Chapter 6

My mother was smirking. “Well son, has the bureaucracy finally beaten you down?” she said.

“Almost mom, almost,” I said. I fell into a chair at our dining room table and dropped my briefcase onto the floor beside my chair.

“So, are you in school?” she said.

“Yes, yes, and now to get ready for work. It’s all in the office today,” I said. “That’s a plus.” She smiled.

“I would imagine,” she said. “But why are you here. You should be home with your wife?” she said.

“I will be after work. This is on the way to the store from the school and I needed to get me some stuff in the attic to take home later,” I said. “Didn’t want to make two trips.” She nodded.

A half hour later I was on my way to work with a box of old school stuff. The boss would be glad to see me. He hated paperwork as much as I did, well, almost.

I was at work and nearly done. In fact, I was done. I was just putting stuff away in the filing cabinet when I got the call.

“Lee, I’m at my hospital. You have to come now,” she said.

“I thought you were off today,” I said.

“I am, was, I went to your mom’s house. Lee, your mom collapsed while I was with her. She’s here. She’s been admitted. You need to come now. Second floor,” she said.

“Oh my God. I’m on my way,” I said. I checked out quickly with the boss and was on the road in two minutes from hanging up on Penelope.

I didn’t storm in but I walked in very fast. Second floor, she’d said. Penelope was waiting for me at the nurses’ station. She stepped in front of me stopping me.

“Lee, the doctor did everything he could,” he said, and she looked down. I knew from her demeanor what the situation was. My mother, mom, had passed.

I took a seat at the wall to my right and waited to gather my thoughts, emotions, everything.

“How?” I said.

“Not sure, Lee. Maybe and aneurism, but we won’t know for sure till a little later,” she said. She sat with me for some time. I finally came to my senses, sort of.

“Can I see her,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve arranged it. Come.”

She led me into the room. The room where my momma had died. It was July of 1987. Caroline Wyatt was only 55-years-old. She looked to be asleep, only that. But there was no movement or breathing. Penelope pulled a chair up next to the bed. I sat in it.

I don’t know how long we were there, but it was a while. Eventually, somehow, she got me home. We didn’t talk much. We would be, maybe tomorrow, but today, no.

Everyone from the salon from where she had worked for so many years attended the funeral, even some long-time customers. The wake was at her house, my house now, I guess. I’d be selling it: too many memories for me to keep it.

The wake ended in the early evening, and Penelope and I headed home and made plans for the following days. We’d be preparing the house for sale. Packing up mom’s stuff: some of it to donate to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. Then we, especially me, would be remembering and weeping and getting on with our lives.

Mom had been gone for a month. I was sitting across from my new bud, that I still sort of hated, making plans.

“So?” said Lance.

“Yes, I’ll be joining you at State full time,” I said. “We’ll be doing whatever tutoring we do in the library every day after our last class unless you’ve a group thing going or what all.”

“That’d be good,” he said. “And I will have a lot of group stuff to do. All of us newbies take the same courses the first year: a lot of togetherness.”

“Okay, then. It’s time for us to get busy conquering the world,” I said.

Cherry nodded in the direction of the burn tent. “He’s in there. He’s on and you’re on,” she said. Penelope nodded. And headed for the burn unit.

The doctor in his mask and gloves, as she donned hers, nodded for her to come closer and to take the sterile wrappings. “Can you do this?” he said, to her. Penelope nodded, and took to wrapping the face and neck of the worker who had been so severely burned at the packing plant where he worked.

The wrapping took a good fifteen minutes. The doctor watched the nurse the whole time evaluating her expertise. He nodded when the operation had been completed.

“You did well,” said Doctor Grant Hardy. “Thank you.” Penelope nodded and offered her thanks, to the doctor, for his approbation.

School was working out for me. I had been able to sell the house and the equity was enough to keep me going all the way through to the biggee. The only problem was that the biggee: graduation with two degrees B.A, and Ph.D. were still going to be a few more years down the street.

My wife, on the other hand, had been doing real good. She had, it is true, been working long hours but also making some serious bucks. She was talking about buying a house now, but I was holding off with that until I did in fact finish with my school thing. She went along with my decision, but that only grudgingly.

We’d been invited to a few parties in recent times. And on another subject, my bud, Lance, was keeping pace with me real good. It looked like we might actually grad at the same time: less than three years to go.

Still in spite of all of the work and time on studies and what all, my wife and I were living the dream. She often came home dragging, but it was dragging with a smile on her face. Her smile made me smile.

And then, for no apparent reason, I started having some concerns. She was looking, something, on some days, and I worried.

But time flew, and I relaxed.

The cafeteria at Mercy General was fairly empty at that hour, 2:00 p.m. The man was actually looking for the woman. He’d held off, a matter of professional ethics, but he’d made the decision and he was about to implement it, and he did worry. Worst case: the woman would spit on his proposal and he could actually lose his license to practice medicine. Best case: he would have found himself the perfect woman, for himself, and rob another man of his. Love and war: both were problematical, and that, one hundred percent of the time.

He saw her chomping down on a roll left over from the morning menu. He strode toward her. Stopping a few feet away, he stared down at her. She sure was pretty.

She sensed this was not an ordinary lunch sit down; they’d shared plenty of those, but this was different, somehow different.

“Doctor Hardy?” she said, her mouth full and still chewing. He smiled.

“May I?” he said, indicating that he’d like to sit with her. Penelope Wyatt nodded.