Mark sat on the exam table wearing a short paper gown. “We can be here all night if we have to. Slow down, you’re not being graded. Think about something else. Hey, remember Natasha Something? Wasn’t she the biggest pain in the ass? Well, did you know she’s the plastic surgeon to the stars these days?”
Kathleen laughed and her shaking slowed to a slight tremor. She used her skills and all the medical equipment in the exam room. She had Mark lie down to examine his abdomen.
“You’re still doing that close your eyes business when you examine?”
“Mark, shut up and take a deep breath.”
Afterward, Kathleen said, as she would to any patient, “You can get dressed now. I want to order a workup on your gallbladder.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Mark paused. “And I do mean Doctor. Two comments. One, you have the shittiest bedside manner. Christ, it’s worse than mine and that’s saying something. Two, my gallbladder has to come out. You knew the diagnosis when you examined me, didn’t you?”
“Y-yes,” Kathleen said sheepishly. “I just thought—”
“I know what you thought!” Mark’s tone softened. “You’ve been through crap and you’re scared to take the leap from patient to physician. You’re afraid to make a mistake. Jesus, you’re like a first-year med student. You’re not the only one trying to hide your PTSD. I see vets all the time struggling with it. They don’t want it to affect their careers or be thought of as cowards.
“Did you notice when you thought about Natasha Something and laughed, your hand became steadier? Some of this is physical, nerve and tendon damage, but some is psychological. You need to work this from both ends.” He laughed. “Just like a physical exam, get it?
“I want you to take the next couple of months and work here with me. This is a clinic, but we’ve got sophisticated equipment and at times we function as an ER. If you can work here, you can work anyplace. Don’t think I’m doing you a favor; I can really use the free help.”
The two months working with Mark was what Kathleen needed. She found her skills returning and her confidence building. Her hand wasn’t always perfect but as Mark said, “Sometime we have to settle for ‘good enough.’ It’s time, Kathleen, for you to get your ass in gear and get back to work.”
The Army was processing her discharge papers and she was ready to put her life back together. Now it was time to check the physician recruiting websites and get her ass in gear.
She started early Sunday morning browsing through websites. Most of them required a registration before allowing her to surf their site. She didn’t want a headhunter contacting her and moved on. The few that allowed a preview showed an abundance of openings with health maintenance organizations (HMO), emergency rooms, or practices in large metropolitan areas.
She had to think this out. What did she really want? She put in her search terms, “Family Medicine Physician, board certified, looking for position in California, small town preferred.” There were over five million hits. Most of them were selling something, but she kept scrolling down until she was at the end of page ten. The day had moved on, it was late afternoon, and she was tired and discouraged. She thought, it’s enough for one day. One more page and that’s it. Near the middle of the last page, one listing got her attention.
“Canfield is seeking a Family Medicine Physician. Must be board certified. One hour from Santa Barbara, CA. Near recreational areas. Not quite like any other town. We will provide offices and living quarters plus a generous compensation package. Send CV and copies of credentials to: Christen Mitchell, PO Box 752, Canfield, CA or e-mail with attachments to: [email protected].”
Kathleen was intrigued. After she did her exercises she would answer the ad.
CHAPTER 15
The grandfather clock struck nine and except for the sound of the chimes, Kathleen woke to a silent house. She missed hearing Gayle and Robert moving about in the kitchen; she had slept through their morning ritual. Hushed voices and an occasional laugh would mingle with the sound of water as it began to bubble its way through the stovetop percolator. The smell of strong coffee would work its way to her room, signaling it was time to get up and join them.
She shuffled from the bedroom to the kitchen, her feet moving sluggishly against the carpet. Her body was dazed and her thoughts confused. She couldn’t shake the feelings from last night’s dream. It was the same recurring night terror, but with a twist.
