Our Seas of Fear and Love

by Richard Shain Cohen

  She smiled at him and rose from the table. As they danced to the middle of the floor, she rested her head on his shoulder. “Greg, we’ll always be this way, won’t we?” She laughed quietly. “Well, within the bounds of whatever happens to married people with time.”

  “Are you proposing to me? I haven’t asked yet, you know.”

  “You will,” and she secretly kicked his shoe.

  “Ouch,” he whispered.

  “Well, that’s a sample. Otherwise you’ll leave me a ruined woman.”

  When they came home, they waited for everyone to go to bed. When it was quiet, they crept down the hall to her room, watching one another undress. She took him in her mouth, slipped her fingers about his testicles, stroked to the tip of his hard penis, lay back as he slipped into her, her eyes tightly closing to the streaking sensations of arousal throughout her.

  After, laughing quietly with satisfaction, lying on their sides, she kissed his face, then raised herself to kiss his mouth. “You see, I’m right. You’ll leave me a ruined woman. Don’t you ever dare. There’s a power in me you should be aware of,” she smiled down at him, kissed him again.

  “Oh, yes, you are powerful. I’m worn out. I’ll be careful.” Then he told her, “I don’t want to go to my room. I want to stay here and sleep with you.” He turned toward her, placing his arm across her, holding her breast.

  ~

  They took the same train from Portland. Brigit would have to wait several hours at Logan Airport. “Are you looking forward to school?”

  “You bet. I’m going to get into clinical studies.” He thought for a moment. “You’re worried about how you’ll find your dad, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” and she answered more quickly, “But I’m going to cure him.” She paused. “Oh, I wish I could. You have to meet my parents and sisters, you know. The next vacation, you come to the ranch. Promise me.”

  “Yes. We’ll cure him together.”

  The countryside went by rapidly. It was about a two-hour ride.

  “I used to build snow forts. My brothers would help me. And we had snowball fights while trying to duck behind the walls. Other times we would take my sled and coast. I miss that, the closeness. Now, I’m more fortunate. I have you.”

  His words enveloped her, and she wanted to hug him. She thought of Jocelyn and her apparent almost severe control, and said to herself, If I can grow to be like her. She has that warmth in her that I feel right now, and she protects.

  At North Station in Boston, they kissed long, hugged, reluctant to leave one another. Outside, as Gregory watched their cold breath puffed in clouds toward the sky, he looked sadly at her, telling her there goes your plane above our clouds. He glanced at the grey sky, then back to her. She was trying not to cry but could not stop, sniffled, looked up at him, blinking, “No it’s not a cold, is it? I need a handkerchief,” as she searched through her pocket book. “Oh fiddle,” and she could no longer help herself. “I’m going to cry, and that’s all there is to it.” She licked her lips, rubbed her nose as dry as possible. “Kiss me and hold me, damn you.” She rarely even used that word. He held her, and she tried hard to settle, felt her body tremble, and whispered, “I love you, and don’t you ever forget it”

  “I promise I won’t.” He was crying now. “See the proof.” And they both stood together, crying softly, knowing it would be a long while before they saw one another again, but this time in the Southwest.

  Gregory took a cab to his rooms and Brigit one to Logan, he anxious to start his clinical clerkship come next semester.

  In the taxi she took out her compact, lightly brushed her face with rouge and put her light red lipstick on her slightly full lips, brushed lightly with her finger at the corners of her eyes, smiled at herself in her small mirror, thinking that’s better. Now you look the way he likes you and you too. He also likes me without makeup, and why not? You’re admiring yourself, looking at herself again.

  ~

  As much as he looked forward to clerkship, he rode back to his rooms somewhat morose. The thought of Brigit so far away was as though he would never see her again. He already missed her face, her enfolding voice, the sound that thrilled him as no other could, not even his mother’s music, or, for that matter, his own. He thought of the nights they rode out into the countryside and he sang to her while she leaned on his shoulder. He shook his head. He had to think of the beginning of the week. He would be starting on the medicine floor. He would be able to talk and to write to her about his experiences, knowing she would understand what he was telling her, how the sick people affected him. He had already seen patients, and it came soon to him how he would have to become inured to the illnesses, the ulcerated skins, the stabbed or the shot, the cancers that ate away a body, the psychotics, those on the verge of psychosis. What bothered him most at the moment was the idea of being with birthing mothers. Again he thought of Brigit and making love to her, how they never thought of pregnancy but of their enjoyment. Well, occasionally she would say something afterwards when she felt the aftermath of his orgasms, hers, too, when her body had relaxed and she began to close and she realized what could happen despite their precautions. But this was not for now. He did not want to think about her or their love making, only the beauty of what she had given him, knowing she felt the same.

  On Monday morning, there was a meeting of his classmates with the doctor who was taking over their introduction to medicine. He knew, from stories his father or brother told him, what it was like that first day, the nurses smiling, some trying to hide their amusement. But after several days came the general acceptance between both groups. However, the head nurse, a short, heavy-set woman with a pleasant face could be quite severe, almost as bad as the doctor who would grimace when one of them made an error or seemed not to be paying attention. It was to be from that nurse, particularly, that he would first learn how to soothe a patient.

