Chapter 41: I Had No Idea!

December 23, 1986, McKinley, Ohio

"That was actually pretty cool," Clarissa said as we left the pathology department on Tuesday evening.

"Seeing the blown aneurysm for real, rather than on a plate in our textbook, was good, though not for the woman on the autopsy table."

"Given it was undetected, there's nothing anyone could have done. If that had happened in the ER, rather than her house, they still couldn't have saved her."

"Oh, I know," I replied. "I just don't like the idea that someone had to die for us to learn. It's different from Caitlin, of course, because Caitlin was so young and died of cancer. Seventy-two is basically about normal life expectancy."

"Your grandparents aren't quite that old, right?"

"Correct. Grandpa Borodin is sixty-nine. Grandpa Loucks is seventy. Their wives are each a couple of years younger. All but Grandfather Loucks are in great health, with no problems like Deacon Grigory had, or Deacon Vasily had."

"So, being a deacon is detrimental to your health?" Clarissa asked with a smirk.

"Mental health, certainly!"

Clarissa laughed, "And you don't have much room to spare in that regard!"

"I won't argue with you about that! See you in a few hours for study group?"

"I'll be there!"

December 24, 1986, Eve of the Nativity, McKinley, Ohio

On Wednesday, our professor dismissed us for lunch at noon, with the happy addition that the afternoon class was canceled, as was the afternoon session on Friday. I wished my friends 'merry Christmas', and quickly made my way to my car for the drive home.

"Surprise!" I called out as I walked into the cottage.

"Mike!" Elizaveta exclaimed. "You about gave me a heart attack! What are you doing home?"

"Our professor canceled the afternoon session today and on Friday."

"Awesome! But why not just cancel completely for Friday?"

"I'm guessing because that would violate some policy. I fully expect less than a quarter of the class to show up."

"Why not skip? Obviously, you won't miss much."

"Are you suggesting that I play hooky from medical school?"

"You could stay home and have sex with your wife instead!"

"Tempting," I said with a silly smile.

"You won't," Elizaveta said matter-of-factly. "It's not your personality. You struggled with missing class for the trial, and only did it because you promised Robby you would."

"I could see my way clear to make love to my wife this afternoon!"

"Do you need lunch first?"

"I think that can wait!"

"Me, too!" Elizaveta exclaimed, then squealed when I swept her into my arms and carried her to the bed."

Two hours later, after showers and a late, light lunch, we cuddled together on the couch.

"Will you come to my appointment on the 8th for the initial ultrasound?"

"You made it on a Thursday, so I assumed that meant you wanted me to come with you."

"You learned how to do that, right?"

"Only the theory," I said. "We weren't allowed to actually use the transducer. So I know the basic principles, but I won't get a chance to apply them until I start my clinical rotations."

"I know I've said it before, but it just seems dumb to not let you do things like that, or even use your stethoscope or a blood pressure cuff!"

"I agree, but I'm pretty sure I've mentioned that Preceptorships are a novel concept, and most medical schools don't do them. McKinley copied the program from Indiana. The vast majority of medical students never get into the hospital until the first day of their first Clerkship! I'll have a huge advantage over almost all the students at the hospital in Cincinnati."

"I hadn't thought about it that way."

"Being able to get used to the way a hospital works in small doses beats the heck out of trying to drink from the firehose!"

"I like to drink from YOUR firehose!" Elizaveta giggled. "Well, cum, obviously!"

"Obviously!"

"And now it's not wasted!"

I laughed, "Every single sperm except the one that fertilized the egg is 'wasted'! There are something like twenty million sperm, on average, per millilitre of ejaculate, and for healthy men my age, between three and five millilitres of ejaculate! So, just for the one time you got pregnant, it's likely a hundred million sperm were 'wasted'!"

"Whoa! I had NO idea!"

"There are other things to consider," I said, "including sperm motility, which is basically how strongly they 'swim', and quality, which is whether they are properly formed. All of that factors into how easy or difficult it is for you to get pregnant. There are other factors, too, including timing, pH balance in your vagina, and so on. That's why the numbers they give for fertility are usually expressed over a year. It took us two months, but we're both young and very healthy."

"But girls get pregnant the first time."

I nodded, "They do. And someone wins the Ohio Lottery pretty much every week or two, and those odds are FAR longer! Or think of it this way — you have a one in fifty-two chance of pulling a specific card from a deck; your odds of getting pregnant within a year of trying are about thirty or forty times better! Of course, that assumes both partners are healthy, the woman is ovulating, and the man has healthy sperm."

"You learned all that in medical school, right?"

"Most of it, yes. We had some at Taft, but not in that kind of detail because we spent a lot more time on the development of the zygote into a fully formed human being."

"Zygote?"

"That's the scientific term for what is produced when the sperm and egg join. It's from the Greek word «ζυγωτός» (zygōtós), which literally means 'joined together'. It would have been used for oxen yoked together, for example."

"It's a baby at that point, right?"

"That is a philosophical or theological question, not a medical one," I replied. "Nobody can legitimately argue that life doesn't begin at conception, because the sperm and egg join to create a new being, albeit, requiring roughly nine months to properly develop, and being completely dependent on the mother until birth. Well, and after, too, though substitutes are possible, obviously. Whether a zygote is a 'baby' is, fundamentally, an unanswerable question."

"The Church says it is."

"As I said, that's a theological opinion, and is a large part of why I won't participate in an elective abortion."

"Large part?" Elizaveta asked.

