Flights of Angels

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “No, I live alone. My cat died last month and I haven’t got a new one yet. Didn’t have the heart.”

  “I thought so,” Jodie answered and took her hand and held it in both of his own while the driver drove them to her pretty little stucco house on the corner of Hope and Ansley streets. Jodie got out and walked with her to the door and waited while she found her key. “Remember, you have to go to bed,” he said. “Call us this afternoon and tell us how you’re doing”.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” she answered. “For all of this. Getting the prescription filled.”

  “Take another one when you get in the house,” Jodie said. “Doctors always take two to start with. They just tell you one because they want to be careful. You really want to kick that infection fast since it’s in your lungs. Don’t be afraid, Suellen. We are a phone call away.”

  “I heard Phyladda was the best,” Suellen said. “My friend who sent me there told me it was the only doctor’s office she’d ever found that she wanted to go back to.”

  “We have good coffee.” Jodie was embarrassed by her praise. “I buy it. I order it from Seattle.”

  Jodie got back into the limousine and was driven back to the clinic. It was a bright day. Jodie hated to admit it but he liked it when someone was really sick. As long as it wasn’t something life-threatening. If someone was really sick there was always a chance they might get well. He sat back in the seat. He took a deep breath. He was proud of himself. He liked what he did for a living.

  The afternoon was quiet. A woman brought in a six-year-old boy to see if he was fat. Jodie told her no, that the child was actually underweight for his age and needed more chocolate milk shakes and sandwiches. “You have to be so careful at that age,” he told her. “Appearances are deceptive. Their growing cells are ravenous. They’ll take calcium from the bones while they sleep. You might go on a diet yourself if you like. I can recommend a good nutritionist. I lost ten pounds with her last winter.” He wrote down the name of a friend on a piece of paper and handed it to the woman. “You’ll learn things that will also help your child. Meanwhile”—he leaned over and whispered in her ear so the boy couldn’t hear—“don’t say fat in front of him. It’s a dangerous concept. Try not to think it either.”

  “Do you think I need to lose weight?” she asked.

  “No. But if someone has to be on a diet, it would be better if it were you.”

  The woman left. It was not like Jodie to be unkind. It was highly unusual for him to be as mean as he had been to the woman. I better eat something myself, he decided. Low blood sugar will make you mean.

  He went into the lounge and ate a turkey sandwich from the sandwich bar and then had a bowl of chocolate ice cream to make sure he would be nicer. He was just having the last spoonful when the call came from Medi-Quick wanting to know what battery of tests they wanted done on Suellen Smithe’s blood. “Sorry, we lost the note,” the technician said. “Don’t know where I put it.”

  “The usual,” Jodie answered. “Everything you can do. And an HIV profile. She wants it.” Why did I do that? he asked himself after he hung up. What was that about? I wouldn’t screw her if she was Marilyn Monroe. Would I? I don’t think I would. Still, I always meant to try that route. Kinky? Well, it’s a finite world.

  He saw a couple of routine stroke-fear patients, examined them for forty minutes apiece, made them wait on a table with heating pads on their back and calves. He touched them, took their pulse, listened to their hearts, examined their facial muscles. “Nope,” he concluded in both cases. “Can’t find a thing. Healthy as a newborn colt. Healthy as can be. Wish I was as healthy as you are. I want you to go for a long walk this afternoon,” he concluded. It was his appointed stroke-scare speech. “For at least an hour. And you have to take someone with you if you can find someone. If you get tired, stop and rest. If you tire easily, walk in the park where there are benches. Tomorrow, I want you to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art. This is an order. When you return next week I want museum passes and a report on the new galleries. There are two things you can have wrong with you. One is illness. The other is fear. Fear is the real killer. It evades all known drugs, all kindness, all cure. If you give in to it, it will kill you, so you are right to be afraid. Are you going to do what I tell you to do? Are you going to follow my instructions?”

