by T. K. Chapin
She rushed over to me as I began to lose my balance and began to tumble.
More time passed, and I awoke again. This time, my head was on a pillow. Turning, I saw Kip in the bird cage now and Katie in my chair, reading a book. The sun had already gone down and the porch light was now on. Sitting up slowly this time, I glanced out to the field and could see fireflies dancing across the empty canvas of the night.
“Hey, you,” Katie said, closing her book and setting it in her lap.
“What are you doing back here? Did John make you come back here?”
She didn’t react harshly. Instead, in a soft tone, she said, “No. I wanted to come back.”
“Why? I’m not going to change my life to heal up. Not me.”
“I know,” she replied as she set the book on the patio table. Standing up, she came over to me and folded her knees under herself as she sat down. Looking me in the eyes, she said, “I know about the trailer park. I want to help you because of it, Clay.”
My jaw clenched as I looked over at her.
Katie tilted her head and looked at me like I was some sort of sick puppy about to die. She brought fingers to my temple and let them graze the side of my head. Her touch was almost as intoxicating as her perfume. I hadn’t experienced the touch of a woman in a long time. “You don’t have to pretend to be strong with me. I know all about you, Clay Roberts.”
Hearing my name jolted me out of whatever was going on inside, and I grabbed her wrist. Looking at her, I let her go. “You don’t know me. You just read some article that some kid probably wrote up on a chilly winter afternoon in order to meet his quota for news articles that week. They’re just words. Not reality.” Irritated, I leaned forward and grabbed the porch railing to help myself up to my feet. Pain shot down my leg, sending me back onto my back. I laid my head back on the pillow. Sighing, I looked over at Katie as she hadn’t moved an inch. “Okay. I want your help. Just don’t pretend like you know me.”
She smiled. “Deal.” Standing up, she continued, “You should be okay, but I want you to go see the doctor tomorrow. I want him to see exactly what damage is still left over from the accident so we can start from there.”
“I’ll have to call and set up a time. I don’t know—”
“Dr. Behr,” she interrupted. Dr. Behr was the doctor that was out in Suncrest. Locally, he was known as a nut case by most people. The ones who thought he was a bit off his rocker had good reason. It was known that he had unconventional ways of dealing with pain management. He once prescribed electro-shock therapy for a woman who had broken her foot. As a loony doctor in the truest sense, not many trusted or went to him.
“Okay . . .” If there was one thing I learned pretty quickly about Katie, it was that she wasn’t willing to argue much of anything. In one way, I didn’t like that, because I felt a need to be in control. Then, in another way, it felt right. She was, after all, the one who had gone through the painstaking task of going to school for years and wiping butts just so she could be a nurse one day. I figured it would be in my best interest to go along with as much as I could deal with.
“He’s a good doctor. You’ll like him,” she replied. Hearing a car pull into the driveway over the loose gravel, I knew my sister had arrived home. Katie had a look of curiosity on her face.
“It’s my sister. With my dinner. So . . .”
She nodded. “I need to get going anyway. Get into Dr. Behr first thing in the morning. Eight o’clock is the time of your appointment that I scheduled.”
My eyes narrowed on her because I felt uncomfortable with the time. She must have sensed it in me, and she bent down to meet me eye level.
“You have to want this, Clay. Or you’ll never heal.” She pressed a finger gently against my head and said, “Half the battle is up here in your mind. It’s fine if you won’t give up drinking right now, but you have to do what I say in every other matter.”
“Okay.”
“Promise?” she asked, rising to her feet.
I furrowed my eyebrows at her. “I said okay. I might not have much in this world, but my word is my bond.”
She smiled at my reply as Janice came out onto the porch.
“Who’s this?” Janice asked, looking at Katie.
“Katie,” Katie replied.
Janice dropped the bucket of fried chicken and wrapped her arms around her. Katie laughed as she hugged her. “I haven’t seen you in so long, Katie!” Janice said with excitement in her voice. “Remember playing dolls and hop scotch in the alleyway behind the Wagon Wheel?”
Katie laughed as they released from their embrace. “I do.”
“Awe the memories,” Janice said, beaming with a reminiscing smile. Looking over at me on the porch, she asked, “What happened?” Janice looked over at Katie. “I love that you’re here . . . but what are you doing here?”
Katie began to explain everything, but Janice stopped her. “Stay for dinner. I insist,” Janice said, dropping down to her knees to pick chicken up off the porch.
Cringing, I said, “Stay and have some dirty chicken.”
“Oh, hush!” Janice retorted. “It’s fine.”
Katie laughed. “I’d love to stay.”
We all went inside and enjoyed a nice night together. Katie did most of the explaining of how everything came about through John, and then she went on to explain to both of us all the background she had in a rehabilitation clinic. While it was only for a short time, fewer than a couple of years, she learned a lot while she was at the clinic. She kept coming back to one main thing, the mind. It was the biggest reason people succeeded, but also the biggest reason why people failed.
After sending Katie out the door that evening, I was kicking my shoes off under the coffee table when Janice came out of the hallway and sat down on the couch next to me. She was beaming with a smile.
“What’s up?” I asked with a raised brow.
