Attending Physician

by Vivienne Hartt Quinn

  Children do that, you know. They take the measures of the adults around them and unconsciously intend to heal their pains both emotional and physical. I did it when I was a child. My mother, alcoholic though she was, was also subject to debilitating migraines. From the time I was five, I was perched on the arm of our green sofa with my little hands on her temples, trying to ease her pain. It even worked sometimes.

  The kitchen had been lovingly restored to a real Victorian kitchen. Every modern appliance was masked, with gorgeous antique wooden doors. The sink overlooked a small bay window herb garden that was thriving. Said sink was a wondrous green soapstone, not sunken into a countertop like we do ours these days, but raised, and stand-alone. Long shelves traced the ceiling where charming Victoriana peeped down on the richly painted floor.

  “Gretchen,” I breathed, “this is gorgeous! What a stunning kitchen!” I enthused to her. “Some time would you tell me about everything? Where you got it, how you made your choices, the stories behind things?”

  Raven and Lucy were deer in the headlights. They looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

  “What?” I said to father and daughter.

  “We’ve been hearing these stories since I was a kid,” moaned Raven.

  “Who said you were invited?” I threw at her. “I want to hear them. I didn’t ask you to join us.”

  “Luce,” whispered Raven out of the side of her mouth, “we’re saved.”

  “Oh, you,” said Gretchen in a tone meant to admonish. Then, to me, “You mean it?”

  “I do!” I waxed enthusiastic. “I love Victorian houses and all things antique. You should see my condo. I live in one-sixth of an 1889 gentlemen’s hotel.”

  Lucy released my hand, and Raven put her in a booster seat at the table.

  “Dinner’s getting cold,” said Raven, glad to avoid our house talk.

  I took a risk. “Lucy, do you say grace before you eat?”

  I felt Gretchen’s surprise more than saw it.

  “Gwace?” she queried. “Nana does.”

  “Wanna learn one you can say?”

  She nodded her head with the only brand of three-year-old enthusiasm available: Level 10.

  I moved to the table across from her.

  “Oh, God, bless the cook and the company,” I said. “Amen.”

  Lucy said, “Amen.”

  “You try it, baby girl,” I said.

  “Oh, God, bless ...,” she stalled.

  I prompted, “... the cook and ....”

  “...the cook and,” repeated Lucy.

  “... the company,” I finished. “Amen.”

  “... the company. Amen!” she shouted. Then with equal emphasis we heard, “Mac and cheese—yum!”

  “Do you pray grace at every meal?” asked Gretchen.

  “When I can,” I answered her, “sometimes not in professional settings because it upsets the ... blessed doctors,” I added caustically, “particularly the politically correct brand they spew out at Harvard.”

  Gretchen grimaced. “They are set in their ways, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I agreed wholeheartedly.

  Raven piped in to defend her tribe, “Hey, ladies, no ganging up on the doctor in the room!”

  Lucy broke her stolid concentration on her mac and cheese, and asked, “Why not? You’re big. You can take it like Unca Terry.”

  Her world was black and white to her, no question. Raven didn’t have a comeback for her progeny.

  Gretchen and I gazed at Raven as if to say, “See?”

  Whilst Lucy ate, Raven opened a new conversation for adults only. “So, Gretchen, this is a big week,” she started. Gretchen stared at Raven without blinking, at the same time communicating scads of information. “You have to get used to it,” Raven cautioned, “Verity is going to be a part of this family.”

  “Gretchen,” I said, “take your time. You don’t have the same incentives Raven does.”

  “No, I certainly do not!” agreed Gretchen, implying what I had not meant in any way, shape or form. I’d merely meant that Raven already knew she liked me. I blushed like a damn traffic light and Lucy caught it.

  She said, “Shy,” gesturing at me with her fork. That kid was spooky with her accuracy.

  “I take it back,” I said to Raven. “I don’t think she’s going to be president. I think she’s going to be Empress of the Universe. Nothing gets by her.”

  Gretchen preened at my comment, so proud of her granddaughter.

  “Gretchen, I didn’t mean that particular thing,” I qualified.

