CLUB MEDicine: A Novel

by Jack Kinsley

  There was a historical charm in his old neighborhood; the feeling of a bygone era when things seemed to make sense and life had the illusion of being much simpler. He found it comforting. His home had been his sanctuary, his own 'retreat to replenish the soul' and a place to 'get back in touch with himself,' but now it was being guarded by a woman who wanted nothing to do with him.

  NPR played in his car while he drove toward the house. The radio had only been background noise while his mind looped around Little Jack and Devon, but then a story about a man who had killed his wife and gotten caught drew his attention. They called it a crime of passion.

  Of course he was caught, Travis thought. Nothing planned out, spur of the moment, fingers pointing at evidence everywhere. The damn fool. I could have done it better.

  Travis slowed the Mercedes as he approached the bend just before the house. If Ana was outside in the yard with Bella, she would easily spot his arrival. He could already imagine her standing from the rocking chair on the porch and staking her hands on her hips at him in objection. Slowly, he crept around the corner and chose to park behind a large cable van where he couldn't be seen from inside the house, but would still have a nice angle into the yard. The gravel on the side of the road crunched under his tires as he came to a complete stop.

  The rain was barely a drizzle now, and he thought maybe he had missed his chance. But then his heart raced at the sight of a bright red umbrella flashing through the slats of the white picket fence. Something of a hint of blue was carrying it. All at once, the umbrella burst and arced above the fence with the grace of a geisha's dance and then dropped and ran behind the wooden panels again.

  The success of Crystal Heights may have been his crowning moment in a series of failed businesses, but it had only been a means to get what he really wanted. Today, that reason was soaked and playing under the expanse of a magnolia tree — unaware of his presence and, unfortunately, still just out of reach. To his relief, there weren't any signs of Ana, and so he leaned the driver's seat back and watched from afar.

  He cracked the window to listen for her singing. If she was singing, it meant that all was right in little Bella's world. Just a whisper of her tiny voice came into the car and he nodded at the familiar tune. He hadn't been the only King in his household. She sang, "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog, crying all the time," as she repeatedly hopped in and out of the same puddle.

  Travis closed his eyes and sang along.

  It had been a rough delivery when Bella came into the world, and she'd had to fight the moment she took her first breath. She was born a preemie, just a hair over thirty-two weeks, and had suffered complications that Travis had mostly never heard the names of before: nuchal cord, respiratory distress syndrome, and bronchopulmonary dysplasia... But he had heard of jaundice. The names alone had scared the shit out of him. He nearly knocked the doctor flat on his ass for keeping him in suspense with all the medical jargon.

  Bella stayed in the hospital for the first two weeks of her life. She lived in an incubator under a bilirubin light where they maintained her body heat, gave her doses of surfactant to keep her lungs from collapsing, and had her hooked up to an alarm that would sound if her breathing became irregular and paused for longer than ten to fifteen seconds.

  Sitting in the neonatal intensive care unit with Ana was the most agonizing time in his life; them not knowing if Bella would pull through and the damn alarm sounding off just when things seemed to be getting better. After a few days, Travis took it upon himself to answer the alarms and rub her tiny back to remind her to breathe.

  When they finally left the hospital, the doctors gave them more to worry about, possible long-term complications: cerebral palsy, impaired cognitive skills, vision problems, behavioral and psychological problems, and general chronic health issues. But together, Ana and Travis refused to believe any of it. They weren't going to give any power to what could potentially go wrong. In forming their optimistic pact, it had created an indestructible bond between the two of them — at least for a few years.

  And Bella had proven the doctors so wrong. She was an exceptional child; all the wiring was in place and she was growing steadily, a bit smaller than other girls her age, but her personality made up for it. Bella had been a quick learner and was stringing words together and composing sentences at the age of two.

  CRACK!

  A piece of thrown gravel struck Travis's windshield and woke him from his daydream. His cover was blown. Bella was standing outside the picket fence a few feet into the road, waving at him in her blue galoshes.

  Travis popped out of the driver seat. "Get back behind the fence, Bella!"

  She paid him no mind and ran to him, fearless of the traffic, and sprang into his arms.

  "Daddy!" she cried and held him tight. Her petite frame held the heat of a small locomotive in the damp, cool air.

  "Don't ever do that again," he said and leaned her back so she could see he was serious. "You never cross the street without looking. Ever. And it's better to cross with me or your mommy, okay?"

  Bella ran her hand across the stubble on his cheek. "Daddy, my umbrella broke." She pouted.

  "Oh really... Let's see if Daddy can fix that."

  Before they crossed the street together, he had her look both ways and tell him when it was okay to cross.

  "Good girl."

  When they reached the gate, she pointed at her broken umbrella resting a good fifteen yards inside the fence, a perilous distance from the house. There still weren't any signs of Ana. And at this point, he didn't care. Bella needed her daddy.

  He felt like a pillar of strength whenever he carried Bella in his arms, and she seemed to regress to a child of a much younger age. It was a sense of strength and clarity that he could never replicate in her absence. He felt he could accomplish anything with her sitting on his hip: negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty, appease fundamental Islamic terrorists, and finally close that nasty debate on abortion. He could even repair a damaged umbrella.

