by Ann B. Ross
Lloyd’s face brightened. “That could work, and I wouldn’t have to turn anybody down. At least it’d be better than what Mama came up with. She said I had to take the first girl to ask me, and I’d have to sit in the backseat with her and let J.D. drive us. But, see, I want to drive. I mean, what’s the use of having a car if you don’t get to drive it?”
“That’s a very good question,” I agreed. And, furthermore, I intended to take that matter up with Mr. Pickens just as soon as I could hem him up.
Chapter 5
*
I dreamed of Lloyd that night. I dreamed he was running for his very life while a bevy of wild-eyed, skimpily clad teenage girls, screaming their heads off, chased after him.
I woke up and lay there, blinking into the darkness, trying to rid myself of the image. Then I recalled Amy Randall’s tale of woe at the last circle meeting. Her son, Les, had covered himself with glory during the football season, and by so doing had been twice featured as Player of the Week in the Abbotsville Times.
“As soon as those pictures came out,” Amy had said, “his phone started ringing. It was one girl after another all afternoon, until I finally had to make him turn it off so he could eat his supper in peace. It certainly hadn’t been that way in my day.” And her day had not been that long ago.
Several of the other mothers of boys agreed with her, saying that their sons, too, had been on the receiving end of full-bore attention from girls.
“It starts in middle school,” Ida Monroe announced, speaking from the experience of raising four boys. “As soon as they move up to sixth grade, the girls start noticing boys and they’re off and running. And every last one of them has a cell phone.”
“If you think phone calls are bad,” Lisa Hudson had chimed in, “consider emails and tweets. Instagrams, too, and don’t forget YouTube and Facebook. At least you know when a phone rings. There’s no way to know what’s happening through the silent forms, and the young girls of today know them all.”
“Boy crazy!” Jessie Beasley had pronounced with a sniff, but her children were in their fifties, so she’d never had the problem of ever-present cell phones and instant messaging with their ability to reach out and touch someone without their parents knowing a thing about it. “Since when,” she’d gone on, “has it been that every child from age five and up has to have a cell phone of his own? I didn’t have my own phone till I was twenty-five and it was a Princess phone by my bed. And it couldn’t be glued to my hand, either.”
I’d seen Margaret Worsham turn her careworn face away and pretend she’d not heard the conversation. As the vigilant guard of a third daughter’s journey through puberty, she had probably fought the good fight as best she could. I had heard her say that the whole world of so-called social media was arrayed against her and every other mother in the land.
But the problem for me was that I’d thought Lloyd would escape such attention, so to suddenly learn that he was in for even more than his fair share of it had shaken me. I had viewed his entry into puberty with equanimity—even after learning that he was the proud owner of an electric razor. I’d been sure that as an undersized, glasses-wearing, nonathletic A student, he would escape the attention and the resulting pitfalls of being attractive to girls of his age. Nothing had surprised me more than to learn how wrong I was.
“Sam?” I whispered, having sensed a change in his breathing. “You awake?”
“Hm-m? Yeah, I guess. Why’re you awake?”
“Lloyd.”
“Lloyd? Why? What’s got you worried about him?”
“Those girls, Sam. Why’re they after him like that? He’s not a sports star or any kind of teen idol or whatever. Of course I know he’s head and shoulders above most boys his age, even though he’s shorter than most, too. I thought he would mature quietly and peacefully until he reached about thirty when he’d be able to choose a nice, sweet girl who would recognize his very real qualities, and they’d live happily ever after.”
Sam started laughing, shaking the bed, then he said, “Honey, those very real qualities you’re talking about have just been recognized a little earlier than you expected. Lloyd is a catch, didn’t you know that? You have to give those girls credit for recognizing what you and I already know.”
“But why? What do they see in him? I don’t understand it.”
“Personality, honey, and he’s got it in spades. Self-confidence, too, which is very appealing to women. I mean, I should know, shouldn’t I?”
I smiled and elbowed him. “Oh, you.”
“Look,” Sam went on, “he’s not what you and I would’ve called a dreamboat—and thank goodness for that—but he’s outgoing, courteous, and always willing to help. Pickens told me that there’s an open-door policy at their house with kids dropping in to get help with math or chemistry or whatever. And remember the tennis tournament last spring? Didn’t you notice he had his own cheering section?”
“Well, yes, but I thought that was just school spirit. Or something.”
“Oh, and remember this,” Sam said, “he’s president of his class and of the Latin Club, and he has some kind of office in the Key Club.”
“There’re only three members in the Latin Club, so that shouldn’t count.” I wasn’t yet willing to concede that Lloyd was any kind of catch.
“Okay,” Sam said, stifling a yawn, “I’ll give you that, but he’s always up to his neck in volunteer work of one kind or another. If anybody wants something done, he’s the first one they turn to. And one other thing, he’s fun to be with. He’s both likable and funny—a pretty unbeatable combination.”
“Well, shoo,” I said. “I thought I was the only one who sees how special he is.”
“No, you’re not the only one, but if it’ll make you feel better, I think those girls are after him because he’ll make sure they have a good time. He’s considerate, Julia. People like him.”
