Her stethoscope was still around her neck. She unlocked the door and walked down to three in a sort of daze. Not dazed exactly, just lost in thought. She, Esther Marie Hanson, was going out on a date with a cute guy. Who could have imagined it? Well, not a date exactly, if Ansel was coming. And certainly not a formal date; rather, a payback for a perceived wrong. Still…
She entered three. “Why good afternoon, Mrs. Breeden.”
“Oh, I do wish you would just call me Avis, like everyone else.”
Esther painted on her make-nice smile. “If you really wish, but I apologize in advance if I forget. It’s not the way I was raised. What’s your problem today?” She began her routine task of taking vitals.
“This shoulder, same as always. When I move it, it’s as if I hit it with a hammer, only one that’s vibrating very fast, like this—” She wiggled her hand. “Only faster.”
Blood pressure, temperature, pulse, lung action, all normal; well, Avis’s version of normal. “The last time you were in, we injected the joint area with a steroid medicine. How long did the effects of the medicine last?”
“Oh, three or four days is all, and then it started to act up again. Herbert—he’s my son, Herbert, a very nice young man and not married yet—Herbert says I’m taking too many pain pills, and he’s worried.”
“I see. What other doctors are you going to?”
And the sweet little old lady’s cheeks, which were pale white, flushed pink. “Well, uh. You know…” She scowled. “Has Herbert been talking to you?”
“No.” Esther sat back. “I did not prescribe enough pain meds to worry your son, so if he is concerned, I surmise that you must be getting prescriptions from other physicians.” She shrugged. “Which is fine, but we should write them down on my chart here—and the other physicians’ charts—so that we can all keep track of them.”
“There aren’t that many.”
“It’s important, Mis—Avis. You’ll recall the first level of treatment for your problem is mild, over-the-counter pain meds. When they don’t do anything, we try the shots. The most drastic phase is orthopedic surgery.”
“That’s what Herbert said. ‘Go to an orthopedist, Mom.’”
“A wise recommendation. Shall I make you an appointment with a good orthopedist in Grand Forks? There is also a good one at the county hospital in Bemidji.” And I have been fighting for years to get one here. You see how far that’s gotten. “Would you take off your blouse, please? I’d like to look at it for discoloration or swelling.”
Reluctantly, the lady unbuttoned. If Avis was this modest for a female doctor, she must hide under a blanket for a male. Esther examined the shoulder—a little warmer to the touch than the other shoulder, but not visibly swollen—as Avis chattered on.
“Do you know, Paul Harden’s daughter is back in town! I saw her in the grocery store with the sweetest baby. She’s just as beautiful as ever. You know, she and that Ben James were a couple in high school, and so handsome. Just perfect, the two of them together. Everyone was so disappointed when he went into the marines instead of just marrying her and going to teachers’ college. Of course, his Allie was very nice, too, and also a high school queen, but not the movie-star beauty that Amber is.” And on and on she went.
Movie-star beauty? Esther definitely wouldn’t say that. Amber, in fact, looked rather trailworn, as if life had not treated her well; or she had not treated life well.
“Thank you, Avis. You may button up.” Esther was going to say, Your problem is getting worse, and pain pills aren’t going to do much when she got an idea. “Uh, did you say if your Herbert is seeing anyone?”
“No. No he’s not. He dates a little, but no. Would you like his phone number? I understand that these days, girls call boys as often as boys call girls.”
“Yes. Yes, I would.”
Quickly, eagerly, Avis wrote a number on a scrap of paper and handed it to Esther. This was excellent. Esther would talk to Herbert and get his take on his mother’s condition. And she’d give him the orthopedists’ names.
“I will write you a pain prescription, Avis, but only for one week. Two a day, maximum. By next week, I expect you to have an appointment with an orthopedist.”
It took Esther another five minutes to get the yakkity Avis Breeden to leave; she might not have gotten it done at all, but Dennis and Yvette brought in a BLS Difficulty Breathing from the assisted living center and Esther was able to shoo Avis out the door.
