by Lesley Kagen
Tess isn’t in any mood to listen to Babs and the five other Book Babes heatedly discuss another Jackie Collins novel. She usually insists on being treated like any other member of the staff when she’s waitressing, but occasionally she pulls rank and this is one of those occasions. Screw Connie and her damn table assignments. She turns her back on the woman who might be feeling so dreamy about her husband and says bossy, “Val can take them.”
But seconds after Will’s right-hand gal heads back to the dining room to resume her duties looking bewildered by Tess’s sudden change of voice, my friend feels stupid and ashamed of herself. This could all be in her head. The affair…everything. Connie might not be messing around with Will at all. She didn’t even admit to being in love. She might not want to jinx just about anything.
Tess knows that she needs to make amends, to tell her that she’ll happily take Babs and her Book Babes after all, but as she heads toward the dining room determined to smooth things over, Otto, the man who makes it his business to keep track not only of the CIA and the inhabitants of Planet Argon, but everyone on the staff, stops her in her tracks when he begins to loudly singsong from the sink, “Connie’s got a boyfriend…Connie’s got a boyfriend.”
Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself
The doctors affiliated with St. Mary’s North have offices growing out of the back of the hospital like a hump. Tess’s gynecologist/obstetrician is on the first floor, and their long-time family doctor, Scott Johannson, is one story up. Surgeon Rob Whaley is in Room #318.
Tess is on high alert as she comes through the doors that morning. This is dangerous territory. She treads softly, her ears pricked forward, her nose twitching. The hospital smells different than when she was here for her mammogram. What is that?
Embalming fluid. That welcoming broad hasn’t moved since the last time you were here, always quick to criticize Louise snips.
When Tess skirts past the information desk because she’s running late, the volunteer greeter gives her the evil eye, like she’s trying to put her out of a job. (Even though Tess loathes agreeing with her dead mother, she has to concur. Poor Vivian does look slightly deceased.)
My friend squeezes her lucky black purse to her side. She needs the talismans inside—the children’s blanket swatches, her treasured Mockingbird book, and her daddy’s Swiss Army knife—to give her enough strength to try and pry herself out from between the rock and the hard place she finds herself wedged into. Her severe claustrophobia prevents her from taking the elevator to Rob Whaley’s office, but she’s so nervous about the appointment that her legs feel like Slinkies, which are designed to go down steps, not up.
You coward.
When the elevator door slides open, Tess checks her watch and takes a few tentative steps. There are times she can force herself into what she calls, “A steel coffin,” but only if certain requirements are met. It’s got to be roomy. The ones in parking garages, for instance, are out of the question. Mirrors are important because seeing her reflection makes her feel more real. The mirrored elevator she’s considering stepping into is generous in size, so those criteria are met, but an unfortunate green-and-yellow paisley-patterned carpet reminds her of her gambling stepfather’s “lucky” shirt.
When she backs up and turns to head for the STAIRS sign, I materialize just out of her line of vision, take a step forward, say, “Good morning!” and accidentally on purpose herd her inside the elevator before she knows what’s hit her.
She lunges at the OPEN button on the panel, but I’ve made sure it won’t respond, so her fight-or-flight response kicks into high gear. She’s trapped, so running away is out. She balls her fists, like she’s preparing to punch me in the breadbasket, which she might, if she wasn’t plastered against the side of the elevator. She’s terrified that she’ll get stuck with the woman she just now recognizes from her recent visit to St. Mary’s City Hospital. Could I be pulling an Otto? Stalking her? Another panicked line of thinking involves me being one of the ailing people who tend to latch onto her. She sneakily checks me for any obvious symptoms. When she finds none, she begins to wonder if the illness is mental, or maybe I’m fine in body and soul, but I hate white people and here she is confined in this steel coffin with an angry black woman who is about to bring up slavery or what if….