  The woman in room B said yes. The thirty-seven-year-old man in room D said he couldn’t because he had to work.

  “Then I can’t help you.” Jodie put his hands on his knees. Lifted his head, looked the man in the eye. “If you can’t help yourself.”

  “My girlfriend works at that museum,” the young man said. “My ex-girlfriend. I don’t want to run into her. Isn’t there anything else I can do?”

  “Go to a CD store, buy three new CDs and play them all afternoon. Don’t turn on the television set. Call a friend, anyone at all. Make them come listen to your music.”

  A nurse appeared in the door. “There’s a call for you, Doctor Jodie,” she said. “It’s Suellen Smithe. She said you were waiting for her call.”

  Jodie left the clinic early and drove Suellen’s Mazda Miata slowly and carefully to her stucco house. He parked in the driveway and walked up the flower-bordered path to the front door. Before he knocked she had opened the door. She was wearing a short violet-colored gown. She had on silver high-heeled bedroom slippers. She reached out her hand. She drew him in.

  “I’m gay,” he said. “After this I wont be able to be your doctor.”

  “We’ll see about that,” she answered. “I wouldn’t kiss you anyway. Not today. I wouldn’t want anyone to catch this cold.”

  He had forgotten about her cold due to the violet-colored gown. Jodie was a hypochondriac himself. All the young men on the service were hypochondriacs. The manager wouldn’t hire any other kind. After all, how could they understand the torments of the patients if they hadn’t been there themselves?

  “I just stopped to bring the car,” he said and held out the keys. “I don’t want to catch the cold if I can help it. It looks bad at the clinic if we’re sick. We don’t want to project an image of anyone being sick.”

  “Comprendo,” she said and backed off and held her keys lovingly in her hand. “No problemo. We have the rest of our lives. Call me next week then, or I’ll call you.” He was looking at her breasts. It was a revelation. They were very, very pretty. They hardly looked real, all soft and pink beneath the translucent material of the gown. Above the breasts a soft string of pearls hung down into the valley between them. Farther down a vulva, a vagina, a patch of light brown hair. Oh, my, he thought. This is so scary. God knows what you could catch from something like that.

  “Better be going now,” he said. “I’ll call you when your blood work comes back. I’m sure it will all be fine. I’m sure that antibiotic will kick that infection in a few days.”

  She walked him to the door, keeping a respectful distance. Then she stood in the open doorway with the breeze blowing the gown as he got into the waiting limousine, which had followed him to Suellen’s house.

  “What a looker,” the driver said. “You docs really make the contacts in that place, I guess.”

  “I’m gay,” Jodie said. “What good would it do me?”

  When Jodie got back to the clinic there was an emergency. A Right to Life group had mistaken them for an abortion clinic and was all over the yard trampling the grass. Three of the protesters were inside being calmed down by the nurses. “We thought this was the place,” the leader said. “We got an S.O.S. If we aren’t at the abortion clinic, where is the abortion clinic? We’ve got to get over there and our bus has left. We’re late. We are going to be late.”

  “What’s going on?” the nurse asked.

  “A woman’s aborting twins just because they’re joined at the stomach,” the leader said. “It’s so important. Could some of you give us a ride?”

  The nurse looked at Jodie for guidance. “This is Doctor Jodie,” she said. �
��I’m sure he’ll find a way to help you.”

  After Jodie called five yellow cabs and gave them the address of the California Bureau of Statistics building on Santa Clara Avenue, he went into the lounge to change. He was pensive. It had been a long day and he had been accosted by those breasts. The more he thought about it the more he wanted to suck on them. He had been breast-fed for two years by his mother and it was all coming back to him. The sling she carried him in. The long smooth power of her body when she held him.

  “What’s wrong, Jodie?” an attendant named Kevin asked. Kevin was new. He was half Indian and half British and had only come to the United States four years before. His accent was completely seductive. Also, he was slightly chubby. Chubby enough so there was a chance there were breasts beneath that white lab coat.