Dennis was downright cheery as he wheeled in Mr. Lamont. “Home game tonight, Esther. Biggie, Bemidji North. Going?”
“As a matter of fact, Dennis, I am. Mr. Lamont.” Esther plugged in her ears. “I’d love to say it’s good to see you, but not with this labored breathing. Let me listen here.”
Mr. Lamont muttered something muffled through his oxygen mask.
Yvette sort of sneered, “Dennis is a sports nut. He can get all excited about beginners’ league bowling. High score, hundred and thirty-five; yay!”
Esther let the two of them transfer Mr. Lamont to the exam table. They were good at it, and this afternoon she felt very weary and wrung-out.
Dennis bubbled, “Hey! Neither team has lost yet, isn’t that right, Mr. Lamont?”
Mr. Lamont muttered.
“Well, yeah, I know it’s pretty early in the season.” Dennis undid the restraints.
Yvette plugged the oxygen mask into the wall valve. “Esther, you may not know that twenty years ago, Mr. Lamont coached high school lacrosse.”
“Really!” Esther slipped an oxygen perfusion clamp onto the man’s finger. “I played in high school, but I was never very good at it. Mr. Lamont, your O2 is way down. Have you been using your oxygen equipment consistently?”
He lifted the mask away. “Not on bridge days. Rest of the time.”
“And today was a bridge day, right?”
Yvette wagged her head. “You should see them play bridge. Pirates are kinder-hearted than those cutthroats; I mean real pirates. Trash talk like you wouldn’t believe.”
Esther grimaced. “I see. Would you two please hang out with him while I talk to his on-call nurse over at his center? Just a few minutes.”
“Sure.” They waved her off, so she returned to her office. She and the nurse, whom she knew casually, compared notes and agreed that his COPD needed greater attention than he could receive locally, so Esther authorized a transfer.
They wheeled him out the door. Oh, if only Avis could be rolled away so easily.
Esther glanced in the empty waiting room and announced to Barbara, “Got a hot date. I’m going home.”
“How hot?”
“Ben James, and probably Ansel. Lukewarm?”
“Oh, no! Boiling!” Barbara smiled, and her voice softened. “Esther, you know how Ben has been having such a really tough time since his wife died, and this is the first he’s starting to act like a human being again. I’m so glad you two are going out. Thank you for saying yes to him.”
“Hm. Now my hot date is a therapeutic intervention. Oh well. Good night.”
Barbara giggled. “Good night.”
She had never been to a tailgate party for the simple reason that she did not ever want to go to a tailgate party. So here she went off to her very first tailgate party, squeezed into the cab of Ansel’s little pickup truck between Ansel and Ben. They parked in the high school lot with maybe a hundred other vehicles, all the people laughing and mingling and apparently enjoying it.
Ansel dragged three Eskimo coolers to the back of the truck bed as Ben popped open three folding canvas directors’ chairs. He unfolded a resin table. From an open carton he plunked down flatware, paper plates and napkins, big bottles of mustard and ketchup. Ansel put the food out, a bowl of potato salad, fried chicken, corn-on-the-cob, and Esther could tell it was all homemade.
One cooler was beverages. Probably, alcohol was not permitted on the school grounds, but beer flowed freely, with people nearby surreptitiously drinking from paper cups. She w
atched Ben, curious to see if he would do likewise. He did not. So he was serious about keeping his act cleaned up for the baby’s sake.
She made mental note to ask him tonight if he’d sent in the forms for Dawn.
The conversation was fast, light, fun. Esther enjoyed the talk and the food. These two men were both good company. Several people who obviously knew them well stopped by, congratulated Ansel on the new arrival, insisted the baby should be named Storm, not Nathan. Ansel vowed to stick with Nathan because the original, King David’s spiritual mentor, was an upright and pious role model, and also because Ansel’s uncle Nathan, childless, had amassed a fortune, and well, you know…
Ben smirked and told her as an aside, “He has no such uncle. He’ll die penniless, same as the rest of us.”