I try to shove the needle off the panicking, obsessing groove in her brain by saying, “How nice to see you again,” in my most soothing voice. Up to now, we’ve been waves crashing on the same beach. Time to formally introduce ourselves. I don’t bother offering my hand on account of her germaphobia. “By the way, I’m Grace,” and she has no choice but to feebly respond, “Theresa,” because she’s polite, but also doesn’t want to irritate unpredictable me.
Now that we’re on a first-name basis, I need to put her mind further at ease, which can be a challenge once she gets balled up like this. Music often soothes her savage breast. Especially the blues. (Misery really does love company.) I’m sorely tempted to take her in my arms and sing our song—At Last—but it’s much too soon in our journey for that. I’d only scare her worse than she already is. I’ll offer assistance instead.
When the elevator comes to a stuttering stop on floor three, I tell Tess as she barges out the doors, “You’re lookin’ a bit peaked, mind if I come along with ya?”
She’s wishing I’d take a long walk off a short pier, but she says, “Suit yourself.” I don’t appear to be some sort of maniac or a member of the Black Panthers, after all. And she is feeling wobbly. A healthcare provider could come in handy. (She’s decided that’s what I am because I showed her the way to St. Mary’s City Women’s Center, sat too close to her in the waiting room, waved at her during the biopsy, and gave her advice about holding onto hope in the locker room.)
To confirm her suspicions, she tries to get a gander at what I’m wearing beneath my hounds tooth coat. She’s looking for a white uniform, but today I’m wearing a royal-blue dress with half-dollar-sized red buttons running down the front, one of my favorites.
“You’re a nurse, right?” she says as we walk.
I smile and say, “When necessary.”
Like everyone else in the surrounding counties, she’d recently found a sleek pamphlet in her mailbox from the PR firm the hospital had hired to spread the word that the hospital is now—“Passionate about Patient Care,” so she decides that I must be an RN most of the time, but on some days, like today, the muckety-mucks at St. Mary’s gave me another job as an emissary at-large. A black nurse with a gregarious personality liberally doling out customer service to white folks would do wonders for the hospital’s image.
Tess pauses for a moment in front of the fake potted plants set below the office numbers painted on the third-floor hallway wall. She doesn’t recall doing so, but she figures that she must’ve mumbled out the room number, because I tell her, “Dr. Whaley’s office is right down here.”
Engaging with me is further depleting the strength she needs to focus on fighting back the fear, so she gives me one of her Brownie smiles and says, “I can find it. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do.”
I say, “Actually…,” and show her my ivories, which stand out quite nicely against my ebony skin. (Tess is reminded of the Girl Scout merit badge she earned for piano playing.) “Bein’ here for you is my job.”
Wishing that this public-relations person could take a hint, she thanks me, and attempts to put some physical distance between us. She begins jogging past the identical office doors toward the end of the hall, but I keep right up, and the both of us arrive at Room #318 breathless.
As a reward for my perseverance, a quality that she greatly admires, she says to me, “I noticed that you have an accent. Where are you from?”
Oh, my.
“A small town in Alabama,” I tell her.
She pats her black purse where the book is nestled amongst her other good-luck charms. “My favorite story, To Kill a Mockingbird, is set in a small town in Alabama.”
&
nbsp; “You don’t say.”
She cocks her head, studies my deep-brown eyes, slim body, and natty hair. “I knew you looked familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it! Has anybody ever told you how much you look like Estelle Evans?”
“Who?” I say straight-faced.
“She’s the actress who played the housekeeper and mother figure to Jem and Scout in the movie version of Mockingbird. Calpurnia?”
Neither one of us is sure that she’s ready to figure out that other than dressing more modern that I don’t just look like Calpurnia, I’m an exact replica of her favorite character in her favorite movie of all time, so instead of answering the question, I distract her by tilting my head toward the office door and saying, “I like Rob Whaley, don’t you? Nice back bumper.”
Tess, who’s thought the same thing many times as he’d rise from one of the diner’s booths, goes all proper on me. She says like she’d never stoop so low as to notice a man’s behind, “Well, nice to see you again. Have a nice day,” and pushes open the doctor’s office door.