  "If only it were possible to carry you around all day," he told Bella. "I could change the world."

  She jumped from his arms and held down one edge of the umbrella with a galosh and stretched it open to reveal a tangle of metal.

  "See, it's all crappy right here," she said.

  "Crappy?"

  He knew this was her mother's word for things that didn't work. If a floorboard creaked or a light bulb went out, it was 'crappy.' If a red light took too long or there was too much traffic, it was 'crappy.' He wasn't sure if this was a popular term in Romania, or if Ana had picked it up on arrival. At first it was endearing, but after remodeling the entire house, it had become grating.

  "Let's say it is 'broken,'" he recommended.

  "Broken," Bella whispered.

  She had done a number on the umbrella. The spokes inside were kinked so they couldn't rise to full extension, and an assortment of wet leaves and dirt had also managed to find their way up inside the cap. Without hesitation, Travis walked to the side of the house and flicked the spigot open. The hose came to life and looked like a boa constrictor preparing to vomit. Before Travis could clear its path, its mouth turned and caught his right shoe with a blast of water.

  Bella laughed at him.

  "Think that's funny do you?"

  She made an attempt for the hose, but he got control of it before she could possibly give him a better shower with it. "One wet shoe is enough," he told her and sprayed her galoshes. She ran in one place and giggled some more.

  Travis shot the debris out of the umbrella and started assessing the damage. "Not too bad," he said. He first worked the spokes with wet fingers, having some success, and then drew his pocket knife keychain from his trousers. While working the last spoke, he heard the front screen door creak open and slap shut. Most likely Ana had heard the change in water pressure from inside the house. They had done considerable work on the plumbing, but for some reason whenever the hose was in use it gave a low moan u
nder the floorboards and could be heard throughout the house.

  He heard the pounding of Ana's feet quickly approaching across the hollow porch. The sound stopped just above his head. From the corner of his eye he could see Ana looking over the railing at them, but he didn't acknowledge her.

  "Why are you here?" she fired at him.

  Travis continued working on the spokes. "There was an umbrella that needed rescuing," he said without looking up at her. With a last turn of his knife, he managed to get the spokes working as a team again; but not without a minor laceration to his index finger. He swiftly produced a napkin from his pocket and kept the small amount of blood from Bella's sight.

  "There you go, sweetheart." He handed her the fully opened umbrella. "You have a roof back over your head. Now let's see if you can keep it there."

  "Daddy fixed it!" Bella said, showing her mother — who wasn't the slightest impressed.

  "Then Daddy can get back to work," she said.

  Her comment drew a hard look from Travis, and his eyes went straight to the long uneven scar that ran from the base of Ana's ear to the middle of her throat. It turned pink when there was moisture in the air. The scar wasn't a clean line, but had a rather jagged, sawed quality from the blade that had roughly cut into her. For Travis, the sight of the scar was forever followed by the echo of Ana's mother, now referred to as Grandma Nica, who was always saying: "Everyone should live with a scar." It was something Grandma Nica had told Ana since she began wearing it; something of a reminder for her to keep walking the straight and narrow and be grateful she was still alive.

  Ana immediately swept her long black hair across the front of it — concealing it as she always did. This one movement of hand and hair could help Travis identify her in a sea of black-haired women. It had become compulsory and autonomous.

  "You really should go," Ana told him.

  Bella lifted the umbrella over her head and began spinning in circles while looking up at the fixed spokes. When her whirl started to waver, Ana told her, "Careful Bella. If I have to change your pants again, you're staying inside."

  Bella stopped her pirouette and jumped into the new puddle daddy had just created with the hose. A splatter of water and mud flashed across his lower pant legs. It pulled a smirk from Ana's pale, cold face.

  "We're going on a plane," Bella announced to her daddy.

  "Is that right?" Travis looked up at Ana for confirmation.

  She didn't look at him and said, "Disneyland, the ride with the airplanes that spin around." She made a circular movement with a single finger in the air.

  "A place far far away!" Bella shouted.

  "Well, that's just the best news I've heard all day," he said, looking at Ana a second time. She kept her sights on Bella. His mind ran through the inventory of rides at Disneyland, and he eventually came up with an image of one with planes, but couldn't remember the name.

  "Okay Bella, Daddy has to go back to work now, but I'll see you a little later," he said and squatted to her height for a goodbye kiss.

  "Seven-thirty," Ana said.

  "Okay, Bella. I'll see you at seven-thirty."

  It was best he left as quickly as possible. He'd already earned his Oscar and didn't know how much longer he could keep up the charade.

  Bella ran and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Her umbrella was still in hand and nearly poked his eye out.

  "What do you say, pumpkin?"

  "Thank you, Daddy." She began spinning and looking up at the spokes again.

  Travis didn't give Ana a last look before leaving the yard. Seven-thirty, he repeated to himself. He remembered seven, originally six — and now it was seven-thirty. He thought about slamming the gate behind him, but wanted to make sure the latch was properly fastened for Bella's sake.

