by C D Cain
Sam pushed herself off of the column and held her hand waist high. She held a tight-lipped smile as she gave me a small wave. I rubbed the cicada charm on my necklace instead of waving. Even in mannerism, I couldn’t tell her goodbye. Nothing about me could say it to her. She came for closure. I understood that as her need but I didn’t know how to say the words she came to hear. She dropped her hand and turned to walk away from the house. The air around me stopped circulating. A much-needed breath was smothered in the thickness of it. My chest tightened as it struggled to bring oxygen into my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. Life. Conformity. Loss. They all began to suffocate me at once. Frantically I reached my hand behind my back to steady myself with the chair behind me. Tiny white flashes of light danced across Nadine’s face. Any moment now, I was going to fall flat out on the grassy lawn. I moved my hand back and forth but did not feel the back of the chair. Where the hell is the chair? Suddenly, my hand touched the warmth of flesh instead of metal. I looked over my shoulder to see Flossie standing behind me. She grabbed my hand with hers. She steadied the speeding rotation of the world.
“Here, baby girl. Let me help you.” She placed her other hand on my arm above our joined hands. Gently she pushed the chair underneath me as I sat down. She placed her hands on my shoulders, steadied the spinning world around me and said, “There you go, Sweetie. I’ve got you.” She walked to her setting and winked as she sat down.
“I do declare I can’t imagine what she’s got in store for the wedding if this is what she’s doing for the engagement.” I heard Nadine’s voice but was only partially aware to the actual words she had spoken.
“I’m sorry. What was that, Mrs. Thibodeaux?”
“Oh, honey, we’re practically family now. You can call me Mom.” In between her words, Nadine devoured a bacon wrapped scallop broil in two bites. “I said I can’t imagine what your Momma’s got in store for the wedding if this fancy shindig is what she does for the engagement.” She placed her fingers around another scallop as she perched herself to engulf it in much the same way.
“Oh right.” I scooted the food around my plate with my fork.
I noticed Charlie Grace was glaring at Nadine. I wasn’t sure if it was because of her delicate way of eating or her wishes for me to call her Mom. My guess was the former as I could hardly think of Mother having any jealousy over me.
“I think it will be a beautiful affair,” Charlie Grace finally managed to say. She continued to stare at the jewelry around my neck. “All we have to do now is get these two to decide on a date. Of course, you know I will need a year to plan the whole thing.”
“Mother, we’ve told you already. We don’t plan on setting a date any time soon. This was just an engagement.”
“I don’t know, Rayne. Maybe we should go on and set one.” Grant didn’t bother cutting the scallop. He popped the whole thing in his mouth all at once.
Like mother like son. The thought caused a roll across my stomach.
“I mean what’s the point in waiting?” he said, trying to talk around his full mouth.
“What?” I knew the look I was giving him in front of everyone wasn’t exactly one of endearing love but at that moment I didn’t care.
He looked at me as if he was surprised. “What?”
“What do you mean what?” I also didn’t seem to care that my voice kept escalating. “First you spring the engagement on me in front of everyone and now you want to do the same damn thing with setting a date all of a sudden.” I stopped myself before I let my anger and confusion of seeing Sam turn this into a scene. From the corner of my eye I saw Flossie and Cora looking at us. “Actually, you know what?” I crumbled my cloth-napkin in a ball and tossed it onto the table. “I’m not doing this right now. I’m going to go say hi to Flossie and Cora. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
No one said anything as I stood from the table. They waited until I had stepped a couple of feet away before they let their whispers run freely. I didn’t care let them talk about the wedding. At least I didn’t have to sit there and listen.
“Hey there, child. We were a’wondering if you were gonna come over.” Cora dredged a fork full of shrimp through her fettuccine sauce before putting the bite into her mouth. “Lawd, child, this is some good vittles yo’ Momma done did. Ain’t you gonna eat?”