  One day he was standing at the nurse’s station talking to a pretty one who had attracted him. Her powder-blue eyes seemed to have so many expressions. When they talked, they would look straight at each other, warming to and understanding through their eyes how each felt and what their good or bad days were like. And then she appeared.

  “Hurwitz! Stop trying to make out with my nurses. You’re here to learn. Are you becoming a doctor, hopefully” she growled derisively, “or a lover? My nurses work on this floor, and they don’t need your distraction.” In fact, Nurse Mayfield liked Gregory but could not help teasing him or keeping after him when he was on the floor and talking to that blue-eyed, shapely nurse so unlike Mayfield. She wore her uniforms as tightly as professionally possible. Then, he would ask himself if he were leading her on, despite being drawn to her, something of which she was quite aware. In fact she drew him on with her eyes, her movements, knowing her body and voice had trapped him. He did not count on Mayfield knowing about Brigit when Jocelyn came one day to find him in the hospital before she had a performance that night.

  Jocelyn had sought out Mayfield, wanting to know how her son was doing. It was close to the end on the medical floor. Mayfield told her that Nurse Littleton had made a conquest, perhaps Gregory had. Jocelyn looked at her quizzically.

  “Has he been going out with her?”

  “I’m not sure. They certainly spend a little time together on my floor and irritate me.”

  Jocelyn did not want to believe her. She loved Brigit. She was Jocelyn’s second daughter, hoped she would be legally, even if it was a way in the future. Jocelyn hesitated.

  “Break them up,” she firmly told Mayfield. “I’ll talk to him too,” she said even though it was against her belief that she should interfere in such ways with her children; worse, talk to a stranger so. After all, he was no longer a boy, not her responsibility, only another of her children she cherished and wanted to protect. Although Brigit saw severity in her, and it was there, there was softness that enfolded all she loved. She would protect Brigit as she would her own children.

&nb
sp; Mayfield was astonished by Jocelyn’s firmness. “That’s not up to me, Mrs. Hurwitz.” In fact, Mayfield felt Jocelyn was taking advantage of her. Jocelyn sensed her reaction and was further appalled at herself.

  “I know it’s not your responsibility. You see, he has an outstanding girl friend.” Again she hesitated. “I don’t want him going astray and hurting her.” As she said that, Jocelyn knew there was something unusual about Brigit which she could not quite define at the moment. She continued, however. “But men, what they see, what they can get, and, yes, he’s my son, but he’s a man.” Jocelyn surprised herself still more that she spoke so openly to a stranger. She sought her self-control.

  “I can’t do anything,” Mayfield repeated. “My responsibility is the nurses on the floor and to be certain they take care of their patients properly. I can’t help you.”

  Jocelyn’s face colored. She could not believe she had spoken as she had, had not been as restrained and firm with herself as she was accustomed. Perhaps it was nervousness about tonight’s performance; because she was thinking of retiring and that this could be her last public appearance. What she was thinking about she very well knew, the hurt she had experienced when Aaron had strayed, how it nearly destroyed her. It was one of the reasons they moved to Maine, despite the inconvenience for Aaron and her. Perhaps distance would make it easier for him, but she hoped the state he loved and where he was calmer and enjoyed the fishing would help him regain his obligation to the woman he loved more than one who had briefly taken him away. She did not want to see that in her sons or to have it happen to Mary with perhaps a chosen woman, or for that matter, her sons with an unfaithful wife. This was more important to Jocelyn than the rest of the world.

  She looked away from Mayfield and down a long corridor to a window overlooking the Charles.

  In that world out there, outside her family, the medical school and the hospital, there was continuing turmoil. The election of 1948 was coming. The Russians were as bad as they had been when they drove into Europe. They had enslaved Czechoslovakia. Later in the year the UN would declare the Israeli State and the Arabs and Jews with their hatreds killing one another. Later, in 1961 they would erect the Berlin Wall with people being shot for trying to escape from East Germany. So how much had the world truly changed from the end of the war?

  In the meantime, after the performance, she would, as usual, be staying at The Condon Hotel. If she missed Gregory because of his schedule, he could, if possible, meet her there. She would also leave a ticket for him at Symphony Hall should he be able to attend the concert.

  She thought of apologizing to Mayfield for her personal release but did not. It had been an unrecallable error on Jocelyn’s part, and she would not apologize to anyone. Love nor cherishing need no apologies.