  “Of course you didn’t,” she flushed. “I don’t know why I’m being so prickly.”

  That kind of self-awareness I could work with. I took in a deep breath.

  “I do,” I said.

  Lucy spoke up. She’d been tracking the entire conversation. “Me, too,” said Lucy raising her fork.

  “Lucy, what is it?”

  “Nana sad mad. Lady fix.”

  Gretchen was on the verge of exploding into speech.

  I had a flash of intuition. Lucy didn’t speak in full sentences when she was in touch with her mother. She was basically translating spirit language which is more images and feelings into human language which is more words. Aha.

  “Lady try,” I said.

  “Lady pinky pwomise,” said our resident soothsayer.

  “Lucy!” admonished her Nana.

  “What?” Innocent big eyes answered us.

  “Well, she outed me, Gretchen,” I admitted. Then I went on, “My presence in your lives is a change, probably a big change if things go the way Raven and I think they will. You’re facing a rough week, rough enough that you can’t hide behind the conventions of civilized behavior. It’s uncomfortable.” I faced Gretchen full-on. “I’d like to help if you’ll let me.”

  “With what?” Gretchen was stone-faced.

  “Everything,” I said gently.

  “Lady fix,” said Lucy to her Nana in toddler seriousness. “Mama says.”

  “Lucy, that’s enough!” said her embarrassed grandmother.

  Lucy gazed at her unrepentant. “Nana needs you,” she said to me.

  “We all do,” muttered Raven.

  “Yep,” agreed Lucy. “Me, too! Pretty lady.”

  “Pretty baby girl,” I said, rising to help her wipe her hands. “Do you wish to be excused?”

  “Excused?” Lucy repeated, confused.

  “When you want to leave the table, Lucy, you say, `May I please be excused?’”

  Dutiful to the last, she said, “May I please be excused?” to her grandmother. When her Nana said yes, Lucy shouted, “Amen!” and made us laugh.

  Chapter 43

  We spent some time over the logistics of the week. Gretchen’s test was Wednesday afternoon. Raven had already rescheduled her patients and taken the afternoon off to go with her. I offered to take Lucy. I’d already decided that I wasn’t up to facing my groups this week, and would leave them to the other supervising doctors so my Wednesday was free and clear. Raven and Gretchen would drop Lucy off for a playdate with me in Somerville whilst they went to Cambridge for Gretchen’s biopsy.

  Because I was the new girl in town nothing would do but for Lady to put Lucy to bed. I waved at Gretchen and Raven and said, “Go have a beer, you two. I’ve got this.”

  Raven looked thrilled, and Gretchen looked suspicious before Raven poked her and said, “C’mon, Nana, a night off! They don’t come around very often. I’ll buy.”

  Gretchen rolled her eyes at Raven (likely, the beer was in the fridge and Raven had already bought), kissed Lucy on the top of her head and told us both to be good. We said, “Yes, ma’am,” in tandem making Gretchen smile in spite of herself.

  “Good job, Lucy,” I said as they left us to our own devices.

  “Good job, Lady,” she said right back.

  “Bath?” I asked.

  “No, shower in the morning with Nana.”

  “Then,” I said, “b
rush teeth, wash face, potty, prayers and a story.”

  “Yes!” she jumped toward the loo.

  “You start,” I said, “I’ll be right there.” I opened her covers.

  “Tell the fairies and the unicorns it’s bedtime,” she instructed.

  “Fairies! Unicorns!” I called, “it’s bedtime. Brush teeth, wash face, potty, prayers and a story.”

  Lucy laughed from the small footstool in the bathroom. “Fairies and unicorns don’t pray,” she said with some authority.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  That stopped the toothbrush in freeze-frame in her mouth. “I don’t,” she said around the toothpaste.

  “I say they do,” I said.

  “Okay, Lady.”

  Lucy finished her ablutions, insisting, like a girl after my own heart, on her privacy for her private business, which I think, at that age, is known as tinkling. I thoroughly approved. Then she took a flying leap from the doorway of her room onto her bed, and landed on her knees in the traditional posture of prayer.

