Chapter 64: Friends and Family

December 25, 1985, Feast of the Nativity, Rutherford, Ohio

Elizaveta and I left my grandparents' house just before 9:00pm, the earliest we could politely leave, despite Elizaveta's desire not to stay too late so we could have more time for ourselves.

"You were right about your uncle," Elizaveta said as I turned onto Route 50 to head towards McKinley.

"He's predictable," I replied. "And he doesn't bother me. He mostly does it to needle my grandfather."

"Your grandfather wanted your uncle to be a priest, right?"

"I think he hoped that would have been the case, and he encouraged him to go to seminary rather than Ohio State, but as I understand it, my uncle was already skipping church fairly regularly by the time he turned eighteen. He met my aunt in college, and they married in her non-denominational church."

"Do they go to church?"

"No. I know they've been invited for Nativity in past years, but I don't remember them ever being in church. I'm pretty sure the last time my uncle was at Holy Transfiguration was before I was born, which was long before Vladyka ARKADY was enthroned."

"But why does he have to pick a fight?"

"Who knows? But I don't let it bother me."

"That's good. Do you know what bothers me?"

"Speed limits," I replied with a smirk, which I wasn't sure she could see in the darkness, illuminated only by the dash and radio.

"You!" she groused. "How did you know?"

"Because we've been in the car for five minutes, heading home, and you haven't said 'drive faster'!"

"They won't ticket you for five over!"

"Yes, Kitten," I replied, pressing the accelerator just enough to mollify her.

"Don't you WANT to get home?"

"Of course. But I also want to maintain my perfect record of never getting so much as a warning, let alone a ticket!"

Just as I said those words, I saw red and blue strobes approaching quickly in my rearview mirror.

"No!" Elizaveta gasped as they grew close enough for her to notice.

I knew the route well enough to know there was a gas station just around the curve I was entering, so I slowed, put on my signal, and prepared to turn into the station. Just as I reached the entrance, the cruiser pulled slightly to the left, drove around us, and continued on.

"Not us, I guess," I replied with more than a bit of relief.

"I was sure you were going to be really upset with me," Elizaveta replied, sounding relieved.

"Officer, I'm sorry I was going five over the limit, but my sixteen-year-old wife was impatient because she wants to have sex! You can look at her and see why I was in a hurry! Would YOU drive slowly if you knew you were going to have your brains fucked out by her?"

Elizaveta squealed and smacked my arm, "You wouldn't!"

"To avoid a traffic ticket?" I teased as I brought the car back up to speed. "I just might!"

"You!" she huffed.

"What?" I asked with a smirk. "Was anything I said not true?"

"Careful, husband!"

"Or what?" I asked, laughing. "You won't have sex with me? An empty threat if I ever heard one, Kitten!"

"Hmph! Then I'll just have to get out my toy!"

I chuckled, "Which, in case you haven't figured out, I find exciting!"

"Not the way I'm going to use it tonight if you aren't careful!"

"You know I love you, Kitten."

"Obviously!" she agreed. "Can we change the subject?"

"For about forty more minutes, yes!"

"I didn't like how rushed we were today. Given your duties at church, we only had a few minutes to exchange gifts. That's absolutely not going to work when we have a family. And once you start your rotations as a Third Year, you don't even get the week off — just on Nativity, and I guess that's not even guaranteed."

"It's not, though the medical school does their best to make sure we have the day off. Obviously, once I'm a Resident, then every day is fair game for scheduling, as we discussed."

"So what do we do?"

"I think, despite my grandfather's desire to continue the Christmas Day gatherings, it's going to have to likely move to another day if he wants us to attend. And the same goes for your parents, because Boxing Day sure isn't a day off."

"Why do you call it that?"

"Blame Mr. Black," I replied. "In one of the books we read for his English class, the name of which I now don't remember, it mentioned the day after Christmas as 'Boxing Day' and the traditions of role-reversal amongst the nobility and their servants and staff. I find it a convenient term to use, and most of my friends knew it. We don't really celebrate it here, but then again, we haven't had an aristocracy or nobility here since before the Revolution."

"I never knew. Anyway, I want to have time on Nativity with just you and me, and, eventually, our kids."

"I agree with you," I said. "Let's see what the schedule looks like next Fall, and take it from there. We're going to have to work out a church schedule as well, though Vladyka is well aware of the conflict and how it has to be resolved. An ordination later in life would have avoided much of that, but that was not to be."

"Did you ever consider saying 'no' to the bishop?" my wife asked.

"Not really, no. My uncle has a point about the pressure from my grandfather, but in the end, I decided. It's similar to the gift he gave me to 'start a family', which was his way of pressuring me to marry. The ordination just accelerated the timing. I was always planning to marry, but I was thinking years from now because of my situation."

"Tasha would have married you immediately if not for ordination."

"Except her real objection was that starting a family immediately wouldn't be practical because I would have almost no time for her and our kids. You know she intended all along to get pregnant on her honeymoon. Nik is going to have plenty of time to take care of her and their baby. If she would have married me, it would have been a struggle. To be blunt, she's too needy. You and Lara were not."

