” We say good-bye and there’s no way I can hug the young woman.
On the way home from work in the Civic I sing the song I learned on the commune. I sing it to Heather: May the long time sun shine upon you, All love surround you, And the pure light within you, Guide your way on.
Circle
I have my women’s meditation group at five and end up leaving a pile of charts stacked in the corner of my desk again. I’ve attended this group every other Monday for more than a year and it means a lot to me. Until we stopped delivering babies, I didn’t have time to make friends. Now I sit in silence for twenty minutes every other week with women my age who wear Birkenstocks and jeans or long skirts and sandals. Half of us grew up in West Virginia. The rest moved here when we were hippies. Two of the women remember visiting our communal farm near Spencer, but that was twenty years ago. Zari and Carolyn have a homeschool consulting business, and Jean is a therapist with her husband. Mandy is a technical writer and Alice an artist. Three of us are nurses of one kind or another. Two are retired social workers. Almost everyone but me works part-time.
After our meditation we discuss books on Buddhism or radical Christianity. We eat bran muffins and carrots, or maybe a fancy soufflé or scones, if someone feels creative. And chocolate. Can’t have a meeting without chocolate!
Today I keep thinking about motherhood. When you have children, you unlock yourself to pain. Not just the contractions of childbirth, which split a woman open like a seed, but the pain that will inevitably come later, the pain of a son’s broken arm or his broken heart. The pain of his loneliness, rejection, or failure. Sometimes the pain of his death.
I shift in my seat, flashing on Heather, all the hurt and grief she’s had in her young life already, losing the twins and now T.J., all the pain she still will go through. I shut my eyes tight and pray a strong prayer, directing the energy from this group of women toward her. And toward T.J. too. May he find peace.
Then I focus my attention and follow my breath. Breathe in again slowly. The universe breathes too. The tide rises and falls. An acorn sprouts, grows to an oak, then dies and nourishes another kernel of life. The puddles of yesterday’s rain evaporate and come down again as a cloudburst. I pray for my sons, that the stars will dance with them, that the sun will befriend them, that the radiance of the full moon will enfold them … Breathe in and breathe out …
The women are stirring. “Let us come back to the room,” Zari says.
At the end of the meeting we hold hands, then bow to each other like Buddhist monks, with our palms pressed together in front of our chests. I am so honored to be with these women, all of whom glow.
“Namaste,” we say, looking into each other’s eyes.
“I greet the light within you.”
HOLLY
“You know these medications are habit-forming, don’t you?”
Holly Knight slouches in the guest chair, stretching her long legs out across the exam room. She has puffy dark
circles under her eyes and looks like hell. I continue my lecture. “Not physically addicting, but habit-forming. If you use them too much you won’t be able to go to sleep without them, not even nap.” I don’t tell Holly how I know this. I don’t tell her about the forty-eight sleepless hours I went through downstairs in our guest room one weekend to get them out of my system. I don’t tell her about the sleep medicine in the little jam jar I use now.
It’s a quarter to twelve, and a drug rep is serving us luncheon in the conference room today. I don’t care about the food, but it’s bad form not to show. We like getting their samples of birth control pills, hormone replacements, and antidepressants for our patients. We accept their lasagna, tossed salad, and cheesecake in return for a five-minute lecture on why their products are better than others.
“So except for sleep problems, you doing okay?” I soften. “How are the hot flashes?” The patient’s not herself today, seems distracted and frazzled, and I decide to slow my inner clock and pay attention. “Are the hot flashes worse?”
Holly shrugs. Her usually coiffed hair is pulled back in a low ponytail; she wears no makeup. I’ve never seen Holly without makeup. Her face is blotchy and lined, making her green eyes look bigger, like they’re swallowing her face, and there’s a yellow pallor just under the skin. “Are you doing okay?”
I glance at her vital signs on the chart. Blood pressure and weight look good, pulse is fine, everything’s stable. “So what’s going on? Is it menopause, what?”
“It’s the night sweats. They’re happening again. And the mood swings. I’m losing it … I’m not sure if it’s hormones or stress.” I wait, let her tell it. “Nora’s in the ICU again. It’s the same old thing. I knew when she started spitting up blood that I had to do something. John says she has to choose to stop being bulimic, that she has to choose to live. But she has to be in her right mind to choose, doesn’t she?” I nod. I’ve never seen Holly like this before. She pulls her hair back from her face, adjusts the ponytail holder, and wipes her tears with the back of her hand.
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