  “God bless Mama. God bless Raven. God bless Papa.” Who I guessed were one and the same. “God bless Unca Terry. God bless Nana, and make her happy.” A small pause. And a peek. “God bless Lady. God bless God!” she finished on a crescendo. “Aaaaaaa-men!” She was under her covers with them tucked up to her eyeballs in a second.

  I gathered this meant that story held slightly more appeal than prayer.

  “Is your Nana reading you a story, Lucy?”

  She nodded.

  “Where is the book?”

  She extricated her small hand from the coverlet and waved vaguely at a shelf to my right. An old book of fairy tales with a bookmark tassel hanging from it had a bookplate in the front with the name “Gretchen” written in a childish hand in crayon. I love books that stay in families.

  We were in the middle of Cinderella, and I loved to read aloud which Lucy knew at once. She listened with every cell in her being. Enchanted, genuinely, by the story. When she no longer struggled to keep her eyes at half-mast, I replaced the bookmark, closed the book, and said, “Sleepytime, Lucy. Sweet dreams. Fairies and unicorns, watch over our baby girl till morning.” Lucy snuggled in. I kissed her forehead and doused the purple fairy lamp by her bed.

  Then I stood and prayed a blessing of the Mother over this precious child. Preoccupied with my thoughts, I hadn’t realized that Raven stood in the doorway until her arms pulled me into her warmth.

  “Baby,” she whispered, “may I take you home?”

  More to her question lived in the surface words.

  “Yes please,” I whispered.

  “You’re so sweet with her,” Raven said bending down to kiss my lips gently.

  “It’s easy,” I said. “She’s sweet.”

  “It does something to my heart, milady, to see you with her.” Raven spoke to me, but also to her innermost self.

  “You do something to my heart, Papa,” I said against her chest. Her arms tightened around me.

  Lucy spoke in her sleep. “Mama, Lady here. It’s good.”

  “Is she reporting in?” asked Raven dubiously.

  “Sounds like it to me,” I said. “How’s Gretchen?”

  “Sacked. One beer is her limit.”

  “Good. She should have one every night this week, doc.”

  “I agree, Dr. Spencer.”

  “You’d better phone her a prescription tomorrow.”

  Raven laughed. “I will.”

  We crept down the stairs. At one point, Raven jumped down two and then lifted me over the one she said would wake the dead. We left through the big oaken door and got into Chérie.

  “Milady, are you okay?” asked Raven as we pulled onto the street.

  “Yes,” I said, “why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Gretchen was downright nasty with you.”

  “Uh-huh,” I agreed. “But that’s Gretchen’s not mine. I don’t have to feel badly unless I want to.”

  “Verity, you got thrown into the deep end tonight.”

  “I did,” I agreed with her. “Don’t worry, Raven. I’m a grown-up and I know how to swim. If it’s too much, I’ll tell you.”

  A circuit of quiet hummed between us.

  Then Raven said softly, “Is it ever too much, Verity?”

  “Rarely,” I told her, “but sometimes, yes. I’d say biker/thug/drug dealers are too much. So are two black eyes. But I’d also say that some thoughtful guys made my weekend, one in particular, plus I met this spectacularly intuitive little girl who totally captured my heart—,” Raven started to speak and I cut her off, “—and I really like her Papa a lot.” That silenced her.

  After a few miles, she started to chuckle. “Who would have thought that covering a shift, one random shift, for a friend in need would have wrought such change in my life?”

  “Raven, why haven’t you been seeing anyone for so long? Why did Gretchen know immediately that I was `serious’? Don’t you think you should fill me in on—?”

  “Whoa, whoa, milady. Two questions at a time are my limit. Especially on Sunday nights.”

  It was such a ludicrous thing to say that I laughed. “What’s so rough about Sunday nights?” I asked.

  “They precede Monday mornings,” she replied solemnly, adding, “every week.”

  “Oh, I see. So, Dr. Lange, my questions if you please. I posed only two.”