“Cora, leave the girl alone.” Flossie pushed the noodles around on her plate before taking a bit of sun-dried tomato. Her tone was flat. Come to think of it, I hadn’t noticed her voice having anything but, a flat tone since we had lost Meems.
“I’ll get something in a bit. I wanted to come over and speak to y’all first. Are you enjoying the party?” I knelt down in between their chairs.
“Are you?” Flossie squeezed a lemon wedge over her glass of ice tea.
“Aw hell, you know me, Flossie. I live for these things.”
Flossie laughed. The sound of it caught me by surprise as I had missed it more than I realized. Her laughter eased some of my troubled feelings.
“Dat you do.” She bit into the lemon wedge and puckered her face. “Damn, I’ve missed you, baby girl.”
“Enough to let me steal one of these?” I grabbed a roasted asparagus spear from her plate.
“Hell yeah. Dem things make your pee stink.”
I let my forehead rest against her temple. “Damn, I’ve missed you too.”
***
A light rain had run most of the party guests under the protection of the large tents strategically placed around the grounds. Charlie Grace had prepared for the weatherman’s report of ten percent chance of rainfall. Jacques fussed about the cost of the tents because a ten percent chance in Louisiana generally meant nothing but stifling humidity without a snowball’s chance in hell for a drop of rain.
Under the largest tent there was a dance floor and band. While the smaller tents had tables with dessert plates of strawberries with Chantilly cream and champagne. I could have been in any one of the tents pleasantly mingling as a proper hostess should be but instead I sat on the farthest corner of the back porch. It was my perfect escape. A dessert plate and half-empty bottle of champagne was my only company.
In the moonlight the large tree branches swooped down over the lawn. They looked a bit eerie with their indistinctive clumps of leaves and long-hanging strands of moss. A small puddle of collected rainwater lay in front of me. I watched the ripples of the reflected porch light change with each vibration of the ground. If the beat of the music and tapping of feet on the wooden planks of the dance floor were any indication, this party wasn’t going to end for quite some time.
“I’d figured as much you’d be out here. Mind if’n I join you?”
I looked over my shoulder to see Flossie standing behind me. She held an empty champagne glass in her hand.
“Not at all.” I swung my legs off the side of the porch swing to make room for her to sit. I tilted my glass in her direction. “I heard Charlie Grace giving you hell because you wore denim.”
“Yo’ momma knows I don’t be dressing up in dat fancy smancy stuff she do. Now Cora, dat woman goes all out. But she should a known better than to think I gone put on like I’m a highfalutin.”
“Well, I love it. You look very nice.” And she did. She wore a dark blue jean material pant suit with flare legs and a short-waisted jacket. Small flowers were embroidered on the lapels and around the large pearl buttons. The colors complemented her ivory shell shirt.
“How ya’ holding up, baby girl?”
“I’m hanging in.”
“I was sort of surprised when yo’ momma told me you and your fella were gettin’ married.” She held her empty glass out to me.
I poured each of us a full glass of champagne. “Correction. We got engaged. Big difference.” The freshly poured bubbles tickled my nose when I brought the glass up to my lips.
“Yeah, Imma thinking there pretty close. Ya’ll set a date yet?”
“Oh no it’s just an engagement.”
“Aw.
” Flossie looked out at the lawn as she took a swallow from her glass. The bubbles must have affected her the same way because she rubbed her slender fingers across the tip of her nose. Several minutes went by. “Y’know that there Chantilly cream tweren’t bad a’toll.”
I looked up at her and noticed she was staring at the strawberry I held in front of my lips. I put it back on the plate in my lap and licked the thickened cream from my fingers. “I don’t know, Flossie.” I sighed deeply. “Things got so screwed up after[CC1]…” I felt the lump form in my throat. The ripples in the puddle blurred.
Flossie put her hand on top of mine. “Dat it did.” She patted my hand. “But don’t got to stay dat way. She wouldn’t want dat for neither one of us.”
