by Cathy Lamb
I loved how she kept saying “Premium Health Insurance”!
“I’m reporting Premium Health Insurance to the state, as your company should not be allowed to work here in Oregon. I will not have more of my fellow Oregonians, or my fellow Americans, victimized by your”—she paused, heavily—“ ‘organization. ’” She slammed the gavel down after one more glare at the shamed attorneys and a hissed “Court dismissed.”
As the attorneys left the courtroom, heads down, townspeople made oinking and mice squeaking sounds at them. Eda Hathaway, a woman who owns thousands of acres, yelled, “Am I a fat enough farmer’s wife for you, assholes?” as they passed. And Dick Mason called out, after an especially good oink, “I’d like to feed you to my pigs.”
It was too bad that the tires to their car were flat and there were no tow trucks available to help them out. None.
They started walking out of town.
* * *
The case had gotten widespread coverage, and Premium Health Insurance was out of business in one year.
* * *
My dad still works as a metalsmith for Margarita, but the artist has declared that she is moving to Arizona because that’s where her new “lover, my Greek lover” is living. Soon my dad will not have a job. He will find another job. Zack and I would help him immediately, but I know my dad. He will not accept any money. I am worried about him.
He is the hardest working man, besides Zack, that I know. He is proud. Confident. Tough. Sensitive. Loyal. He has a kind and forgiving heart. I mean, Jane Eyre is his best “book friend.” How can you not love a man like that?
I am his hummingbird. He is my hero.
* * *
Soldier had a bad day in the activities room. He stood up suddenly and yelled, rage tumbling out. It was impressive. “This is what I want to know!” Soldier demanded, his fists in the air. “This is what I want to know!” He started to cry. He was so furious he was shaking.
“What do you want to know?” Frog Lady asked. “I know all about monkeys.”
“If you want to know something,” Architect said, “I’ll build you a thinking building.”
I put my arm around his shoulder. It was hard to balance because he was flailing around. “What do you want to know?”
“Why do people have to kill each other? Why? Why did that war happen?”
We didn’t know that answer.
“Here’s a frog.” Frog Lady gave Soldier a pink clay frog with blue eyes she’d tucked into her pocket. “Maybe she’ll know.”
“Your thinking building will help you figure this out,” Architect said. “I’ll get it done tonight, Soldier.”
“How about having chocolate cake with me?” I said. “I saw some.”
Soldier was trying to breathe, panting, tears streaming from his eyes, his helmet wobbling. I patted his arms, and he seemed to get control. He exhaled, the fight draining from his body. “Okay, Jewelry Maker. Let’s go and get cake.”
“Can I come?” Frog Lady asked. “I can hop on in.”
“Yes. Come,” Soldier said, straightening up. “I’ll keep you safe. There are no AK-47s or grenades allowed here.”
Architect started to cry.
“What’s wrong, Architect?” I asked. There was a lot of stuff going on today.
“Why don’t they like me?” he whispered, tears filling his eyes. He held his hand close to his chest and pointed at Soldier and Frog Lady. “Why didn’t they invite me? I want to get chocolate cake.”
Soldier put a shaking arm around Architect, who was sniffling. “Man, I like you. Come on.”
“Hop to it, Architect,” Frog Lady said, hopping. “I like you as much as I like my monkeys.”
We went to get chocolate cake and we all felt a lot better when we were done.
We are emotional basket cases but I am telling you, the four of us are true friends.
* * *
Finally, I was going home.
I was leaving the Brain Bang Unit. I was leaving my doctors, nurses, and therapists. I was leaving Soldier, Frog Lady, and Architect.
I wasn’t all better. I wasn’t close to it. I still walked at a slight tilt to the left, and my brain had been scrambled. My adding and subtracting skills weren’t as disastrous as they’d been, but the numbers still flipped and flopped, often, and I couldn’t get them to stay in rows. Reading was going poorly, as the letters did the same thing as the numbers, as if they were in cahoots together. Saying what I was thinking at a normal speed was still a problem, but there was, thankfully, progress. I had had endless therapy and would continue to receive therapy. Dizziness and headaches came much less frequently, for which I was grateful.