  “I’m having a bad day,” Jodie confessed. “I’m gay and I got snared by a patient’s breasts. It was very confusing. I’m going to a Chinese restaurant I know and watch the fountains.”

  “I’m free.” Kevin surrendered and moved in. “How about some company and a talk.”

  Kevin had breasts. They weren’t very big or well formed and of course there wasn’t any milk but they were tan and had delightful little black hairs growing on them and Kevin was generous and let Jodie play with them to his heart’s delight. They were out on the patio of Jodie’s borrowed apartment. He was housesitting for a set designer for a month. Taking care of the dogs, keeping the robbers away.

  They were on pallets beneath the stars. Not kissing, not fucking, not doing anything the slightest bit dangerous. Not even drinking. Just lying on the pallets talking about their work and breasts and what breasts meant and how symbolic they were and no wonder Jodie had been waylaid by Suellen’s, which probably weren’t even real.

  “You could get some made,” Kevin suggested and giggled a delightful, foreign giggle.

  “No, no elective surgery. I’m against it totally.”

  “I don’t mean attached to your body. Just to hold and look at. They wouldn’t have to be on a mannequin. I mean, it depends on how good your imagination is. I could make you some. I’m a potter. I used to make things out of clay all day, then I got into acting, then into Phyladda. I’m proud of the work were doing, so proud of the help we give to people. I’ve never been happier than I am working there.”

  Kevin rolled onto his back and began to count the stars. “Help me count them,” he said sweetly. “Let’s count all night. We both have the day off tomorrow. We don’t have to do a thing in the world but be happy.”

  “What a thought,” Jodie said. “That’s like this book I was reading about the Buddha. He said the purpose of life is to be happy. That’s the very first line of the book. It’s by a man who lives with the Dalai Lama. So they should know. I mean, the wise are with us if we look for them and if we listen. If not . . .

  “Then we are like our patients,” Jodie finished. “Scared to death from morning to night. Scared shitless in the daylight, in the United States, in the late twentieth century, in the only world there is.”

  “Don’t think about it,” Kevin said. “The darkness and the light. Take your pick. I pick stars. Sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine.”

  “Seventy,” Jodie continued. “Seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six, seventy-seven.”

  The stars kept on shining and they kept on counting until they fell asleep and didn’t wake until it rained.

  It was a good thing they got some sleep. Someone had come in the day before with a real stomach virus and half the attendants were down with it. At six a call came to Jodie’s apartment asking him to come in on his day off. “Were trying to find Kevin Alter,” the office manager said. “Do you have any idea where he is?”

  “I’ll try his friend,” Jodie said. “I’ll be in in half an hour. I’ll have Kevin call if I can find him.” He rolled over to the other half of the futon (they had come in during the night and unrolled the bed in the bedroom). “Do you want to go in with me? I don’t want you out of my sight now that I’ve found you.”

  “Sure,” Kevin said. “Twenty dollars an hour plus overtime. I can use the money.” They got up and quickly dressed and were out the door. No doctors on E.R. were ever faster. They did go through the drive-up window at Hardee’s, but it was on the way.

  “What do you think will happen today?” Kevin asked. “I ask myself that every morning. What next in the world this morning.”

  “Unwrap that other biscuit for me, would you? It’s the only fat I eat all day.” Jodie stopped at a stop sign and smiled at his new friend. Kevin politely unwrapped the biscuit and held it out to him. Their coffee was sitting side by side in the holders underneath the radio–CD player. Steam rose from the cups. The sun was shining. They were young and beautiful and healthy. And they weren’t afraid.

  The first patient was a woman magazine editor who thought she was getting her electrolytes out of balance every time she drank a cup of coffee. Since her demanding job caused her to drink seven or eight cups of coffee every morning, there was nothing she could do but live in fear. “I’ve tried to quit,” she said. “I can’t get any work done if I don’t drink it and I know it depletes my salt and potassium and sometimes gives me the runs, which really makes it worse, so what should I do?”