  Gregory had no idea his mother had been in the hospital. He and other students had been with one of his professor doctors on another medical floor where more severely ill patients had rooms. They were in the room where lay a veteran of the war who had suffered shell shock. When he returned to the United States he had begun drinking more than anything he could get in Europe. His war had been long, having been a paratrooper dropped behind the lines just before the D-Day landings. He then fought his way across France and collapsed just before the crossing of the Rhine and the push into Aachen. Having been hospitalized in England and then sent back to a VA hospital near Boston, he was finally medically and honorably discharged. His family did all it could to make him feel safe, but could not stop his drinking. He tried Alcoholics Anonymous once or twice but failed at that, despite the help the members tried to give him. Now he lay in the hospital with a bleeding liver. Blood dripped constantly from an IV. Gregory listened to the man’s history, looked at the paleness and shrunken cheeks, picking up the blanket when told to do so and saw the bony legs and wasted body. He started to choke, imagining himself in the bed, feeling the obscenity of what had happened to him and to so many of them. The doctor watched Gregory, started to ask him a medical question, then went to him and quietly told him to leave the room, seeing Gregory’s tears and the slight trembling. The others looked at him. There were one or two veterans among the group but only one had been overseas. All looked away and pretended to be examining the patient. Gregory went into the hall, looked about and allowed his tears to flow, cursing the war, what had happened to him and to the man lying there dying. About two days later the man was dead. Gregory could not forget him, never would; and occasionally in his own illness, a vision of the man appeared to him. He began to wonder whether he cared to be in primary care for a specialty. He decided to call Brigit.

  He told her of his experience on the wards.

  “Greg, you aren’t even started. You still have a long way to go, and there will be many more such experiences. Are you going to quit medical school? I remember what it was like for me, and I didn’t go through what you must. For someone who has gone through what you have, who has seen what you have, a man dying in a hospital is sad and often terrible to watch. C’mon.”

  Gregory felt his face redden and was glad she couldn’t see him. He was not only embarrassed that he told her but that he reacted as he did. Yet, it was going to be that continuing nightmare. It may have been because it was the first time in a hospital that he felt helpless, that he was a student who created his own unpreparedness for the sights he would witness.

  “Brigit, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you. You’re right. I‘m behaving like an innocent.”

  _______________

  As he lay in his bed thinking back to that time and the call, he imagined himself wasting away. He lifted the sheet covering him on the warm summer day to look at his body. He had lost weight, but it was still much the same body that thrilled Brigit, that aroused her.

  He saw her now, felt her running her fingers through his hair, down about his body. That short call and the desire to visit her in the Southwest were as vivid as on that day years ago.

  _______________

  “When I have time, I’m coming to see you, even if it’s only for a few days. I want to lie beside you. I dream about you too. They are some dreams but so frustrating.”

  She laughed. “You see the power I have over you from such a distance? You can never escape me. Was it a real sexy one?”

  “You know it, you idiot. I was . . .” He stopped.

  “You were what?”

  “Deep inside.”

  “As long as it wasn’t another nurse or one of the medical students, you may keep dreaming.”

  “I promise. I’ve got to go, but remember I love you, that you’re mine. You don’t need one of those cowboys that you live near.

  “Brigit, your dad. How is he?”

  “Well, you know that cancer they thought was spreading. It isn’t. One of the radiologists reading the plates made an error. I told you I would cure him.” And she laughed. “Well, it’s not gone, but it isn’t spreading. I want my mother and dad to think about having his pancreas out now. Imagine that guy telling us it was spreading to his – to his intestines and lymph nodes. I could kill the guy. There we were, my sisters, Ellen and Marie, my mother, and I, crying. It was like a wake. Greg, I despise that radiologist. Sure, anyone can make a mistake, but if you had seen the four of us so distraught. I think there was a pool of tears at our feet. They’ll operate on him pretty soon.”

  _______________

  And in his next round, Gregory was in surgery. There were myriads of operations. Some of the doctors brought their own scrub nurses. Most used those who worked for the hospital. Gregory had earned praise for his work on the medical floors and the same was expected of him in surgery. His first assignment was with a thoracic surgeon.

  The surgeon told him to come closer for better observation. There was hardly any conversation except for the surgeon explaining to Gregory throughout the procedure what he was doing, occasionally asking what part of the lung they were looking at, what did Gregory anticipate would be the next move for excision of the tum
or. “Well, what do you think? He’s breathing O.K. His heart rate’s consistent; the anesthesiologist believes I can go on.”

  “I’d say go ahead and cut it out.”

  “You’re right,” and the scrub and the doctor both laughed. “I start with the fairly easy questions first. You know, if this is all that grows and I have it all, she’s going to be all right. It may be that in some of the procedures you watch, some one other than the surgeon will close. I always do my own.”

  When they finished and an orderly was cleaning up the room and the nurses cleaning their instruments, the surgeon took Gregory to the dressing room, and in a soft, gentle voice, explained the entire case, going beyond what they had discussed together in the OR. “You’re not a thoracic surgeon yet, but you asked the right questions. Good fellow. I hope the rest of your time here will be just as good.”

  Gregory was proud of himself because of the compliment. As time progressed, he saw D&Cs, vein excisions, breast lumpectomies, breast or testicular cancer, removal of the breast that hurt him, thinking of what the woman would experience with that loss and the attempt to keep her alive, hopefully for years. There were also epididymis repairs, appendix cases, limb removals. It went on. He aided in the operations, holding instruments, cutting sutures. With the progression of his rotation, the surgeons would allow him to suture. He returned in his mind to the naval hospital and the wounded who did or did not recover, thought of the men with whom he became close and the manner in which they kidded one another but hiding their fear of the future as cripples. There were times during his schooling when students would ask Gregory what happened to him during the war that he limped. It was natural curiosity; but there were times he believed they felt sorry for him. He hated that.