I was sad to leave, in a way. I was leaving my new best friends: Frog Lady, whose real name is Dr. Rose Bingham, from Stanford University and who is a noted zoologist. She fell out of a tree studying apes in Africa. Her husband, Dr. Leonardo Bingham, was with her at the top, and she was flown out first by helicopter, then by private plane. He had been a constant visitor.
Architect, whose real name is Sanjay Kapoor, designed three buildings on the West Coast that all won prestigious awards. He came to the Brain Bang Unit after he fell off scaffolding. He is married with three children. His entire extended family had come often to see him.
Soldier, real name Jefferson Titus, is the recipient of a Purple Heart from his service in Iraq. He was the student body president of Howard University. The grandma he draws his fairy-tale pictures for, depicting war, owns Grandma’s Cupcakes, a chain of cupcake stores.
I had found an honesty in my relationships with them that had been endearing and refreshing. We came into the Brain Bang Unit at the bottom, and we all had to work ourselves up. There were no pretensions here. There were no cover-ups, no bragging, no trying to present a certain image. We were struggling, open, sympathetic, and compassionate.
I hugged all of them before I left.
Architect said, “You found your happiness building, Jewelry Maker?”
“Right here.” I held it up. He had made me a one-story building, using pink paper and cardboard, with cut-out flowers sticking out of it in 3-D form. “Thank you, Architect. You’re a true friend. Everyone likes you.”
He started to sniffle, those dark eyes swimming. “Do you think so?”
“I do. I know it.”
He gave me a hug again and said, “I like you, too, Jewelry Maker. Thank you for my necklaces.”
“You’re welcome.” I had made him another necklace with a heart on it. Because, I told him, people love him.
Frog Lady handed me a purple frog. It must have weighed seven or eight pounds. It had red lipstick lips, yellow daisies, and numbers painted on it. “I will miss you, Jewelry Maker.” I had made her another necklace, too, with a frog on it. I had had to specifically ask Zack to order a frog charm for it.
Soldier handed me a picture of him fighting in a war, pointing a menacing gun toward a village. “This is a picture to give you a smile. It’s so you can remember Robin Hood and Maid Marian.”
“Thank you, Soldier.” I hugged him, too. He was wearing the necklace I recently made him out of small silver tubes.
Zack shook hands with everyone and thanked them for taking care of me.
“No problem, sir,” Soldier said, saluting. “I protected her with my guns.”
“She’s nice,” Architect said. “She made me necklaces. See?”
“I like her poems,” Frog Lady said. “But you should make more poems about monkeys. Hey! Thanks for my frog necklace!”
I still could not remember the morning of my accident, or the accident itself; there were only odd fragments, and the doctors told me there was a high chance I would never remember.
“Let it go, Natalie,” Dr. Ugande said. “You lost one morning. Yes, it was a traumatic moment in your life. We all want to remember our own lives. But maybe, in this case, not remembering the crash, it’s better.”
“Let your mind relax on it,” Dr. Eeko said. “Don’t try to
remember, that will simply lock it in place more tightly. Focus on healing your mind and body. Take it easy.”
I was excited to be going home and I was scared to death, already overwhelmed, confused, insecure, and worried. I had been in the hospital and in the Brain Bang Unit for almost three months. It was a different world out there, and that world was fast paced. I could not keep up.
Plus there was the hit-and-run and the Barbie with the twisted head and the headless bird, which were direct threats to me. The police clearly had no leads. Zack and I had talked, and he had promised me I would be safe and secure. “This will all go away. Trust me. Please. I will protect you.”
I wanted to believe him.
I was grateful to be alive. I am a different person than who I used to be. If there was any shallowness left in me, I believe that’s been blasted out. I am more serious than I used to be, more thoughtful, more introspective. I know I need to make changes in my life in the future in terms of how much I work and the stress I’ll allow myself to be under.