The curiosity and confusion she’s feeling about me fades the moment she lays eyes on the deserted office with minimal decor. Just a few wooden chairs, a magazine table, and a coat rack. The closed window to the receptionist area is begging for a spritz of Windex.
Is that a tumbleweed in the corner? her mother says with a wicked snort.
Tess isn’t acquainted with many physicians, other than head shrinkers, but she’d been told by medical transcriptionist Birdie that surgeons are at the top of the heap. Searching her brain for any reason to flee, she tells herself only a sawbones who has been brought up on malpractice charges many times would have zero patients waiting to see him in such a bare-bones office. Why, it’d be irresponsible to allow Rob Whaley to cut her open! She’ll get the name of another more-successful surgeon from Mare Hanson. She mentioned once that her husband worked in the medical field, or maybe Jill could refer her to someone more qualified that she didn’t have a crush on.
Tess is about to take her leave when the smudged reception window slides open and a woman around her age, give or take, says nasally, “Theresa Finley?”
She’s unsure now how to proceed. The office is making her very uneasy, but as long as she’s here, maybe she should just listen to what Rob Whaley has to say? She doesn’t want to offend him. After all, he’s a pillar of the community. A regular at the diner to boot.
“Please call me Tess,” she says as she steps toward the window.
The woman with the permanent-waved chestnut hair has red half-moon reading glasses perched low on her nose and a name tag pinned to the chest of her smock identifies her as Patience. As a rule, the more scared my friend is, the quicker she is to resort to witty repartee, so she’s about to crack to the receptionist, What if everybody had jobs based on their names? There’d be gas station owners named Ethyl and barbers named Harry and….
“Patience,” Tess says. “Great name! What if everybody—?”
“Save it. I’ve been working in this office for sixteen years. Heard ’em all. Insurance?” Patience inspects the card Tess hands her with a quizzical look. “It says here that your last name is Blessing. Didn’t you tell me it was Finley when you made the appointment?”
She can’t tell Patience that she’s incognito—that sounds too paranoid. Tess castigates herself for her slipup, and then says with a self-conscious laugh, “Finley is my maiden name. Sorry. Menopause. Having a hard time focusing lately.”
Patience points to a little desk fan. “I hear ya. Between the hot flashes, the mental fogginess, and the allergy meds, I feel like I’m stroking out most of the time.”
After the receptionist spends time pouring over her computer, she escorts Tess to an exam room. She is much taller than she looked sitting behind the desk, close to six feet. “Undress from the waist up,” she says, and then in a more intimate voice, adds on, “How are you feeling about all this?”
Like a minnow flailing at the base of a lighthouse. Wishing this woman would take her leave, Tess heels off her shoes and answers, “All what?”
Patience takes a step closer and sets a warm hand on Tess’s arm. “The cancer?”
She had been so careful! How did Patience find out? (If the cloud of anxiety hadn’t kept her from thinking clearly, she would have realized that the sister hospitals share medical files.) Tess shouts, “I…I have to keep it a secret!”
Patience isn’t thrown by her vehemence. She’s a professional and used to all sorts of wild reactions from patients. “Keeping your cancer a secret is not a good idea,” she says. “You’re gonna need support from your friends and family, and other women who have been diagnosed. We have a wonderful group called The Pink Ladies that meets at the hospital twice a week to share what they’re going through. I’ll arrange for you to join after your surgery.”
The idea of broadcasting her innermost feelings to complete strangers is repulsive to Tess. Even if she was prone to “sharing,” she couldn’t take the chance that one of The Pink Ladies hailed from Ruby Falls. Someone might recognize her and turn into the town crier, or organize a Spirit Raiser like the one that’d been held at St. Lucy’s for Richie Mattigan. Award-winning photographer, Haddie, would be recruited to provide heart-plucking Blessing family photos that’d be hung on the gym wall behind the cookie and punch table. Henry might be asked to organize a basketball tournament between fathers and sons.
“Don’t you dare tell anyone!” Tess says enraged. “I’ll sue you!”