The dream began as it did every night. She was trapped in the burn pit, surrounded by waste. This time, she was able to climb out of the pit before being swallowed by the sinking ground. She wandered, lost, through the desert landscape. She wasn’t wearing any body armor and felt unprotected and vulnerable. As she walked through the desolate terrain, she mumbled in anguish, “Where’s my body armor? Where’s my body armor?” She walked for miles over dusty, rock-filled roads. Her feet burned. The sun became a merciless enemy. She was alone and exhausted. Her throat was parched and she couldn’t swallow.
She spotted a small stream with its banks covered in red, blue, and yellow flowers. The water ran swiftly over large rocks and stones. A woman, lost in thought, sat on the edge of the stream, trailing her hand in the water.
Kathleen was drawn to the flowers; she was drawn to the woman. She began to move closer, until she was almost in reach of the stream, when she stepped on an IED. She woke with a gasp and in a half dream state checked to see if her limbs were still attached. She buried her face in her pillow and smothered her cries. She didn’t want to wake Gayle and Robert.
She followed the dwindling fragrance of the coffee and read the note from Gayle, hanging on the refrigerator door:
Robert made baked apples. Bagels in the pantry. I’ll be home around five. Glad you could sleep in. Love, Gayle.
She poured a cup of lukewarm coffee and heated it in the microwave. She anticipated that moment when she would hold the cup in her hand and breathe in the aroma, remembering the feeling that would follow when she took her first sip.
She heard the post office delivery truck stop in front of the house and walked to the curb, yawning. The oversized mailbox was filled to the brim and Kathleen tugged with both hands to release the mail. When she returned to the house, the bundle slipped out of her hands, spilling onto the entryway table. She sorted the mail into neat piles, hoping there was something for her.
Gayle and Robert got their usual cornucopia of catalogs, magazines, and letters. Kathleen, who rarely received any mail, got three letters. She carried them into the kitchen and decided to play the childhood game of eenie, meenie, miney, moe.
A letter from Helen and Sam won the first game, and Kathleen, with recently recovered dexterity, tore open the envelope impatiently. Invisible lines seemed to have guided Helen’s crisp handwriting—no cross-outs, no whiteout, and straight as an arrow. Kathleen tried to get her to use e-mail, but Helen was adamant. “I want to feel the paper against my pen,” she had said defiantly. “It makes me feel closer to you. I don’t want to join a billion other people, writing quick, generic messages. Pony Express is fine with me.”
Helen and Sam’s letter was filled with chatty news about their recent retirement from the Army. They had traveled in their motor home for six months, stopping at national parks along the way. They wanted to settle down, but weren’t quite sure of where. Helen wanted a house with room for a garden and Sam wanted to work part-time.
Helen thought Sam could do anything he set his mind to do. “I discovered a side to Sam,” she shared. “He loves to kibitz. A five-minute errand takes us twenty. I suggested his new career might be as a big-box store greeter.”
Kathleen laughed out loud, picturing Sam in his new profession. God, I miss them.
Kathleen decided not to do eenie, meenie, miney, moe with the rest of the mail, and picked up the large manila envelope with a government stamp and return address printed on the corner. She knew what was inside: her Honorable Discharge certificate. She slit open the envelope and looked co
ldly at the letter-sized document with the Army seal and the standard boilerplate language. Except for the personalization of her name, it was interchangeable with the millions of others the government had issued. She thought it should contain a disclaimer: Your life has been turned upside down and if you’re lucky, you’ll get to be right side up… maybe.
Kathleen shuddered and became overwhelmed by the terror that gnawed at her, like a starving rat chewing through a kitchen wall, looking for food. What if she couldn’t find a suitable job? What if her early days of deprivation returned with a vengeance? What if she became, once again, the frightened, lonely child?
Kathleen focused on the discharge papers and became surrounded by a veil of sadness. The Army had been her life for fourteen years. She had made friends, primarily within the medical community, but never came out to anyone. During those years she lived a lie, making her closet deeper and deeper.
Sometimes, she couldn’t deny the longings that could only be satisfied by women. A trip to a strange city hoping she would be safe, looking for a gay friendly bar, then meeting a woman who would linger in her hotel room for a while, but always leaves before dawn. She wondered how it would feel to reach over and touch someone she loved, instead of an empty space left by a stranger.
