Mark quietly squeezed himself into a brightly lit, colorful children’s waiting room and strolled inside. The room was quiet, with only a lone ceiling fan lightly buzzing and rattling around. He examined the empty room, desperately searching. He continued until he spotted Mary gently smiling. As Wegman began to quietly jog over, she stood up and did the same. When they got close, he dropped his bulky backpack and she jumped into his arms. They squeezed tight while Mark swung her in a complete circle and passionately kissed her forehead. They then sat down and quietly whispered.
“I’m sorry I was late, did I miss anything?” His right hand slid into hers, which quickly grasped it tight.
“No, I’ve just been sitting here like you usually do in a waiting room, I guess.” Mary nervously laughed.
Mark smiled and quietly responded, “Don’t worry, everything will be okay. They will check you in, tell you to lay off the prune juice, and kick you out. We’ll be out in thirty with a lollipop and a sticker.”
She giggled and gazed up. “You promise?”
Mark stared into her gorgeous brown eyes with a graceful smile.
“I promise.”
Mark woke up sweating.
He was in a different room, a much smaller room, and attempted to move but was strapped to the bed by restraints. They were snug. Mark checked his feet. It was the same. The Ativan had worn off, but he wished it hadn’t, so he panicked.
“Help, help! Where am I? Get me out! I need to go!”
A nurse peeked her head through the resolution-blue curtains and then quickly pulled herself back. Mark saw her and desperately yelled while panting, his voice much stronger than before, yet still weak, “Wait nurse! Help me, help me, get me out!” The nurse never came back, but instead Tom did.
“Be quiet, man, that doctor is beyond mad,” Tom said while taking a chair next to the bed.
“But why tie me up?” Mark wailed. “Morons. I’m not a criminal, I did nothing wrong.”
“Stop moving, you’re going to hurt yourself again,” Tom cried with irritation, yet at the same time with colossal care and love. But Mark continued to squirm in his thin white bed, wrapped by the fat yellow straps. Dr. Kenny finally confidently flew the curtain open and slowly shut it behind himself.
“Dr. Kenny, why am I here?” Mark said. Tom stood up from his chair and offered Kenny the seat willingly. The doctor patiently walked over to his bed and sat in the chair, not even glancing at Tom, who didn’t mind and simply leaned on the wall. Mark felt lonelier since Tom was now farther away but ignored the feelings deep in his throat.
“You scared us all, Mark. Not one nurse would dare look at you now.” Kenny chuckled. “My entire staff would have walked right through the front door if I didn’t do what I did.” Everything Kenny told him flew right through his head. Besides his buried feeling of loneliness, Mark was thinking of one thing and one thing only.
“Kenny, please get me out, I have to go.”
Kenny patiently watched Mark, and slightly nodded. “Back to your wife? That’s understandable.” He pulled his stethoscope off his neck and slowly placed it on Mark’s heart. He couldn’t move.
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” said Tom. “He is obsessed with his wife.”
“It’s funny, we never got one set of vitals while you’ve been conscious,” Kenny said while again lightly chuckling. “Deep breath, please?” Mark did as he asked while glancing at Tom every other second to see what his expression showed, Tom smiled, and this positivity slightly radiated onto Mark. During the vitals test, Mark never spoke, and while Dr. Kenny and Tom continued to talk, Mark thought of Mary, Tyler, Aaron, and Kenny. Who was this man? And why was Dr. Kenny in such a good mood? Between conversations, all the doctor did was smile, but while he spoke, he seemed to force himself into a serious expression, to somehow hide his already noticeable joy.
“Mark, from the accident last night,” Kenny strongly said, while wrapping his stethoscope around his neck, forcing the smile in his pocket and sitting down again. “You had minor head trauma and a pesky whiplash. It was no shorter than a miracle considering the wreckage. The accident should have left you in a much flimsier condition. We found both drivers knocked out cold, and at first came to the assumption that you lost consciousness because of the wreckage. But Mark, we later learned that you lost consciousness not because of the wreckage, but instead because of anxiety.” Mark never responded. “Now, if you’d like, there are many counselors in our hospital, all willing to talk to you. And you can thank me later, but I got you an amazing counselor for no cost.”
“No,” Mark said sharply.
“Mark, you don’t have a choice.” Kenny never looked away from his eyes. “Do you even understand what has happened? We found you completely totaled, and the car you rear-ended was in an even more severe condition. We found the boy you hit in an unresponsive, comatose state, and we found you in an unconscious, strained sleep. We first believed that YOU intentionally slammed into the boy’s car.”
“I did not!”
“Let me finish!” Kenny stood up from his chair and Mark silenced.
Fighting wouldn’t matter anyway,. Mark thought, It’ll prove him right, that it’s safer with me tied up. It probably is. Kenny calmed down and sat in his chair. Tom stood in the corner, feeling the awkwardness from the fight and searched around for a way to escape the room.