"And for Lara, being a deacon's wife just wasn't in the cards."

"She would have been very unhappy, to say the least. You know she's not interested in 'prim and proper' the way Tasha is, and to an extent, you are."

"To an extent?"

I chuckled, "Permission to say something inappropriate?"

"Sure."

"You and Tasha are perfectly happy to play the perfect prim and proper lady in public, but be, uhm, less reserved in private."

Elizaveta laughed, "Sex-crazed teenagers?"

"Something like that!" I chuckled. "But also with teasing, and so on. Tasha is very reserved if Nik is around. You're a bit less so, but nobody is going to complain."

"I think our Sunday dinners would be a bit more, uhm, open, I guess, without Nik and Tasha there. Alyssa and Serafima are both a lot of fun, and I know Mark and Elias are way more mellow than Nik. He's way too uptight, even when it's just him and Tasha."

"Which is between the two of them," I replied.

"But it does make the rest of us too careful about what we say or do. It's why I like going out with Mark and Alyssa on occasion, so we can really talk. And you know I talk with Serafima and my other friends."

"Just how 'unladylike' do you get?" I asked.

"We're teenagers!" Elizaveta laughed. "But that's totally in private, not even at the lunch table at school."

"Maybe I don't want to know, but I'm curious what you talk about?"

"Well." Elizaveta giggled. "I am the expert on sex! And nobody can complain about that!"

"Just be careful what you reveal, Kitten. And be careful not to sound like you're encouraging inappropriate sexual activity."

"I do remember I'm a Matushka, Father Deacon. But you know as well as I do that sex ed is pretty limited."

We came upon the cruiser, along with a pair of others, blocking Route 50 just before the Hayes County line. A fire engine and paramedic unit told the story, even though we couldn't see the accident, due to the dozen or so cars between us and the cruiser. I slowed to a stop and shut off the engine, as there was no convenient way around that wouldn't take us at least forty minutes out of our way.

"When you're a doctor, would you offer to help?" Elizaveta asked.

"If it were appropriate," I replied. "They briefly covered that in our Practice of Medicine course, but it's so situational that I'd have to ask whoever was in charge of the accident scene if they wanted my assistance."

A flatbed tow truck pulled into the opposite lanes and moved past the cruisers, giving me hope that the scene would be cleared relatively quickly so we could be on our way.

"Where was Jocelyn's accident?"

"Just outside of McKinley," I replied. "About another twelve miles up the road."

In the end, it took twenty minutes before we were allowed to proceed, on the 'wrong' side of the road, past the accident scene, which had mostly been cleaned up. The firemen were hosing down the pavement as we drove by, most likely to remove oil and gasoline. Both cars, their front ends destroyed, were on flatbed tow trucks.

"Whoa!" Elizaveta gasped. "Head-on accident."

"Yeah," I replied. "Which was what happened with Jocelyn."

"What about the ambulances?"

"Moore Memorial Hospital is closer than Rutherford Hospital, and Moore has a full Level II trauma center. If the injuries are severe, they'll send them to Columbus via Flight For Life. Moore Memorial Hospital has a long-term plan to be a Level I trauma center. Harding County just doesn't have the money to expand Rutherford Community Hospital, though I suppose if the population grows, they might."

"So what happens if someone is hurt there?"

"For most cases? They stabilize and send them to Dayton, McKinley, Cincinnati, or Columbus. Mainly, they do inpatient and outpatient surgery and care in Rutherford. So, elective surgery or something like appendicitis. They do cancer treatment as well, though again, it's limited by the size of the hospital."

"That's not something I ever thought about."

"Living in a rural community is like that. And even in Hayes County, there's only Moore Memorial Hospital. The Columbus area has half-a-dozen hospitals, all with ERs, as does Greater Cincinnati. And a city like Chicago would have at least a dozen, with most of them being teaching hospitals."

"What's the difference?"

"Basically, Rutherford has no medical students and isn't affiliated with a medical school."

"So you could do your Residency there?"

"It's possible, yes, but I wouldn't want to, given the state of their ER."

"So what's the real difference?"

"Funding from the federal government, as well as a proper education program. Every Resident and Attending at a teaching hospital is considered a teacher. That's not true for a non-teaching hospital. There also wouldn't be the same variety of cases at a small, regional, non-teaching hospital. The interesting ones would likely end up in Cincinnati or Columbus. The really interesting ones would be at Mayo, Johns Hopkins, or Stanford."

"But you didn't want to go anyplace like that?"

"Clarissa and I considered both Emory in Georgia and Stanford in California, but in the end, I wanted to stay in this area, so we had UC and OSU as our main backups, then Indiana and Pittsburgh as our fallbacks."

"And Fran and Sandy agreed?"

"Sandy did, once we all agreed to go to medical school together. Fran was going wherever Jason ended up, and once he decided on Taft, that pretty much meant she had to go to McKinley Medical School."

"How does the Match thing work for her? Won't it depend on where he ends up working?"

"Yes, and she can interview anywhere she wants. There are several hundred teaching hospitals in the US, so she just needs to make a list when the time comes."

"You and Clarissa are going to submit the same list, right?"