There was one last piece of mail to open. It could be the frosting on the cake and she had wanted to save it for last. Kathleen held the letter postmarked Canfield, CA, and felt her hands dampen with anticipation. She carefully ran her fingers under the seal, trying not to tear the envelope. She felt a surge of excitement when she read the response from Christen Mitchell inviting her to meet with Canfield’s Mayor and Town Council. She would make an appointment with Christen and talk to Robert and Gayle during dinner.
Kathleen first saw the back garden when she was a third year student at UCLA, struggling to balance classes and work. Raised in South Boston’s Irish Catholic neighborhood, she thought a backyard like Robert and Gayle’s only existed in storybooks. The garden took her breath away, then and now.
Robert had designed every bit of the garden, from the black-bottom lagoon pool, to the organic vegetable garden. He told her gardening to him was like standing next to God. She had learned so much from Robert.
Kathleen stood on the flagstone patio and carefully placed the dishes and silverware on the glass-topped iron table. She remembered when Gayle had bought the table and chairs at an estate sale and Robert had carefully removed layer after layer of chipped paint until he exposed the metal surface. As Robert’s sinewy hands sanded and cleaned the metal, he talked to Kathleen about how much he loved restoring old furniture.
“Gayle finds it and I bring it back to life.” He laughed. “Now, I’m going to share a secret with you. I learned this from my father.”
He put on thin plastic gloves and covered his right hand with an old tube sock, turned inside out. “This is the best paint brush you’ll ever find for painting these delicate curves.”
Robert continued to talk as he patiently rubbed his paint sock over the iron filigree. “Restoring old furniture is a lot like life. We begin life the way this table did, in pristine condition. Then, over the years, we’re faced with difficult, painful situations, and we begin to hide ourselves beneath layers of paint. We think we’re protecting everything, but after a while, just like this furniture, we end up with a rough, peeling exterior. We have to risk removing all those extra layers to expose the beauty that’s underneath.”
Kathleen finished folding the cloth napkins, placed them gently on the table, and thought about how she had spent most of her life hiding beneath layers of “paint.” She rubbed her hand across the back of the chair, feeling the smooth, flawless finish. She saw the vivid colors of annuals and perennials, so lovingly planted by Robert. She breathed in the fragrance of the blue beard shrubs and felt grateful for the magnolia trees that shielded her from the setting sun.
Gayle set the platter of barbequed chicken on the table. “Robert’s secret recipe. Do you know he keeps it locked in his safe?” She chuckled as she passed Kathleen the chicken. “How was your day?”
“Fine.” The aroma from the chicken made her aware of a twinge in her stomach. “I got some mail. I’m discharged effective the end of the month.”
Gayle put down her fork and looked at Kathleen with interest. “How’s that feeling?”
“Sometimes, it’s hard for me to accept what happened. Now, it’s real.” She looked down. “I’ll miss my career and I’ll miss my friends, but I know it’s time for me to look ahead and get back to work. It’s just difficult to find where I belong.”
Robert walked over with a basket heaped high with roasted potatoes and corn. “Have you found anything interesting?”
“Do you remember when I told you about the opening in Canfield for a family physician? I got a letter from them today. I’ve made an appointment to interview for the position and tour the town.”
Gayle looked concerned. “I’m glad you’re thinking about work—although, small towns can be isolating.”
“Isolating?”
“Yes, it can be hard to meet others.”
“You mean because I’m…” Kathleen paused. The word stuck in her throat, “lesbian?”
“You’re single and in your thirties,” said Gayle matter-of-factly. “At some point you may want to date or perhaps even have children. Your chances of meeting someone in a small town are slim to none. Will you continue to hide such an important part of your identity as you did in the service? I only want you to weigh all your options and their consequences before making a decision.”