  “I haven’t seen anyone for so long for a couple of reasons. I was in the process of ending a long-term relationship, practically an engagement, when Angie died. It fell to pieces when that happened for which I was grateful. It had started to wear me out, and wasn’t meant to be for much longer.”

  “How long were you together?”

  “Three years, but they were fraught years. On-again, off-again. More often off-again. She was very reactive most of the time and in more and more unpredictable ways. By the time it finally ended, I figured out she was a bully.”

  “That’s tough,” I said. “What was her name?”

  “Jenny. Jennifer McClaggan. Something was not right with her here,” she referenced her head.

  “Sounds like she had some healing to do that she hadn’t done so it informed your relationship.”

  “Yeah,” said Raven. “Painful.”

  “Was she a femme?”

  “Sort of,” Raven hedged.

  “Sort of?”

  “She could do up like a femme, but she didn’t have a femme brain.”

  “That sounds like a description of Shelby only on the butch side. She could dress the part, she could act the part but she wasn’t the part.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Raven.

  Chapter 44

  Raven went on, “Well, Angie died suddenly, and then molto legal things had to be taken care of. Lucy was first and foremost, and when the documents revealed that I was her legal guardian and not Terry, well, we had shit to work through around that. I don’t think Gretchen has forgiven Terry yet.

  “Then we had to make a boatload of decisions to run our lives around a two year old, and keep me in practice. The three of us had to deal with our grief over Angie, too—each in our own ways, and then I made no time to meet a girl, nor was there the oomph for one.

  “So we ousted the tenants in Gretchen’s house, and I moved in there after selling my house. We figured out how and if Terry would be part of Lucy’s life. We did everything to make things as stable for the little one as possible since that was the priority, and it’s a year later, and I met this girl at the hospital, and my whole world is upside down.” I didn’t say a word. “In a good way,” she assured me.

  “Oh?” I said. “What way is that?”

  “Well, you know how butches always say, `There’s this girl, see ....’? And then we fill in the blanks? Well, there’s this girl, um, woman, uh, femme, I met at the hospital one night and my world hasn’t been the same since.”

  “Is that a good thing?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah, very good,” she assured me put
ting her hand over my hand on her leg. Her voice dropped, “And if I have anything to say on the subject, it’s about to get better,” she smirked as she parallel-parked. Adroitly. With one hand no less. “I’ll be right back, baby, I have to get the parking pass for morning. Sit tight.” Note to self: Get her a parking sticker.

  Well, that answered that question. It was suddenly warm in the car, or, I was suddenly warm in the car is probably a better way to say it. In fact, delightfully warm in all the right places.

  “Come on, sweetheart,” Raven beckoned me out of Chérie. I stood in the circle of her arms and lifted my face for her kiss. Raven wasted no time. She kissed me like a drowning man, like it had been decades instead of hours since she’d kissed me. I was the one who’d not been kissed in over a decade and the ache at the core of me because of that fact had rapidly diminished. I was definitely getting used to being kissed, and, for that matter, to kissing.

  Raven walked me to the front door kissing me along the way including the four marble steps, unlocking the front door of the house, up two flights of stairs which twist halfway, unlocking my front door, and once we were in the brilliant yellow of my foyer with the door firmly closed, she stepped up her game.

  She deepened her kiss till I could barely breathe with the intensity of it. When she wanted to be, Raven was demanding and I loved it. Loved it. Oh. My. God. Could she kiss.

  “Milady,” Raven spoke against my ear, “I want you now. Please.”

  I didn’t know exactly what that meant but I did know that I trusted her. “Take me, darling,” I whispered.

  She groaned her impatience and carried me down the hall to the bedroom continuing to kiss me. I’d decided to throw caution to the wind. There is no way to be ready to make love after eleven years of drought other than to do it, and know that you’ll deal with the clean-up, if any, afterward.

  Raven set me on my feet and lit the candles on the fireplace mantle in the bedroom. Then she focused on me.

  “Are you sure?”

  I felt like a virgin, and I suppose I was. “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “I’m not pushing you.”

  “You are,” I smiled shyly at her, “but I like it.”

  She took my face in her hands and tipped it up to hers. “You are so very beautiful, milady.”