Jake shuffled across the sidewalk in front of the clinic, late again. This time he had an excuse, though. More like an explanation, which Jessica had told him didn’t excuse anything, but counted as a step forward from the lies he used when he was drunk or high.
He’d had to wait for her to get home from work, since all they had now was the Tercel. Not only that, but he was moving so slowly, one lumbering step at a time. First the wheelchair, then the walker, then the cane. And now, nothing but his own power to support him. The rehabilitation process seemed to be working, in spite of his bitching and moaning.
The doctor held the door open for him as he moved into the waiting room. He still couldn’t remember the guy’s name, even after four visits.
“Looks like somebody’s been putting in PT overtime.”
“Yeah, the wife pushes me pretty hard.”
“You’re lucky to have her.”
“I suppose.” Jake followed the doctor into the exam room, each excruciating step a flashback to the brutal physical therapy sessions Jessica had been putting him through. The wheelchair work of flexibility and arm-strengthening exercises had seemed tough, but they turned out to be a seated cakewalk compared to what had come next. The minutiae of relearning something like walking, which he couldn’t remember learning in the first place, had amounted to a tedious hammering of a million small nails into his legs.
Just to move a few feet across the living room floor.
His frustration had blinded him to any sense of progress, besides the ability to walk like a dying T-Rex, so he was a little surprised when the doctor looked up from his clipboard twenty minutes later. “Nice work, Jake. Everything looks pretty good. You’re way ahead of schedule. Don’t forget about the dietary changes—more whole foods, less packaged and processed.”
Jake heaved a sigh of relief. He knew he’d gotten a second chance that he didn’t deserve, and he found himself holding his breath every time there was a chance of bad news.
“Thanks, Doctor … what was your last name, again? I know you’ve told me before, but I keep forgetting.”
“Mark. Just call me Mark. And you probably have post-traumatic amnesia from your brain injury. Short-term memory can be affected for several weeks or months. Very normal to experience that.”
“Okay, thanks, Mark. See you in a couple of weeks.”
Mark held the clinic door open again for Jake and watched him maneuver to a beat-up Toyota Tercel, moving like a man fifty years his senior, but moving. He’d lost weight since the accident. A lot, according to his chart. An IV diet, then hospital food, followed by a determined wife cooking healthier meals and making him do PT, had helped knock his obesity down a couple rungs. Even his blood pressure looked better.
He exhaled as Jake eased himself into the driver’s seat. Every week since he’d been here, he’d been diagnosing versions of the same story. Obesity? Check. Type 2 diabetes? Yep. High blood pressure?
Of course. Depression? Likely, given his addiction. Not to mention the diverticulitis and ulcerative colitis that had put Jake in the hospital the first time.
Jake had mentioned in passing that his father was battling Parkinson’s, and the dated patient notes left behind by the outgoing doctor had mentioned early indications of leukemia in Jake’s daughter.
And on top of all this, the accident.
Bad luck?
Maybe. But he knew Jake had been raised on that farm, just like Jake’s father, and his father before him, so he had to know every landmark like the back of his hand. Especially an old elm, which he’d told Mark he’d crashed into while checking his wheat.
After midnight, with a shit-ton of booze and Oxy running through him?
Something besides bad luck was going on.
In Jake, in Jake’s family, in this town. That enemy he’d seen take out his old man seemed to be taking over the community.
Why? And why now?
Mark watched the Tercel pull away and stop at the intersection, one taillight oblivious of the need to cooperate with the other. He turned from the plate-glass clinic door and headed back to his office, eyeing the box of chemo research gathering dust in the corner next to the file cabinet.
He hadn’t looked at that stuff since he left Oklahoma City. Maybe next weekend.
He shoved a blue Mead notebook, which he’d been using as a journal in between patients, into his briefcase and hit the office lights. His father’s truck was waiting a block away, in an attempt to leave a makeshift designated parking space in front of the clinic for the folks who had a harder time getting around.
Like Jake.