On the other hand, I laugh more, and I laugh over the smallest things. I cry more often, too. It’s like the steel walls I put around my emotions are down and I let myself feel more now. I think I am more a part of life now. I know who my true friends are.
I had almost died. My life would not be the same again.
In almost dying I saw my life ever so clearly.
* * *
I glanced across the car seat at Zack, holding his hand. He had given me a bear hug and a kiss in the parking lot of the hospital and swung me around. We both laughed.
He smiled at me. Gentle. Sexy. Encouraging. I was dressed in new jeans. I’d lost weight, and Zack had bought me a couple of pairs. My shirt was burgundy, long sleeves, with burgundy lace. I was wearing my black cowgirl boots and two chokers I’d made in the hospital, one with silver triangles, one with silver flowers.
I wanted to look like a woman and not a patient for Zack, which is why I had Justine buy me a red bra and matching panties from Lace, Satin, and Baubles. He would get “red romance” when we got home.
As we pulled away I noticed there was something in Zack’s eyes, in the way he was holding himself. What was it? Wasn’t he happy I was coming home? He seemed . . . worried. Was he worried about my health and how I would do, or was he worried about the man who mangled Barbies and birds?
He turned those light green eyes to me. Man. He is all stud. Total ex-Alaskan fisherman, house-building, construction stud. After five years of marriage he still gives me the sizzles.
“Ready, honey?”
“Yes.” Ready for Zack, that is. We would talk about the rest of this stuff later; it was making my mind swirl. I could not handle it right now. All I could handle was going home. I wanted to sleep in our bed, I wanted to touch my grandma’s antique perfume bottles, my china teacups with the pink flowers, and make sure my plants hadn’t died. I wanted to see the hummingbirds my dad made me hanging in a corner of our family room and all my embroidered pillows and books and the oak tree in our backyard. “Totally ready.”
* * *
“Natalie, honey,” Zack said, pulling me over to him when he stopped his truck.
“Yep?” I leaned over and kissed him. Zack had driven, without my asking him, out to the country, to our special place, with a view of farmland and fields, and beyond that, pine-tree-covered hills and the coast mountain range. It was cool so he had brought my jacket. We held hands as we sat on the blanket and enjoyed the scenery, no one around.
I had missed most of fall, but there were still some orange and yellow leaves on the trees, they weren’t completely bare, and the sun shone in the cool blue sky. To me, being outside in nature was a sweet balm to my soul. I had made it out of the hospital and was sitting underneath a tree. How cool was that?
“There have been changes since your accident.” His jaw was clenched.
“Yes. I know.” I decided to explore his chest with my hand. I felt the long scar on his ribs. “I have a jagged scar underneath my hair that looks like a snake. I’ve lost boob and much of my butt, but don’t you worry, I’m going to build those suckers back up. I’m going as soon as I can to get my hair highlighted, because I look like a skunk. I had no idea my hair was so dark underneath the blond.”
He didn’t smile. “Baby, that’s not what I need to talk to you about.”
“What else changed?” I ran my hand over his brown hair, now shot through with a little gray, brought on by my vacation in the hospital. He is tall and broad and kissable. “I missed you, baby.” I straddled him and kissed his mouth.
He pulled away.
Zack, my Zack, never pulled away from me. He was always eager for a romp. My fingers froze on his buttons.
“What is it, Zack?” I pushed my lust aside. “Zack, honey? What happened?”
His hands were on my hips, and he stared off for a second and his face was so . . . so . . . defeated it took my breath away.
“We don’t have the house anymore.”
“What?” Our house was gone?
“I sold our house.”
“What? Why?” Zack had bought and remodeled the house years before we met. He had offered to put my name on the deed, but I declined. He’d bought it, it was his house; I wasn’t worried about the future. The man didn’t even let me pay him rent. “You are the love of my life. I am not taking any money from you, Natalie,” he’d said.
He stared back at me, bleak, hopeless sadness in every inch of his face. “I’m building six homes right now, and I took a loan out on our house because I had an issue with the bank. I had problems with a couple of the homes, and they didn’t sell when they should have.”