“Hey guys,” Tom awkwardly expressed, “I think It’s about to snow, I have to let my cat in.” Mark stared at Tom, wanting him to stay.
Kenny talked over Tom, and he felt offended. Kenny didn’t care. “Now after we hooked you two up, got blood samples and vitals, we found out that he was severely dehydrated by a bacterial infection called C Diff.”
“I didn’t know.” Mark’s words never passed his ears. Kenny continued.
“Since you were on duty during the accident, the district almost fired you. But many men in your department vouched for you. They gave good feedback.”
Mark never moved, Kenny paused to see if there would be a reaction, and when there wasn’t, he moved on.
“But all we and your department ask for is that you talk to someone. A three-week session all on us, the hospital, all of it is set up. You come in every Monday and Friday.” Mark wasn’t amused by his talk. “And if you enjoy it, you can pay for more. But we made the first three weeks mandatory.”
“And if I don’t?” Mark glared up at Kenny; he shot the glare back.
“You’ll show.”
“Why even do this for me? We don’t even know each other,” Mark said in a harsh tone. But Kenny took the statement differently. His face froze in shock.
“You don’t remember me?”
Mark was puzzled.
“The hospital? Your wife?” yelled Kenny, not forcing his shocked face like the grave expressions before. But Mark thought hard—his wife, the petty war, the doctor’s diagnosis, and painful reminisces of the unsettling dark pit from this short life—but he found no memory.
“Dr. Kenny, it’s not your business to interfere with my personal life. And don’t talk about my wife, ever!” He glanced up again, forcing his eyes to meet the old and gray doctor. Kenny wasn’t thrilled. It made him grieve painfully and burn with rage, but there was mostly despair and failure. Mark’s eyes began to well up with tears. He thought of it all, because of that doctor’s carelessness of words, forcing him to recount his entire past.
What an inconsiderate, careless doctor, he thought, stupid, worthless man. Why do I remember so often? They sicken my mind and haunt me every second. I don’t understand why I unconsciously torment myself with these devilish memories I call the past! He did this to me, how does he know me? He’s making me feel like a fool, with his files given by the hospital, that’s how he knows, that’s how he knows! In reality, he’s clueless. Clueless people are cruel. Mark continued to cry, and his memory invaded his mind like a bacterial disease. One cell at a time, until the entire body was useless.
While he daydreamed, a nurse popped her head out of the curtain. “Doctor?” she asked quietly. “Is Mr. Wegman going to be discharged?”
Kenny slowly looked up, wiping away the water in his eyes to see the nurse, slightly shocked from his emotion. “I want a scan on him before we let him go. Now please, take a break.”
Tom finally interrupted from the corner. “Yeah, I’ll take a break, too.”
Mark’s breathing was getting louder as he began to silently yet violently cry. There were two sides to a coin, different sides to a mountain. In his past, there were moments when the sun seemed to kiss your skin, and spring’s scents and sounds seemed to never end. But there were other moments when you never left your knees from prayer, and your spine never stopped its icy tingles. If you were pained enough from weak knees and tired eyes, those days would come back and haunt you again, more than the barbecues on the Fourth of July and finding your lost dog at the pound. He couldn’t help but remember. To remember the clumsy free-willed doctor, a middle-aged mother who was needed here. They very desperately needed her. Mark was seventeen, Mary was seventeen, and the day was May 24, 1985.
◆◆◆
“Good evening Mary, evening Mark.” The doctor shook both outstretched hands. “How’s Aaron?”
Mark quickly responded while shaking. “Oh he’s good.”
“Really? Anything new?”
Mary interrupted in a delicate, tiny voice. “He got his first girlfriend.”
“I thought the day would never come! It’s about time he got those sticks out of his caboose.” The couple laughed. Mark gazed up from his splitting sides.
“Yeah well, she’s a keeper. They’re very happy.” He smiled, and Mary jumped from her shy spell.
“She keeps his anger down as well!”
“He gave me the heebie-jeebies. That boy needed a chill pill.” She smiled, and her rosy cheeks popped out from under her bright blue eyes. She was their mother, and they wouldn’t deny it. They all sat down.
“Wow,” Mark added in. “You need to take a chill pill on your usage of idioms.” Everyone in the room burst out with hysterical laughter.
“Oh, but that’s my schtick,” said the young and pudgy Dr. Kennedy while grinning and winking in Mark’s direction.
“Are you ready, Mary?”
The couple grabbed each other’s hands simultaneously, frightened in different ways.
“Is it bad, Kennedy?” Mary said.
“I confess, we should have brought you in sooner.” The nurse’s face was blank.
Mary’s lips began to shiver. I wasn’t ever going to leave without my death note. She thought. Just like my mother, and my mother before her.