Ansel glanced at his watch and clapped his hands. “I’m headed home. Little Natalie just found out a baby brother takes lots of Mommy’s time, and her nose is out of joint. So I’ll go spend some time with her before bed. Enjoy. Lemme know who wins.”
In moments, he and Ben had folded the table and chairs and put the food away; and their comfortable encampment disappeared into the back of the truck. Ansel drove off, and Ben and Esther walked over to the ticket window. Just the two of them. So this actually was a date.
“Tailgate parties are a whole lot more fun than I expected. Thanks!”
“Glad you enjoyed it. Busy day today?”
“Quite light, actually. I got a little headway on that mountain of paper.”
Ben wagged his head. “We should at least have kept a list. I never thought of it until afterward.”
“It wouldn’t have been kept up. The cases were coming in faster than we could handle them.” Esther expected them to climb up into the bleachers the way the rest of the crowd was doing. Instead, he led her to a box of seats on the fifty-yard line, ten rows above the field.
“Nice.” She settled into a bucket seat to Ben’s right. “I had assumed you bought general admission.”
“I like to watch the players, not ants running around on the field. You follow football much?”
“Not at all.”
“You are about to learn the game.”
They rose for the national anthem as executed by the brass section of the high school band. They cheered politely and briefly as the visiting team took the field; they cheered lustily and exuberantly for the home team. Obviously, white with blue trim figured prominently in the home team’s attire, and the opposing team was decked out in black and golden yellow. And all the while, Esther tried to analyze this situation as if she were undergoing an out-of-body experience.
This was Ben’s natural habitat, a football field. He fit here comfortably. And yet he fit comfortably in the clinic during the storms, and he seemed to be fitting comfortably as a surrogate father. Which man was he, or was he all of them?
Which woman was she? A physician’s assistant, tantamount to a doctor in this small town, but she did not fit comfortably. A Christian, but she rarely went to church. She enjoyed children but had no burning desire for one of her own. She found the whole thing confusing and in a large way, saddening.
Ben leaned toward her to be heard above the hubbub. “Each team tries to keep the enemy from getting close enough to the goalposts on its end of the field to score. They’re tossing a coin to determine who has the ball first. Chance also determines which set of goalposts will be defended by which team first. At the half, they switch ends.”
He went on, “It’s especially important for the first few games of the season. The sun is going down, and it’s in the eyes of the team trying to get to those goalposts.”
She nodded. “Blinding. Very difficult see, with the sun low in your eyes.” She would not have thought of that. She watched the players line up and crouch. A disembodied announcer crowed enthusiastically, “There’s the snap. Conner to Wilkes, Wilkes takes it for five. Nice play.”
She should have brought a jacket. She had forgotten how quickly it got cool this time of year. Most of the people here were getting out blue-and-white jackets or sweatshirts. The bleachers on the other side were turning black and gold as their people bundled up.
She jumped and gasped as a warm jacket dropped over her shoulders. Ben had just loaned her his own jacket. “Thank you, but you take it. I can—”
He grinned. “I’m good. I wore a sweatshirt under it, just in case.”
He explained the next play as it was happening, as if he knew already what they would do. She realized, he probably did.
“Ben! It is so good to see you here!” Amber! She plopped into the only seat left in this box, the one to Ben’s left.
“Good to see you!” He flashed her a bright grin. “Welcome home.” He turned back to Esther. “You see which one’s the quarterback?” She nodded. He pointed. “Watch the backfield, those guys there. One of them just dropped behind the enemy lines. The one way back is the target; he’s clear of enemy players.”
The quarterback threw the ball mightily; it arced over the players, and that lone fellow grabbed the ball and started running. The enemy players quickly brought him down.
“Ben!” Amber sounded astonished. “She surely isn’t that dumb about football, is she? I mean, that’s first-grader stuff.”