  Back in his car, Travis flipped the glove compartment open and rummaged through its contents until he found the small black box he was looking for. He shook it, heard the familiar maraca, and shoved it deep into his pants pocket.

  — — —

  Driving away from his Victorian home gave Travis the greatest sense of failure. It wasn't so much the failed marriage, but being ripped away from Bella.

  In all his years of dating, he could have never guessed how he would eventually end up creating a family with Ana. It was such a remote possibility that winning the lottery seemed just as feasible. Travis had never been a fan of online dating — never had the need, really. He was sociable, good looking enough, a happy drunk with a natural charm — taller than most, maybe, but he'd never gotten any complaints. But in the early days while struggling to get Crystal Heights off the ground, he was putting in sixteen to eighteen hour days, seven days a week, and there was no time for a real relationship, or to go looking for one — even though his soul still craved it.

  Online dating was an option chosen out of convenience; one that readily fit his demanding lifestyle of all work and no play. It didn't matter that Ana was living in Bucharest — seven thousand miles away from him. The point wasn't to fly over and meet her, but rather to have a message waiting for him when he came home; a little affection through emails and Skype chats. She was a sympathetic ear listening to the asinine events of the workday, there celebrating the small victories in his climbing success, and wishing him sweet dreams before he nodded off. It was a virtual relationship, a place of mental refuge, and minus the actual physical benefits, it kept the coals firing inside him. It was perfectly tailored therapy for his workaholic nature.

  What was unexpected was how he increasingly came to depend on her for support, and began to genuinely exchange equal support in her corner. They found they had a lot in common, similar personal challenges they'd overcome in life. Soon they were describing what they wanted for the future, found further commonality, and began openly discussing and sharing parallel dreams: a traditional family, complete with white picket fence. They picked each other up when they were down, and he began to think about her more during the days. He became efficient in time management in order to have longer conversations with her at night, and it was her smiling face on webcam he wanted to see before hitting the lights.

  Another surprise from Ana was her ability to bring out the romantic side in him. Life before Ana was all business. Everything was numbers, profit margins, quarterly goals, marketing, client scheduling, staff scheduling, licenses, payroll, taxes, insurance, negotiations, loans, and interest rates. Ana fed his emotional counterpart, made him whole again, and put the juice back in his tenderloins.

  He began exercising his creative romantic side; finding hours to shop for just the right gift to send her – and spending nearly as long to find just the right wrapping paper, or the perfect bow. He wrapped the gifts personally, paying attention to the details. First it was a box of chocolates, then a silver necklace, followed by a suffocating teddy bear crammed into a tight cardboard box. Even his emails became more romantic, with the additions of 'I wish you were here' and 'thinking about you.'

  He knew he had gone overboard with all this; he hadn't spent a moment with her in person, but it didn't matter whether it worked out with Ana or not. Part of the journey was getting back in touch with himself. He felt it was the last step in becoming human again, and strangely associated it with freeing himself completely of his alcohol addiction. It was also a healing process in at last putting the dark reminders of his fiancé's death seven years before, behind him

  As remote as the chances were, Ana had reinvigorated his soul, pumped life back into his veins, and had toughened his entrepreneurial spirit. He credited her with maintaining his sanity during that first difficult year launching Crystal Heights, and he honestly believed he couldn't have achieved his success without her — even though she had been living on the other side of the planet.

  When the time had come for him to make the trip to Bucharest, he purchased online a hand-carved jewelry box from Poland. It traveled all the way from Poland to California, just so he could fill it, and send it right back to Ana in neighboring R
omania. It was a small beautiful box that could have held just about any gift in a woman's imagination. There was a lock on the box and it only came with one key. Inside it Travis had bubble wrapped a Guess watch, and on the outside was a handwritten letter:

  Dear Ana,

  This package has traveled many miles to reach you, and I will have probably thought of meeting you at least a hundred times during its journey.

  There is a gift inside this box for you...but there is one catch. This box is locked and I have the only key with me in California. I will bring it when I come to visit you in February.

  So...until I arrive, you can only guess what gift is waiting for you inside.

  I look forward to spending time with you, Ana.

  Thinking of you always,

  Travis

  When Ana retrieved the box at her local post office, immigration had been working hard at opening the box with a screwdriver — policy for foreign packages in Romania. Ana had managed to read the letter before they could open it, and after a quick explanation why it was locked, they granted Travis's wish.

  It was nearly a full year before he and Ana finally met in person. They were not disappointed. Travis spent three weeks with her in the middle of a harsh Bucharest winter, where the snowstorms and chilling winds kept them indoors most of the time. But that was fine by them. It was during one of the heaviest snow falls when Bella was conceived.

  It was no accident, either.

  They had communicated for such an extended period of time that after confirmation of sexual compatibility (and actually being who they said they were), the next step felt completely natural. Ana was open for business and he let his boys swim; although it was Bella who beat the boys. The result was a shared dream growing inside of Ana and the realization of a fever-pitch desire that had saved Travis's life years before.