“It’s hereditary.”
He came in close and whispered in her ear. Her lip calmed and her heart slowed. Kennedy looked at Mary as her eyes glared and darkened.
“Mary, don’t make the same mistake your mother did.” A rage came from Mary’s eyes—her tongue was going to defend her deceased mother. Kennedy caught the powerful rage in her eyes, but it subsided.
She is right. If I make the same mistake, I’ll die, Mary thought.
“Your mother and grandmother died from colon cancer at very young ages. And since it’s passed down by generation, you are at high risk even at seventeen. So with your consent, and your father’s consent—”
“He’s on another business trip.”
“I figured.” Kennedy paused for a second, not to dramatize the moment but to glance at Mark. He knew what she was going to ask, and he continued to rub Mary’s hand. Kennedy continued her speech. “Consent for annual colonoscopy tests.”
“But I just had one done!” Mary yelped and wiggled nervously while pulling her clothes down, like worms had just crawled up her skirt.
“Mary, Mary, look at me.” She quickly looked up and squeezed Mark’s hand, and he squeezed it back. Mary understood but continued to stare into his eyes. Okay, Mary, I’ll ask her to leave, Mark thought. “Can you please leave us for a second to talk things over?” Mark asked, smiling calmly at Kennedy with his controlled voice. She nodded and left the room. He then drew attention to Mary, who was in a silent panic, gazing at Mark’s lap. Her dark hair covered that beautiful face in a very gentle, fragile way.
She’s an angel, Mark thought. God lost an angel.
“Mary, it’s okay, nothing’s happened yet. How do you know what life brings?” She never looked up, afraid that even a single glance at Mark, like the space shuttle Challenger, would burst with emotion. “How can you see the entire picture? We both still exist, our hearts still exist, and they’ll continue to do so. That’s all that matters.” Mark held her hand up; her position stayed. “See this? My hand’s warm, and so is yours.” He placed his second hand over theirs, and Mary quickly looked up. Their eyes greeted each other, hers glistened with fright, but because of his, the fright ran numb, she saw his strength, and she gained some from it. “We give off CRAZY amounts of heat. More now ‘cause you’re panicking, which makes me panic, and then I’m forced to hold our hands in the air like a couple of lunatics.” Mary grinned, then followed it with a loud giggle, and placed her second hand over theirs. Mark felt its touch. “I guess I’m a lunatic, too.” She sniffled up a few tears, but her eyes told him what to do, it told him she needed his words, his love.
“My point is that if we can still warm each other’s hands, even slightly, we don’t have to worry, because we still have each other. I always look into your eyes and quietly say in silence, ‘I’m home.’ You know why? Because you’re the beauty I need and the friend I crave. I look up to God sometimes and thank him for this angel. So don’t you DARE cry for a fate that’s not yours.” Mark let out a lone tear, and Mary’s fragile eyes couldn’t handle the pressure. She began to cry. This would be the only time Mary ever saw tears on Mark’s face.
“So from now on, if you’re ever upset, or shaking like you were, hold my hand, feel the heat blazing from my heart. We are both alive! Never have an inch of doubt! God is with us.” He kissed their hands. “And if I’m not there, call me. It doesn’t matter where I am! I will travel back to you. I will travel back to you! Your hand is worth more than every dime I’ve ever made and second I’ve spent. Because holding hands is a reminder to remind you that I’m still alive and you’re still alive, so there’s hope no matter what happens in life. Loving and caring unconditionally. You’re my Hand Mitten, cause you keep them warm, you cradle and fit in mine, and I fit in yours.” Mark’s voice cracked from the tears running down his face. “And…and you’ll always be mine, eternally. You’ll never be alone! We will take that stupid test together, every year, the same operation table. Until we realize that you’re your father’s daughter, with your mother’s warm smile.”
She smiled and finally spoke from under her tears. “Hopefully not. I don’t want my mother kissing my boyfriend.” They both gently laughed.
“There is it, you look better that way. Keep your gorgeous smile.” They hugged for minutes.
Kennedy walked in at one point with a paper and a pen but unfortunately caught them in the middle. So, Kennedy did what she’d do in any scenario—quickly run out in fear of ruining the moment but casually slip on the doorstop. Ironically, the couple never noticed her tumble, her strangely silent somersault away. Kennedy stood up soon after and calmly wiped off the fall. When she came back with the documents the second time, she handed them to Mary and pointed to where she needed her father to sign. Mark picked a few forms as well, though he waited until he was eighteen and held the test costs on his own to save the expense from his parents.
The next test was scheduled eleven months from then, and they went in together, hungry, as the test asked for no food within twenty-four hours. When they walked in, they held each other’s hands, and when given anesthesia, the doctors had to separate their grasp. Every test was the same. The doctors separated them. The doctors always, no matter what, separated them.