I didn’t even know what to say. I was thunderstruck.
“This is completely my fault, Natalie. I leveraged the money wrong. I took a risk and it was a bad one.”
I tried to talk, but I couldn’t.
“I am so sorry, Natalie. I really am.”
“Zack.” I took a breath. Okay. We’d lost the house. We could get another house. I leaned down and kissed him. He was devastated, I could tell. “I’m sorry you had to sell the house.” I kissed him again and smiled, though I felt like I’d been sucker punched. “We’ll get another house.”
“We will, honey. I promise. I will have you in another house as soon as I can.”
My brain started to work after that blow, and the truth surfaced. I rolled off of him. “Zack, you were with me all the time. That was the problem, wasn’t it? You didn’t even work for weeks.”
“No.” He shook his head, emphatic. “That was not the problem. I overextended. I made a bad decision with the loan I had with the bank. This was not you at all.”
“It had to be.” It was. I knew it.
“Hon, you know the men I have working for me. They don’t need me looking over their shoulders.”
“I’m sorry, Zack.” He had bought and remodeled every inch of that house. The work was exquisite. It was a showplace. It had been photographed for a couple of home magazines.
“I’m the one who’s sorry, honey. So sorry. You’re in the hospital, you’re in rehab”—his voice cracked—“and you finally get out and find you don’t have a home.”
“It’ll be fine.” I grabbed his hand. I was shocked. I was shaking. I felt like I’d been run over again. This was a terrible loss. We had no home. But I was struck by another thought. “Why didn’t you use our savings, though?”
“Because that was our money. Yours and mine. I had caused this problem, I was not going to use your money to get us out of it. And I wasn’t going into our retirement accounts for the same reason. Plus, they tax and penalize the heck out of you when you take money out early, and we’re going to get old one day and we’ll need it.”
He and I always thought the same about money. The tax accountant in me said, “Nice choice. Can I be honest with you, Zack?”
“Please.” His voice was ragged. He had hated telling me we’d lost the house, hated it. “Always.”
“Honestly, I didn’t like the neighborhood much with our fancy, rich neighbors. They always bragged. They bragged about their kids, their boats, their businesses, that club they go to downtown that is so snooty, and their snooty golf clubs. I grew up riding horses and tractors and jumping off rocks into a lake. I’m a small-town eastern Oregon lady, and I never felt like I fit in there. You did a gorgeous job on the house, and I loved living there with you, Zack, but I didn’t fit into that neighborhood.”
He closed his eyes for a second, I think it was in relief. “You should have told me.”
“I loved the house. You turned it into house art, and I loved being with you. But now that we’re out, we’ll find a better neighborhood.”
“When I bought the house, all I saw was an awesome investment, and it was. I’m a former Alaskan fisherman. I build homes. I’m an electrician. And the neighborhood didn’t fit me, either.”
I grinned at him. “Then we’re in agreement, once again, sweets. Where are we living now?”
He was not happy. “We have an apartment. It’s a two bedroom. It’s in the Rockford neighborhood.”
I could feel my eyes widening. The Rockford neighborhood? Rough. Poor. Gangs. Geez.
“I’m sorry, Natalie. A contractor of mine moved out of this place, told me about it, and I took it. Our house sold in a day, multiple offers. I took the cash offer, and they offered ten thousand above list if I moved in two weeks. I was seeing you, working, trying to get the houses done, and this was just easiest.”
It was not surprising that the house sold that quickly.
“My business is struggling, but it won’t be for long. I’ll sell the houses soon, and we’ll take the money and buy a new house. Justine has continued to send your check, too. I didn’t want to buy another house until we could make the decision together. You also need to sign the papers, too, so it’s a jointly owned home.”
There was something very wrong here, something amiss. I couldn’t catch it. It had to do with the money, the loan, the bank, overextending. . . . It wasn’t making sense.... Zack was excellent with handling money . . . but it drifted away again, as my memory of the morning of my accident kept drifting away.