“Seems like I can’t find anything but screwed up these days.” I swirled the strawberry around in the cream and popped it into my mouth. The juice of the strawberry dripped from chin.
“It won’t feel like dat forever. I promise you dat.” She handed me a napkin. “It won’t.”
The chains of the swing squeaked as we gently swayed the bench back and forth. Even through the beat of the music, I could hear a few cicadas singing in the night. I found the coolness of the golden cicada between my fingers again. Oh Sam, why did I let it get so screwed up?
“I’m afraid I’ll feel this way forever, Flossie.”
“Then maybe some of dem choices you done made ain’t the best for ya’.”
“No, they aren’t but they’re the only ones I had.”
“Sis, there always more than one choice if’n you want it to be.”
I gave her a half smile. “Not this time, Flossie.” A gentle wind blew in the scent of the climbing jasmine. I breathed in its aroma deeply as I looked out across the lawn. At the moment I was thankful the frogs were starting to drown out the cicadas. I didn’t think I could handle hearing their song another chorus. I remembered the forgotten champagne glass in my hand and took a generous swallow. “I love it here. All I ever wanted to do was to come back. I had it all planned out. I would go off to school. Come back. Set up my practice and just be home.”
“It is yo’ home. It’s who you are. Just like Addie. But what dat got to do with what we talkin’ about?”
“Because see Flossie. To have that I had only one choice to make. I couldn’t have both. It would’ve never worked. I made my choice so I could come back.”
“Ain’t no choice ever takin’ away yo’ home. Not ever.”
“This one would’ve,” I said as I brought the glass back to my lips. “Trust me.”
Flossie shifted in the seat of the swing to face me full on. “You listen to me, Sis. Ain’t nothing you ever gone do or say gone change who you are or where you from. This yo’ home and always gone be.”
I emptied the champagne bottle evenly into our glasses and handed one of the two remaining strawberries to her. “I don’t want to go back to school.”
“What? That crazy talk.”
“It won’t be the same when I do.” It wouldn’t be either. Without the chance of seeing Sam walk down the hallway. Without the opportunity to breath in her scent of eucalyptus mint when she passed by me. The remembrance of her scent remained with me no matter where I went. The breeze caught in an opening door seemed to carry it to me. The pillowcase of my bed seemed to hold the fragrance in their fibers even though her body had never rested on its sheets. Nor would I see the smile that had taken strength from my legs cross her face again. At least, knowing she was in Birmingham had given me some hope I would see it again. We hadn’t spoken and I hadn’t seen her but the possibility had been always there. Many days it had been the sheer possibility of seeing her that held the power I needed to make it another day at the hospital. The possibility was my oxygen. Now that chance was gone. Sam had left Birmingham and she was not coming back. The heaviness of her absence was a weight I could hardly bear.
“I just can’t imagine going back there, Flossie.”
“Sure, you can. You got lots more learning and you love doctoring. It’s who you are. Who’d you always wanted to be.” Flossie pushed her foot against the porch to give the swing motion. “And once you done soaked up all dat learning you gone come back here to yo’ home to bring what you done learnt to us.”
I looked out at the remaining flickering tea light candles. Some had managed to stay lit through the light rain while others had grown dark. I let my ears open up to the laughter behind the dancing footsteps. I let my mind look beyond the sadness of Sam’s moving away and let it drift to the people behind the laughter. They were my family. They were the reasons why I called this place home. In some moments there were flickers of light in the darkness. Flickers which held enough of a flame to brighten the darkness. This was one of those moments.
I clinked my glass against hers. “And thus another reason for the decisions I made.”
Chapter 3
“Hello, Mrs. Lambert. I’m Dr. Storm. Your OB doctor requested a surgical consult about your gallbladder results.”
“Yes, come in.” The young woman positioned herself to sit up straighter in the bed. Her very pregnant belly made even this simple task difficult.