"Yes, though for different specialties. None of the six of us is competing for a Match. Well, Peter isn't sure yet, but he's leaning towards neurology. That's a really tough one to get into, but he's a good student."

"Why is it tough?"

"Because there aren't that many Resident positions. For emergency medicine, internal medicine, OB/GYN, and pediatrics, there are plenty. Surgery, cardiology, oncology, and neurology are more limited. Also, there are fewer applicants for emergency medicine and internal medicine, because they aren't as 'cool' as other specialties. There are more applicants for surgery Residencies than any other."

"You said it was possible you'd get assigned somewhere besides Moore Memorial Hospital."

"That's entirely possible, yes. You and I will sit down and figure out what's an acceptable list, and then I'll work with Clarissa on that list to set up interviews."

"I suppose if you didn't mind driving, Columbus or Cincinnati would be OK. For Columbus, we could live near Nik and Tasha, and for Cincinnati, we could live in Rutherford. But that would mean changing churches, right?"

"That would be up to His Grace, not us. I'll need to run all the possibilities past him when the time comes to find out what he's willing to do, and what he can do."

"Why not now?"

"It's still highly speculative, and there's no need to worry about it until it's time to schedule my interviews."

"Is that automatic?"

"No. You have to submit what amounts to an application and then they decide if they want to interview you. It's similar to what I did for medical school. But let's worry about that in the future. We have more pressing matters to worry about."

"Including you pressing into me! Drive faster!"

December 26, 1985, McKinley, Ohio

"Now THAT is a breakfast!" I exclaimed when I walked into the kitchen on Thursday morning.

Elizaveta had prepared bacon and sausage, which had been off-limits from the beginning of the Nativity Fast on November 15th. Now, there was no fasting until Theophany, or 'Epiphany' as the Western Christians called it. Rather than celebrating the visit of the 'Magi', we celebrated Jesus' baptism in the Jordan.

"I can't even imagine what your previous fasting rule must have been like!"

"Toast with marmalade, preserves, or jam, and fruit," I replied.

"From Thanksgiving to Christmas?"

"Yes. I followed all the fasts rigorously after my first year at Taft. It was a failed attempt to rein in my bad behavior."

"And then you quit cold turkey."

"To get the best sex I've ever had in my entire life!" I exclaimed.

"But how did you know?"

"First of all, sex with my wife is the best sex I can think of. Secondly, you made it quite clear you would be an enthusiastic, fun partner in learning how to make babies! Do you want to know what I heard when you said that?"

"I am curious," Elizaveta smirked.

"I heard you say you wanted to fuck like bunny rabbits and that you would want to fuck all the time!"

Elizaveta laughed, "I guess I did imply that, didn't I?"

"In the only way that was appropriate at the time."

"Is it a problem that we use those words in private?"

"Are you going to tell?" I asked.

"No! Of course not!"

"Then how we talk to each other is simply our business, so long as neither of us feels abused."

"And your butt?" she smirked.

"You're careful not to leave any permanent marks," I chuckled. "And you know what it does."

"Makes you super-hard, and I get fucked unconscious! Win-win! Now, sit down and eat so we can spend some time in bed before we have our Christmas celebration with my family."

"You didn't get enough last night?" I asked, moving bacon and sausage from the serving platter to my plate.

"That accident cost us nearly an hour! And we didn't get to leave your grandparents' house until almost 9:00pm!"

"Then I better eat enough to get my strength back!" I chuckled, serving myself a large helping of scrambled eggs.

Before we started eating, I said the blessing, then we began to eat heartily.

"Was there anything in the paper about the wreck?" Elizaveta asked.

"Just a couple of lines. The Sheriff said that the car heading west crossed the center line, but that's all they know so far. Both drivers were critically injured but are stable and are expected to survive."

"What exactly does that mean?"

I chuckled, "Not much, really. Basically, there are so many terms, and they're subjective, but usually, 'critical' means in the ICU and under constant observation with significant monitoring equipment. It's also a subjective indicator of risk of death."

"So what does 'critical but stable' mean?"

"Generally, very badly hurt, but no immediate breathing or heart trouble, usually. But as I said, it's all very subjective. I'll have a much better idea in three years."

When we finished, we washed the dishes and then fooled around for four hours. We stopped with just enough time to have a shower and dress before we walked across the backyard to the main house at 1:00pm. Elizaveta had taken the gifts over on Christmas Eve, so we didn't have to worry about those. We also didn't have to worry about food, as Anna had helped Elizaveta's mother and grandmothers with preparing the meal.

As expected, Viktor invited all the men, including Joe, Geno, Elizaveta's grandfathers, and me, into his study for a drink, while Elizaveta joined the women in the kitchen. That gave us time to talk without our wives in earshot.

"How is school going, Joe?" I asked.

"Well, it's sure as heck not twenty degrees below freezing in LA, that's for sure!"

"Not quite what I was asking," I replied with a smile.

"The chicks are just as warm!" he smirked.

"Iosif, that's not appropriate!" Valentin declared.

"Mostly B's," Joe replied. "How's medical school?"

"Pass/Fail," I replied. "Though you can get a notation of 'honors' if you're at the top of your class."