“First, don’t break my stuff. That phone was old, so I’m not too upset, but don’t let anything like that happen again. You put a hole in the wall.”
“Sorry. That doesn’t explain the smile, though.”
She put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m really proud of you. You’re doing the right thing, getting this help from Katie and going to counseling. I know I can be hard on you . . . but it’s because I love you.”
I smiled. “Thanks. I love you too, Sis.”
“I didn’t get a chance to talk to you yesterday with the double booking of showings at work. I want to know. How did your trip go with Paul?”
“Good. Did he tell you about that guy dying in front of the milk section?”
Janice nodded and scrunched her nose. “That’s so strange, isn’t it?”
“Yeah . . . life is fleeting.” I looked toward the window as Katie was pulling out of the driveway, and her headlights shone through. I smiled. “We can’t put off what we want to do because we think we have more time. We never know when that time will run out.” Looking back at Janice, I said, “He loves you. A lot. I like him more now that I spent some time with the guy. I’m really glad I went.”
“I’m so happy you two are getting along. You two are the most important men in my life.” She stood up. “On that note, I’m going to head to bed.”
“Sleep well.”
Grabbing the remote off the coffee table, I lay down and flipped the TV on. As I heard the bedroom door shut down the hallway, I got off the couch and headed into the kitchen.
Pushing open the deep freezer lid, I looked at the bottle of whiskey. Glancing around for a second, I decided to pull it out. I don’t want to. Putting the bottle away, I went over to the sink and ran the water. As I let the water get cold, I grabbed a cup from the cupboard, and a flicker of light caught my eye, causing me to look out the window. Seeing the fireflies glow as they buzzed around in the darkness that sat across the field, I thought back to the time Janice, our cousins and I had camped out in the yard when we were kids. I had captured a jar full of fireflies so I could
read by the glow of them through the night while the rest of the cousins and Janice slept.
Taking a drink of my water, I smiled and then headed to bed.
CHAPTER 8
Beep, beep, beep! The alarm blared.
Seven in the morning felt too early as I struggled to push an eyelid up and reach for my cellphone on the coffee table. Flipping the phone over, I slid my finger across the screen and silenced the alarm. My eye closed, and I began to drift back to sleep until a pressing thought surfaced and startled me back awake. She won’t help you if you don’t do what she says. The quiet truth was enough to force me off the couch and into action.
Sitting up, I smoothed my hair back and glanced toward the window. A beam of light shone in through the curtains and into the living room, casting a ray of sunlight that illuminated the pocket watch that sat on the coffee table. That pocket watch was a gift my father gave to me from his deathbed years ago.
The day my father passed into eternity was one of the most difficult days of my life. He seemed fine to me as he lay on that bed in this house like he had been for months. My father knew something that day that not even the hospice nurses knew. He knew he’d die that day. In the morning of the day he passed, just after breakfast, he called me to his bedside and gave me the pocket watch. I’ll never forget what he told me. ‘Time never stops, but life does when we don’t truly live.’ It was weird, but it made sense to me, and I clung to those final words that my dad told me before he left this world. Whenever I pull the pocket watch out and think about him, those final words press against my mind.
Grabbing the pocket watch from the coffee table, I dropped it into the shoe box full of my stuff I had under the coffee table. That shoe box and the beater truck out in the driveway were the only things I had left that belonged to me. Gail had taken the rest in the divorce, and I was in such a depression that I’d let her do it. I didn’t care about anything.
I opened the door to Dr. Behr’s office, and a bell chimed, echoing through the empty waiting room. The sun shone through a window in the lobby, illuminating dust particles in the air. Seeing magazines perfectly laid in a circle on the table that sat in the middle of the room confirmed my suspicions that nobody really came here for medical help.
“You must be Mr. Roberts,” a young female receptionist said from behind an open window that hung to the right of the lobby. Walking over to the counter, I leaned my arms against the top that hung out from the opening and nodded.
“Sure am,” I replied. “You new around town?”
“Yes.” She typed for a moment. Looking at me as she stopped, she said, “I just started this last week.”
“That makes sense why I haven’t seen you around town.”
The door that led to the back suddenly jerked open. “Clay,” a familiar voice said from the doorway.
I looked over and saw Colleen. She was one of the children’s bus ministry leaders back when I was still attending church. An older lady, but one of the sweetest souls I had ever met. I hadn’t seen her since that day in the trailer park. As her eyes began to water at the sight of me, I walked over to her.
“I’m sorry.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks.
Touching her arm, I replied, “No. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you worked here.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. Come with me.”
Colleen seemed stuck in the past just as much as I did by her reaction when she saw me. Like a fire having a can of gasoline tossed in, the pain of the day in the trailer park forced its way to the surface.
She led me into a little room off the hallway to take my vitals. The silence turned from uncomfortable to awkward until we both tried to speak at the same time.
“I’m sorry, go ahead,” I said.
As she finished taking my blood pressure, she undid the Velcro and asked, “Why didn’t you ever come back, Clay?” Her eyes were forming tears again as she continued. “All those kids . . . they needed you.”