“Well, my word,” I said, beginning to see the boy in a new light. “I guess I just haven’t noticed the impression he makes on others, but I’ll have to say that I’ve always thought he would go far.”
Sam chuckled. “Yep, if he manages to survive high school.”
* * *
—
After being reassured by Sam that Lloyd’s natural good sense would keep his head on straight in spite of having become the center of female attention, I was able to turn to other matters of concern. To that end I called Sue Hargrove the next morning and asked her and the doctor to dinner the Saturday night before they were to leave.
“Oh, Julia,” she’d said, “we’d love to, but I’m afraid we can’t. The Crawfords are coming in Friday and staying with us. Don is the doctor who’ll be taking over while we’re gone, so Bob will be familiarizing him with the practice over the weekend. And,” she added with a laugh, “I guess I’ll be entertaining his wife and two children while trying to get packed. But it’s so nice of you to ask us.”
“Well, I apologize for waiting so long to do it. To tell the truth, Sue, the time slipped up on me. I thought it would be another week or so before you left. But I hope you both have a wonderful time. We will certainly miss you.” Which was an understatement if there ever was one.
“Thank you,” Sue said, “but we’ll be back, maybe sooner than anybody expects. I still can’t believe that Bob is willing to leave the practice even for a few days, much less for a couple of months. The only thing that attracts him is a medical meeting of some kind in Stockholm, which he really wants to attend. That’s how he rationalizes being gone. But, Julia, I hate to ask you because I know you never need to be asked to do the nice thing, but would you mind having the Crawfords over sometime—or at least introducing Lauren around a little?”
“Why, of course,” I said, readily agreeing to sponsor, so to speak, the new couple in town. “It would be my pleasure.” And more than that, it would be a way for me to take the measure of th
e physician in whose care we were being left.
Sometimes, I thought after we’d hung up and I’d been relieved of hosting a last-minute dinner, it’s enough to have offered without having to actually follow through. Not that I wouldn’t have enjoyed the company of the Hargroves, but I wasn’t sure that I could’ve refrained from expressing my dismay at the loss of my physician’s services for a period of months. Which would’ve been poor manners, to say the least. The man deserved a vacation. Everybody does, but my doctor?
The thing to do, I told myself, was to make sure that everybody stayed healthy. I’d have to watch myself as well as Sam and Lloyd and Hazel Marie and her twin toddlers. And then there were Lillian and Latisha, her sprightly great-granddaughter, to watch over and, I guess, Mr. Pickens, too. Although I couldn’t imagine him getting sick—no self-respecting germ would be so presumptuous.
“Julia,” Sam said after I’d moaned again about being under the care of an unknown quantity—and quality—if any of us got sick, “Bob Hargrove is not going to leave his patients in the hands of an incompetent. Think of what he’d have to come back to if he did—no practice at all. You’re worrying over nothing, sweetheart.”
It didn’t relieve my concerns that the hospital chose that very Sunday to announce in the Abbotsville Times the employment of three new doctors. Although I had no intention of making an appointment with any of them, I read their write-ups with interest—and with increasing apprehension. One had graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School and had done a residency in a Boston hospital, both of which sounded impressive enough, although clearly he wasn’t a Southerner. Upon closer reading, I realized he wasn’t a “he” either—Dr. Sydney Pulaski was a woman.
I had no problem with her gender or her educational background, but I certainly did with the other two. One wasn’t even a physician—he was a DO—a doctor of osteopathy. Since Sam was at the Bluebird café with his friends, I went immediately to the dictionary:
Osteopathy: a medical therapy that emphasizes manipulative techniques for correcting somatic abnormalities thought to cause disease and inhibit recovery.
My word! Had they hired a chiropractor to practice medicine? Manipulative techniques certainly sounded like it. Why, I could remember when osteopaths were not even considered for hospital privileges. Nor were naturopaths, but now—according to a national hospital’s commercials—they, too, were hospital staff members. What would be next—witch doctors? medicine men? acupuncturists? alchemists? Don’t get me wrong—anybody can go to whomever they want and receive whatever treatment they want for whatever ails them, and more power to them. The problem I have is with the very recent elevation of these outliers to the same level of authority as fully qualified and accredited physicians.
What had changed? Probably, I told myself with a wry twist of my mouth, the recent effort to be inclusive of everybody and not hurt anybody’s feelings or make them uncomfortable by telling them flat-out that they weren’t up to the job.
But it wasn’t just practitioners who blamed every disease known to man on maladjusted or malaligned bones who presented problems for the unwary patient. There was also a subspecies of practitioner known as certified physician assistants who were permitted to both diagnose and treat patients under the supervision, it was claimed, of a fully qualified physician.
Doris Blanchard had run afoul of one of those assistants when she had gone for her annual checkup. She’d showed up, she told us at the last book club meeting, but her doctor hadn’t. “He dumped me off on some young girl who’d had a fraction of his education, and I’ll tell you, I was stunned. But what could I do? There I was half naked, waiting to be poked and prodded, and it’s hard to show proper outrage with no clothes on.”