Patience takes a step back, says huffy, “Well, excuuuse me,” and slams the exam room door behind her.
Tess immediately regrets getting in her face. She’ll apologize profusely, or better yet, make her laugh on her way out the door. She looks over at the file that Patience had tossed on the nearby counter. Something had slipped out. A pamphlet:
The Pink Ladies
There Is Hope
Hope is for chumps.
After Tess changes, she sits on the edge of the exam table, and plucks the floppy copy of To Kill a Mockingbird out of her lucky purse to help her calm down. She’s in the middle of Chapter 28, the climax. Although she has read it countless times, she’s always pulled in like it’s the first. Scout and Jem are returning home after the Maycomb Halloween pageant at the high school. A storm’s coming and it’s grown darker than the children expected it to be on the walk back home. Scout’s wearing her chicken-wire ham costume and “Bam…bam…bam!”
Tess jumps, half-expecting drunken Bob Ewell to come slobbering through the exam room door, but in struts the guy with the handsome face and nice back fender. He’s not her type, she doesn’t like a man to be prettier than she is, and with his tousled sandy hair, green eyes, and lofty cheekbones, Dr. Whaley most definitely is. “Nice to see you, as always,” he says warmly.
“Wish I could say the same, Rob.”
He peruses her chart with a confident grin and sets it aside. “What say we get a look at what we’re dealing with?”
There is a lying of hands upon her right breast, followed by a through kneading. It’s occurring to Tess that it might’ve been better to see a doctor she didn’t know.
“There it is.” He pulls away, makes a note, and comes back to explore further. “Haddie still enjoying school?”
“Yup.” Tess often wonders if people suspect that her girl has a problem, or whether they admire her commitment to fitness when they see her tearing around town at the crack of dawn. “Mandy?”
“Struggling with calculus.” His manipulation has caused her right nipple to turn into a Parcheesi piece. “Let’s talk about lumpectomy versus mastectomy.”
“I’ve decided to go with a lumpectomy. So could I get a local anesthetic instead of a general?” She’d feel too out of control if they put her under, and very, very afraid.
Rob pretends to consider her question. “A local is feasible, but I’d feel much more comfortable with a general.”
Well as long as HE’s comfortable, Louise spits o
ut.
“Talk to Patience. Have her schedule you in two weeks,” the surgeon says as he prepares to exit the room. “Oh, yeah, and could you tell Will the rumaki special last night was beyond perfect?”
She gives him the thumbs up, reassembles herself, and makes her way back to the waiting room. She can see the receptionist’s silhouette behind the finger-printed frosted glass, but she doesn’t respond to Tess’s knock. Recognizing a cold shoulder when she sees one, her mother was a master, she says, “Patience? Can I get a sticker?”
The receptionist forcefully slides the window back and says, “When does the doctor want your surgery scheduled? About two weeks?”
“Yeah. Hey. I’m really sorry for losing it before. It was kind of you to offer to set me up with The Pink Ladies. Grease is one of my favorite musicals, by the way, but I’m super-shy in a crowd.” Some phobias are more popular and therefore more socially acceptable than others. She says with a put-on quiver in her voice, “I’m…I’m terrified of public speaking.” (As a performer, that’s one of the few fears she doesn’t have, but she knows it tops the list of activities that scares the hell out of “normal” people.)
An explanation and apology were all Patience needed because she visibly thaws. “I get it,” she says with a resolute nod. “My husband gets a bad case of the trots when he has to speak in front of groups.” She passes the appointment card through the window. “If you change your mind about joining the group, the offer still stands.”
Tess thanks her again and slips out of the office door and straight into me. For the first time, my sudden appearance doesn’t further throw her, and that’s a good sign. She barely stiffens when I put my arm through hers. “Breast cancer, huh.”
First the receptionist, and now me. She says ticked-off, “What the…?” but then she remembers that I was present during the biopsy, and goes straight to wondering if nurses or ambassadors-at-large or whatever the heck I am, need to respect confidentiality the same way doctors and hopefully, receptionists do.