  “What do you think you should do?” Jodie had decided to play the Socratic game with her. She was so nervous he thought it might calm her down.

  “Well, I keep potassium tablets everywhere. I have a bottle in the car and in the office and one in my purse and one in the emergency suitcase by the front closet. I’m afraid to take them because I heard you can have a stroke from too much of it. I don’t know what to do.”

  “There is potassium in all food. All food contains it. Are you sure it’s the potassium, not salt?”

  “I don’t know. How would I know? You’re the one who is a doctor.”

  “Well, a diagnostician. It’s not exactly the same thing.”

  “I’ve got to get this straightened out. I can’t work thinking I’m going to start seeing white and silver lines before my eyes at any moment.”

  “That’s what happens?”

  “I will be reading along, then bingo, there are silver lines all over the page and I can’t focus. Then I take one or two potassium tablets and lie down for an hour and it goes away.”

  Jodie wrote on his prescription pad for a few minutes. He pulled off the piece of paper and handed it to her. “I want you to go out this afternoon and buy this book,” he said. “Then I want you to go two days without coffee. Then I want you to return on Thursday and tell me if you’ve seen any more white lines.”

  The woman read the piece of paper. She put it in the pocket of her jacket. “That’s it?” she said. “That’s all you can tell me?”

  “You know what the problem is,” Jodie answered. “The book will teach you lots of other things to put in your mouth to make you happy and make you energetic and make you work.”

  “It’s just a book about food?”

  “You need to get reacquainted with food. You’ve replaced food with caffeine. I see that all the time. It’s easy to reverse. Your body will be so happy to have some food to eat it will be dancing a jig. Try it for a few days. Trust me.” He held his gorgeous wide shoulders back and held up his head and drew in his chin. It was a pose he had used a lot on the soap opera when he played a young lawyer who used women. It was the look the director had him use when he was moving in on new prey.

  It worked. She smiled. She stood up.

  “One more thing,” Jodie said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I want you to get a massage tomorrow. Here is a list of three people we think are very good. This is important. Will you do this for me?” He stood up beside her.

  “I don’t know if I have time.”

  “Make time.”

  “Well, all right. I mean, if you think that’s what I should do.”

  “I’m sure you should
.” They shook hands. She smiled again. Fortunately her breasts weren’t very big, so he was able to ignore them.

  At eleven he met Kevin in the lounge and they decided to run out for a salad and pasta. They got into Jodie’s car and pulled out of the parking lot just as Suellen’s Miata came barreling around the flower gardens and pulled to a stop in a handicapped parking place.

  “She saw me,” Jodie said. “God, I’m glad I’m not there. She has a terrible cold. We’re going to have to have an isolation room for people with contagious things. They didn’t use to come in here with germs. That’s only been happening in the last few months.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “A year last week.”

  “Who started this place? I answered an ad in the paper. I wasn’t sure this was a good part of town but I was desperate for money so I applied. Then after I started I decided it was a great job. But the manager never told me very much. Just the standard attendant training and the vocal coach and the medical dictionary and the hand-washing thing. He said he was going to give me a history but they rushed me on in before I even finished the training course. After the rains last month and tremors, when everyone was so nervous.”

  “Okay, where to begin. Phyladda Hoyt got the idea from her aging parents. She was a registered nurse for many years before she started the clinic and she had seen enough to know there was a real need. Then her mother died of a stroke from worrying about what she would do if she had one. How she’d kill herself if she was helpless and all that. I’m not telling this very well. Maybe someday you’ll get to hear Phyladda tell it herself. Anyway, there was quite a bit of money in the estate and Phyladda used it to start Phyladda in honor of her mother. Her mother was also named Phyladda. That’s her portrait in the waiting room. The child with the long white dress and the flowers. It’s Phyladda Hamilton Hoyt as a child.