But, Doris had gone on to tell us, contrary to her expectations, that she’d never had anyone be so interested in the explicit description of every little pain, twitch, or tingle that she’d ever experienced.
“That young woman,” Doris said, “now knows me inside and out, and futhermore, she comes to the phone when I call the office. Which is more than I can say for the doctor I’ve been going to for years—he might return a call at the end of the day, or he might not. He figures if you’re really sick, you’ll call back. But Marsha is Johnny-on-the-spot—I can always reach her. And you know what? Next year I’m going to make an appointment with her, and if it hurts the doctor’s feelings, well, it serves him right.”
With that backhanded compliment to another class of nonphysician, Doris had nodded her head firmly and eaten another pineapple and cream cheese sandwich.
As for me, I was appreciating Dr. Hargrove more and more for staying out from under a hospital that had become so open-minded that a medical degree was no longer a requirement to practice medicine.
What was the world coming to? I was even more at a loss for an answer when I read the background of the third hospital employee—he had a medical degree, but it was from some kind of school in Haiti. Haiti! I had to sit down to catch my breath.
What kind of medical school did Haiti have? I had no idea, except I could be fairly sure it didn’t come up to the level of Duke or Chapel Hill or Emory or a dozen others I could name that weren’t even in the South.
There was only one reason why anyone would go to an osteopathic school or to an offshore medical school—their applications for admission to recognized medical schools had been rejected. In spite of that, however, their applications for positions on the medical staff of the Abbot County Hospital had been accepted. Did the hospital administrator not know the difference? Or was he able to hire them at lower salaries than he would’ve had to pay traditional physicians, thereby making his end-of-the-year bottom line look better?
And if that’s what the administrator of the Abbot County Hospital was doing, then it all boiled down to this: A businessman was in charge of the general health and well-being of every resident in the county. And that was enough to make anybody sick.
Chapter 6
*
On further thought, I realized that the hospital administrator—a man by the name of Stuart Barlow—couldn’t be the only one to blame for the current state of affairs. It was, after all, the Abbot County Hospital; that is, it belonged to the county, which made it come under the purview of the county commissioners—none of whom had a smidgeon of medical education or experience. All of them, however, knew how to read a financial statement. So, again—medicine being run as a business.
“What’s the matter with you?” Lillian asked a few days later, as I sat at the kitchen table wondering if my lethargy was a sign of worse to come in the form of a debilitating illness. “You been doin’ nothin’ but mumble all day long. Who you talkin’ to, anyway?”
“Myself, Lillian. I’m talking to myself. I’ve been telling myself that this country has the best doctors and the best hospitals in the world, so there’s no need to worry about the future of medicine.”
She dropped a dishrag into the sink and turned to look at me. “Now, why you got something like that on your mind?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just been watching the news too much, I guess. And being a little antsy because Dr. Hargrove is beyond reach—that’s enough to make anybody nervous. But,” I went on with an effort to shake off the doldrums, “I promised Sue Hargrove that I’d have the new doctor and his wife over for dinner. If they’re free Thursday evening, Lillian, let’s try for that. Would Thursday suit you?”
“One’s about as good as another for me. What you want me to serve?”
“Let’s just do our old standbys—a standing rib roast, asparagus casserole, and oven-browned potatoes. No, wait, let’s do that casserole that you make with frozen hashbrowns. Of course, that makes two casseroles on the table, but Sam loves potatoes that way, so who’s counting? Your yeast rolls, definitely, and for dessert, well, let’s see. With the weather so cold, maybe we should do something hot, like a cobbler or something. What do
you think?”
“Well,” Lillian said, “if you’re lookin’ for something Mr. Sam likes, you can’t beat Biscuit Tortoni. It comes straight out of the freezer, so it’s not hot, but it sets light on the stomach after a heavy meal.”
“That’s perfect, and it can be made ahead of time. Let’s do that. Oh, and a salad—maybe tomato aspic to add a dash of tartness. Now,” I said, reaching for a notepad, “to decide who else to invite. The new doctor, I understand, is in his late thirties, and his wife is somewhat younger, probably late twenties, and, I declare, Lillian, I hardly know anybody in that age group. I’m about to outgrow anybody to invite for dinner.”
Lillian’s eyes rolled up in her head. “Don’t get started on gettin’ old again.”
“I’m just making an observation. Oh, and by the way,” I said to get us off that subject, “his name is Don Crawford and his wife is Lauren. They have two children, four and six, and I can’t imagine the state Sue’s house will be in when she gets back. And that reminds me, I must suggest a babysitter when I call Mrs. Crawford. I am not in the mood to entertain children too young to use a knife and fork.”
“I hope you soon get out of whatever mood you in. I declare, Miss Julia, if you don’t quit worryin’ about ev’ry little thing, you gonna worry yourself to death.”
“Well, you’re right. I know you’re right. But if I don’t worry, who will? I just wish I could find something to worry about that I could do something about. I feel a great need to fix something. I just can’t find anything that’s fixable.”
“You can fix that babysittin’ thing with Janelle,” Lillian said, referring to her well-qualified teenage neighbor. “She’s lookin’ to make some money to buy herself a fancy dress for the senior prom.”