“Here, let me help you.” I set the chart down on the bedside tray table to help her adjust the pillows.
She panted breathlessly as if she had just run a three-mile marathon. “Thank you. To remember the day an entire hour-long aerobics class didn’t make me this out of breath.”
I smiled at her. “It’s not entirely your fault you know? The pregnancy is causing pressure against your diaphragm which makes it difficult for you to expand your lungs fully.”
“You’re sweet not to mention my fat ass when I tell you about my old aerobic days.”
“You’ll be back to class in no time.” I flipped the chart open to review her results once more. Not that I needed the reminder. I had noticed over the years of rounding at UAB that patients seemed to be more comfortable when you opened their chart in front of them. I’m not exactly sure why but always guessed there was a hint of worry when a new doctor came into the room that they didn’t know everything about their history or because we see a large amount of patients in a day that we will somehow get them confused with another if we didn’t have their information right in front of us. I have even caught some of them turning their heads to try to read the name on the side of the chart.
I tried my best to stifle back the developing yawn but failed miserably. “I’m so sorry,” I said as I closed the chart. In less than an hour I would be getting off after a solid twenty-four-hour work day. I had managed to snag a couple of hours sleep in the on-call room. Beyond those, these eyes had not seen sleep. Maybe the patients were onto something after all. I was so tired I could easily forget my own name.
I rubbed my eyes and started again. “Your doctor consulted us due to your abdominal pain with nausea and vomiting. She was concerned for gallbladder disease as a cause of your symptoms. Your blood work was fairly normal except for a mildly elevated white count and amylase. Both of which can be increased with gallbladder problems. The ultrasound didn’t show any signs of gallstones which is a good sign. Considering your pregnancy and the associated risk of further testing or surgery, we have decided—“
“Hey, Beth, how’re you feeling today?”
The door flew open so much that I fumbled the chart in my hands and nearly let it fall onto the patient’s feet. Dr. Breaker seemed to notice because her eyes darted to the chart and a smile crossed her face at my recovery.
“Aunt Violet, I wasn’t expecting you until later.”
I looked between the two women. Violet? Aunt Violet? I can’t say I saw a family resemblance.
“Hey, kiddo. I got out of my last meeting early and thought I would swing by.” Dr. Breaker winked at Mrs. Lambert before walking toward me with an extended hand. “Good evening, I’m Dr. Breaker.” Her grip was strong as she gave me one brisk shake of her hand and then released it quickly.
“Good evening. I’m Dr. Storm f
rom surgery.”
“And your findings?” Her expression suggested she was already bored with my presence.
“Oh…er…sorry. Yes…I was just telling Mrs. Lambert that her WBC count was mildly elevated as was her amylase.”
“And her liver function tests?”
“Both the AST and ALT were within normal limits.”
“Which leads you to?” She is pimping me. Aunt Violet is pimping me. I suppose now would not be the time to make a mistake and accidentally call her Aunt Violet.
“With both normal liver function tests and a normal lipase with only a mildly elevated amylase, we aren’t concerned for a stone obstructing ducts to the liver or pancreas.” I decided to speak quickly to try to avoid any further questioning by her. “Plus, the ultrasound didn’t show any signs of a cholelithiasis. Given her timing in her pregnancy, we are recommending to postpone any further testing or surgical intervention at this time.” I directed my attention to Mrs. Lambert who had a wide grin. “There would be an increased risk to the baby to do a Hida scan to determine the function of the gallbladder secondary to radiation of the injected radioactive tracer. Any surgical intervention at this stage in your pregnancy would also be a risk and would have to be an open procedure versus laparoscopic. Therefore, I’m going to recommend to your admitting physician bowel rest, intravenous fluids and antibiotics if your white count does not start to normalize on its own. Upon discharge I would recommend you avoid high fatty foods to prevent another event.” I realized I may not have taken a breath with my hurried speech.