My jaw clenched as I could feel the pain in my heart reach up and clutch my throat with a ferocious strength. My lips pursed together as I fought against the pain boiling inside of me. Closing my eyes for a moment, a flashback from that day surfaced. I was wrestling the knife out of Lance’s hand on the dirt floor of the trailer park when suddenly, a gunshot went off. Pushing my eyes open, I came back to and shook my head at Colleen. “Where’s Dr. Behr?”
Sniffing, she stood up and wiped her eyes again. “I’ll get him,” she said softly as she left the room. As the door shut, my eyes watered immediately as I could feel her pain still in the room. Keep it together, Clay. I dabbed the tears from my eyes with the palms of my hands. While I waited for Dr. Behr, the lump in my throat subsided and I was able to regain my composure.
The doctor arrived, and I adjusted in the chair I was sitting in. Positioning my posture a little bit better, I forced a smile as he sat down on the stool in front of me.
“How are you?” he asked as he glanced up from his clipboard.
“I’m good.”
“Well, you can’t be all good or you wouldn’t be here. Right?”
I smiled. “Guess you’re right. I have pain in my back and leg, and it shoots down into my foot.”
“Were you injured?”
“Yeah. I was in a motorcycle accident last year and had a bunch of surgeries. Went to a rehabilitation clinic for a while, but I got kicked out.”
He set his clipboard down on the counter and said, “Straight to the facts.” He smiled. “Hop up on the bed. I want to check a few things out.”
He conducted a physical examination which to me seemed very thorough. I don’t know what all the rumors of him being a quack were about. By the end of the visit, he concluded that there might be a pinched nerve in my back and that I needed to go into Spokane for a visit to the spine doctor to have a nerve conduction study to test the nerves.
Back in the lobby of the doctor’s office, I waited for the receptionist to get off the phone with the Spine doctor. She called to set up my appointment. Covering the phone, she asked, “Could you go in today? They actually just had a cancelation.”
My eyes widened. “That quick? Yeah. I guess. That’d be perfect.”
“Okay,” she replied. “How about two?”
I nodded.
The door leading to the back opened, and Colleen approached with a prescription slip. She was still upset, but I was able to control myself this time. Looking down at the prescription, I saw it was for a painkiller.
“I can’t take those,” I replied, giving the slip back to her.
She didn’t ask questions, just nodded and left back through the door. I didn’t want to take a painkiller because I didn’t like the way they made me feel, all loopy and sleepy all the time.
As I left the doctor’s office, I called Katie to give her an update on everything.
“Good,” she said after I told her about the visit with Dr. Behr. “If it’s a pinched nerve, like the sciatica, we can do exercises to help fix the pain.”
“That’s what the doctor was saying too. He said you’d know exactly how to handle it.”
“Yep. Okay. Well, I’ll be by this evening after I get off work and see how you are and hear about the spine doctor’s appointment.”
“All right. Thank you.”
“No problem.”
The doctor confirmed what Katie and Dr. Behr were already leaning toward. It was indeed the sciatica nerve. Luckily, with physical therapy, the doctor believed it’d be able to be resolved. In the unlikely event that it couldn’t be, surgery would be in order.
Katie showed up to my sister’s house just as we were about to dish up dinner that evening. The doorbell rang, and I stood up from the table. A jolt of pain grabbed at my leg, and I reached for my cane that was lying against my chair.
Getting to the door, I opened it. Katie peeked past me and saw Janice bringing the pot of corn from the stove over to the table.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize it was dinner,” Katie s
aid, taking a step back on the porch. She looked like she was about to leave.
“Come on in,” I said, pushing open the screen door. A warm rush of the summer evening air breezed in as I held the screen door open for her. As she walked inside, I said, “That’s the second time in a row you’ve been here for dinner.”
She laughed as she stepped inside the living room and turned around to me. “I promise I’m not trying to eat all your food! I just wanted to see how the spine doctor visit went.”
“Come on in and stay,” Janice insisted, motioning her over to the table as she took a seat.
As we sat down at the table, Katie went right to the heart of the matter. “What’d the doctor say?”
“You were right,” I replied as I unfolded my napkin and set it across my lap. “Sciatica.”
“Well . . . at least it’s that and your disc wasn’t ruptured again or something crazy like that.”
Nodding, I handed her the paperwork from the spine doctor and then I grabbed for the mashed potatoes and began plopping them onto my plate. My hunger was a bit strong. I had been so busy in town and running around that I hadn’t had a chance to eat anything decent all day. Just a quick candy bar from the vending machine just outside the doctor’s office right before I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things that Janice had needed for the house.
My cellphone suddenly vibrated in my pocket. Setting my fork down, I slipped the edge of it out of my pocket to see who it was.
It was Gail.
My pulse began to race. She hadn’t ever called since she left me last year in the hospital. It had always been me reaching out to her, and even then, it was just to talk to Cindy. Excusing myself and leaving Janice and Katie inside, I took the call out to the back porch.
“Hello?” I answered, stepping onto the porch and shutting the door behind me.
“Clay . . .” she said in a soft tone.
“What? What’s wrong? How’s Cindy?” My mind began racing by the mere tone of my name.