Kathleen spoke slowly, struggling to find words to match her feelings. “I suppose the chance of meeting someone in a small town isn’t so great. Sometimes, I think I’m meant to be single. I’ve always wanted that something special you and Robert have, but I’ve never had much luck at romance. Maybe I’m not relationship material.
“The job market for physicians…” She fought to stifle the quiver in her voice. “Well, it’s not exactly robust. Most of the full-time positions are with HMOs and ERs. I don’t want to be stuck in an HMO where the load is so heavy that there’s barely time to remember my patients’ names. I want to treat according to my conscience. I can’t work full-time in an ER anymore. There’s too much fast action and I can’t chance a flashback —at least not right now.” She paused. “I’ve got to feel productive again and I like the idea of a small town and a family practice. The trip is for three days and it’ll be good for me. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on my own.”
Gayle looked thoughtfully at her. “When are you going?”
“In two days. Gayle, please don’t worry. Since I’ve been working with Mark, I feel so much better. More like my old self every day. I’m excited, not frightened. It’s time.”
“You’ll remember your exercises?”
“Every day, and the bed and breakfast I’m staying at has a large hot tub right outside my room.”
“You won’t forget to eat?”
“Three meals a day.”
CHAPTER 16
Robert took care of Kathleen in his own way. He lent her his 2006 Acura with the Global Positioning System (GPS) and he had her promise not to sign any contracts without his reviewing them first.
Robert checked his car’s tire pressure and fluid levels, showed Kathleen how to use the GPS, and checked the tires and fluid levels—again. He packed her lunch just as he had packed Gayle’s, every workday, for more than twenty years.
“Summertown is about fifteen minutes south of Santa Barbara,” said Robert. “It’s a quaint village filled with all kinds of interesting shops. I think you’ll enjoy it, and it’ll be good for you to stretch your legs. I set the GPS, but keep your eyes open for the signs.” Robert handed her an envelope. “This is for you. Treat yourself to something special.”
Kathleen hugged Robert tightly and thanked him. He made sure Kathleen was settled in the car and holding back bittersweet tears watched her back out of the driv
eway before returning to his home office.
She followed the GPS directions to the 101 Freeway, north. Gradually, the landscape changed from a densely populated city to a sprawling suburbia. The once rich farmland was replaced by housing tracts, created to give families the illusion of a rural life.
Within an hour, Kathleen was at the coast highway where views of the Pacific Ocean peeked around every turn in the road. She opened the car windows and took a deep breath of the fresh ocean air. She passed the small beach town of Carpenteria where surfers were catching the last of the morning swells. Kathleen heard the disembodied female voice of the GPS telling her to take the exit to Summertown. Robert had thought of everything.
Summertown was a charming village with enough small shops to keep Kathleen busy for days. She opened the envelope and took out two crisp one hundred dollar bills. She shook her head at Robert’s generosity, but knew she wouldn’t spend that much on herself.
She strolled the six blocks of Summertown, stopping to look at the stores’ window displays. She stared at the mannequins wearing summer dresses and shorts outfits, and wondered how she would look in them. She sighed. Mrs. Roth had sewed her school clothing, but she had never learned how to shop. The Army fed her and told her what to wear for different occasions. Sweats, jeans, and Tshirts hung on a dozen hangers and supplemented her Army uniforms and hospital scrubs. One below-the-knee print dress along with a black pantsuit and two white suit blouses completed her wardrobe.
Gayle had insisted on taking her shopping for her birthday. “You can’t begin a new life with such a limited wardrobe. I know how you hate to shop, but it’s time.”
They were ushered into the dressing room of an upscale department store. Pre-selected outfits, ready for Kathleen to try on, hung on hangers outside the dressing area.
Gayle said, “I wanted to make this as painless as possible so I called ahead for a personal shopper.”
Kathleen looked at one of the dresses, a simple black sheath. “I like this,” she said longingly as she reached to look at the price tag. Gayle quickly covered her hand. “Uh-uh,” she said. “No looking and the tags are going to be cut off before we go home.”
Flowers from Iraq (The Storyteller and the Healer Book 1) Page 10