Esther definitely felt her feathers ruffling. She turned her attention back to the field. The players churned around a little, lined up, paused, suddenly burst into action. Now that she could see what they were trying to do, it was beginning to make a little sense. And now she knew about downs and yards. This was quite a complex game.
Amber pushed in against Ben’s left side, rather hard to do with these bucket seats. “I love these Friday-night football games, don’t you?”
Kind of a stupid question. Esther chalked it up to that’s-just-Amber. Maybe the lady had trouble making small talk. Esther often did. Ben muttered something.
Amber pushed tightly against him, wrapped her right arm into his left. “Yes, this sure brings back old memories, doesn’t it?”
The announcer called, “Myer picked up seven yards there. Second and goal.”
Esther asked Ben, “So that’s the line the player has to cross, right?”
“Right. Properly speaking, the ball has to cross it and be in the physical control of the player. That’s a touchdown.”
Amber purred, “It gets cold out here too quick. Ben, could I borrow your jacket awhile?”
Esther could hardly believe it. Sheesh, Amber! That is so high school!
Ben seemed not to notice. “Sorry. It’s already loaned out.”
Amber leaned way forward, looked squarely at Esther, and asked, “I don’t suppose I could borrow for a while.”
And the way Amber was looking at her, and the way she said that, Esther knew for sure she wasn’t talking about the jacket.
Chapter Nineteen
Having a day with her family had seemed like a good idea.
Until it was time to go there, and now all Esther wanted to do was call and say she wasn’t coming. Or couldn’t come. But for what reason? That was where she drew a blank. She’d told her mother she’d leave right after church and if she was going to get to church on time, she’d better step on it.
Pastor was making the announcements before the start of the service when she found a seat on the outside end of the last row—easier to get up and leave if she couldn’t handle the sitting any longer. Settling her purse under the pew in front of her, she turned her attention toward the front, at the same time taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out again. There was no need to have tension in her neck and shoulders when she was here. Another thought floated through. As sporadic as her attendance had been the last few months, why was something inside her so insistent that she needed to be here this Sunday?
The organist played the prelude to the hymn and everyone rose to sing. The voice in front of her sure sounded familiar. A man with a baby in his arms. It couldn’t be. Ben! All these years she’d been coming here and she’d never se
en him in church since his wife died. Beth and Ansel and their two sat beside Ben, Beth with the baby, Ansel with his daughter in his lap.
Why had she chosen to sit here? Now she’d be caught in a conversation afterward, unless she snuck out right after communion. She tried to keep her mind on the service, but questions kept bombarding her. She’d forgotten to ask him Friday night if he had sent in the paperwork on Dawn like she’d asked him to. Did she ask him to or was that only in her imagination? Tired as they’d all been, it was miraculous that more things hadn’t fallen through the cracks. Or else she just didn’t know it yet.
Trying to pay attention took so much energy, she settled into her corner and started listing things to be thankful for. Until everyone rose and turned to those around and behind them for the greeting. Pasting a smile on her face, she said good morning and she sure looks wonderful and how are you, Beth and…And the one she didn’t ask was, Should you have Dawn out in public where someone might start asking questions?
But her concern let up when he told the people in front of him that he was taking care of the baby for now and that Beth was really doing all the work. As everyone sat back down to prepare for the sermon, Esther sucked in a deep breath and wished she could put her hand on Ben’s shoulder.
What? Where had that come from? She’d like to hold little Dawn, too. Now, that was understandable, but what brought about the former? Yes, they’d had a good time at the game, until Amber joined them.
The minister’s voice broke through her fog. “Let us pray.”
That part she could do. With his words on one ear and her own petitions floating through her mind, she hoped God could sort it all out. She prayed for healing for herself, safety for Dawn, and an answer to the social services monster that had yet to rear its ugly head. So far, unless Ben had filed the forms, no one even knew there was a baby here.
She glanced at the bulletin. Sermon title: Love One Another.
“Let me ask you a question this morning. Jesus tells us to love one another—but how do we go about that?”
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