Mark frowned as he pulled the door handle and climbed into the massive cavern that was the cab of his father’s Duramax. Horse to water, right? He could tell his patients to eat better and exercise, but he couldn’t make them. Only thing really in his power was prescribing pharmaceuticals, and he was so tired of using chemical Band-Aids to cover gaping internal wounds.
What bothered him more was the possibility that he could be doing the same thing with his chemo research. All this time, he’d thought cancer was the disease. But something had to be causing the cancer he’d been trying to cure, right?
That’s the enemy his old man had been talking about.
Cancer doesn’t just rise up out of nowhere.
He wasn’t going to be seeking and destroying anything from the driver’s side of this Duramax, so listening to music would have to do for now. He searched for the artist he’d first heard on the way home, when his father was dying.
Bison something …
Bridge.
Bison Bridge.
He found the album, plugged his phone into the truck stereo, and pulled onto North Main Street, ready to not think about the potential futility of his career.
He passed the Dollar Store, then McDonald’s, Mr. Burger, and finally Walmart, where Main became Mile 30. Somewhere around Little Goff Creek, he let go of the day and drifted into the music.
My brother Tom fought your holy war
Came back different than he was before
He got the flower in his vein
He got the nightmare in his brain
So tell me your Jesus turned water into wine
And tell me he healed a beggar man born blind
Then why is he leaving my brother behind
Well, that was a fair enough question. Mark could understand where this guy was coming from. Absolutes like religion and medicine didn’t seem quite as … absolute anymore.
Don’t send your son
Don’t send anyone
Walk these streets with me
And tell me what you see
If you ain’t surprised
Then your eyes just ain’t the seeing kind
If I had your strength
I’d fix what I find
Probably bordering on blasphemy in some Sunday circles, especially out here.
Mark turned the volume up.
Maybe I can’t deal in water or in wine
Maybe I can’t heal a beggar man born blind
But I ain’t gonna leave my brother behind
My eyes are the seeing kind
And there ain’t enough love out here sometimes
Not enough love? Probably true.
But cancer, obesity, neurogenerative disease?
Nobody was going to solve those kinds of problems with love.
Somebody willing to do God’s dirty work would have to handle that.
Jessica watched the Tercel roll to a stop behind the wrecked F-150, which was still waiting for a visit from the insurance adjuster.
She met Jake on the front porch, kissed him on the cheek, and held the screen door open as he shuffled into the house. She really was trying to do right by him … feeding him out of the garden, dialing back the meat, practically forcing him to do his PT, and dodging his complaints as they ricocheted between the farmhouse walls.
All this, while struggling to keep herself from asking whether he really wanted to be here anymore. Whether he might try again. Whether he was sneaking booze or pills. Whether he actually gave a shit.
She doubted these were questions she should be asking a suicidal addict, so she had to come up with others. “How’d the doctor’s appointment go? Almost done with those, right?”
“Pretty good, I guess. Mark says I’m coming along.”
“So now you’re calling the doctor by his first name.”
“I just can’t remember his last.”
She pointed to the couch and helped ease him down. “I guess we went to high school together, but I can’t place his family farm.”
“They’re on the other side of town, way, way out. His dad was huge … hands like dinner plates. Overheard somebody at the feed store talking about how he just died.”
“Like you almost did.”
“Yeah, almost, I guess.”
Jessica headed to the kitchen, where she saw Hailey buckled into her chair by the table, making paste with Cheerios and milk, head flung back in joy.
God, she loved that kid. Almost too much, if that was even possible.
She turned to the pantry, scrolling her phone for a recipe she’d used back in college, and within a couple of minutes was smashing black beans against the side of a bowl with a fork. She added an egg from one of their hens, some breadcrumbs, and leftover cooked quinoa, and was spooning the patties onto the griddle when Jake shuffled in.
“Burgers!”
“Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
She waved at the ingredients on the counter. “There’s no meat in them.”
“That looks a lot like what you made on one of our first dates.”
“That’s right.”
“What the hell kind of a burger is that?”
Jessica nudged him with an elbow. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and set the table.”
“Hey, I’m glad I didn’t, you know?”
“Didn’t what?”
“Die. I mean, I know that whole thing was over three months ago now, but—”
“I know, Jake. I know.”