"It's not the ultimate deciding factor, nor is it the complete answer, at least for me. It's a complex social question, and I'm not sure I would like government policy to be based on religion. Think about how THAT could backfire."

"You mean because we're a minority among Christians in America?"

"For one thing, yes. But I wouldn't feel right imposing our belief system on others if we were the majority, either. That's the whole point of the First Amendment forbidding a state religion. Remember, too, the Orthodox ideal is a dual system, with the government in charge of purely secular endeavors, the Patriarch in charge of purely spiritual endeavors, and coöperation between the two for the good of the people. You can guess how that's worked out in practice."

"Not well."

"Exactly."

We spent a few hours together, then had a light dinner before heading to church for the Vespers of the Nativity.

December 25, 1986, Feast of the Nativity, McKinley, Ohio

"Christ is born!" Father Nicholas proclaimed at the end of the Divine Liturgy.

"Glorify Him!" the congregation answered strongly.

Everyone came forward to kiss the cross, and, as usual, I was the last to do so, then went into the altar to consume the remainder of the Eucharist, and clean the chalice, paten, and other liturgical items used for the Eucharist, before going to the vestry where Father Nicholas was waiting, having changed into his cassock from his liturgical garb.

"Your mother-in-law approached me about a concern."

"If it's what I think it is, Viktor and I discussed it and came to an agreement."

"It is, and I suspected that was the case. Want to tell me your side?"

"You know we have a meal nearly every Saturday with my in-laws at Yulia's insistence. She wanted it for Sunday, but that didn't work due to Sunday School and my study group. We see my family maybe once a month, if that, mostly because we have so little time. I felt it was appropriate to join my grandparents' celebration. The other part of it, and you can confirm this with Elizaveta, is that Yulia told Elizaveta we were having dinner with them today; she didn't ask. You can imagine how that went over."

"About as well as a skunk in the nave," Father Nicholas said.

"Exactly. Elizaveta was outraged but simply answered sweetly that she'd discuss it with me. I got both barrels, though they weren't directed at me. All things considered, I felt going to my grandparents' house made sense.

"What happens next year depends on my clinical rotations, and I won't know about Thanksgiving Day until just before my October Clerkship, and Nativity until just before my December Clerkship. I may not be available for either of those days, so I can't make any promises about next year. I'm sure Yulia will have something to say about that, but she's going to run into a much harder brick wall than she has with her daughter. May I ask what you said to Yulia?"

"That, in my experience, the only person who has any real say in such matters is the child. I think, in your case, part of it has to do with Yulia seeing Elizaveta as a child, not a woman in her own right. I doubt that will change until Elizaveta has her first child. At that point, it's pretty difficult to deny that she's a woman in her own right."

I was sorely tempted to let him know that Elizaveta was pregnant, but I didn't have permission to do that. Even telling him during confession wouldn't absolve me of error in Elizaveta's eyes, and it wasn't as if I was concealing sin. I did make a mental note to ask Elizaveta about telling Father Nicholas and Vladyka JOHN.

"You do realize that most of the teen and young adult group feel they were adults by the time they were fifteen or so, and we treat them that way."

"Oh, I realize!" Father Nicholas declared. "But parents don't. I recall you had similar problems even after you turned eighteen!"

"I actually had no problems before I turned eighteen. That's when I started making decisions my mom didn't think were correct. I pointed out to both her and my dad that they were treating me like a little kid, something they hadn't done since about the time I started Junior High. It took some time, but my mom finally came around. All of that amused my grandfather to no end because it had been one of my mom's chief complaints about him."

"Grandparents get to enjoy watching their kids have done to them what their kids did to them!"

"My grandmother, especially, because she knew what my mom was doing but kept her mouth shut."

"In most cases, that is the wisest course of action for parents so long as the kids aren't breaking the law or doing drugs."

"Sex?" I asked with an arched eyebrow.

Father Nicholas laughed, "Could your parents have prevented your escapades?"

"Nope!"

"So, as a parent, all you can do is teach and model proper relationships, ensure your children are informed about the risks related to sex, and pray 'Lord have mercy'."

"What do you want me to do about my in-laws?"

"Nothing. You spoke to Viktor, which is what I would always advise, and he's not come to see me to complain or even ask questions. This is Viktor's problem, and mine, obviously."

"Sorry about that."

"If you think this is the first time I've had to deal with a perturbed mother with regard to her adult daughter, you aren't quite as clued in as I thought!"

"I have no doubt, and that is another of my ninety-nine reasons to not want to be a priest! And another reason to pray for long life and health for my Matushka!"

"That goes for me, too! Can you imagine either of us as a bishop?"

"Lord have mercy!" I exclaimed.

"Exactly!"

I received Father Nicholas' blessing, wished him a 'blessed Nativity', and then went to meet Elizaveta so we could leave for my grandfather's house.

"Mom was giving us the evil eye," she said when we got into my Mustang.

"I hope you just smiled sweetly."

"I did. No eruptions of 'Mount Kitten'!" she said with a smirk and a sideways glance.

"I think I might have to strangle Clarissa," I chuckled. "When did she tell you that?"

"Not long after you started medical school. She thought I'd find it funny."

"DID you find it funny?"

"Yes! I was pretty volatile at first."

"At first?" I asked with a smirk and an arched eyebrow.

"About my mom? At first, but not now. In the bedroom? Forever!"

"Good!"

December 26, 1986, McKinley, Ohio

"How was your Christmas, Lissa?" I asked as we walked from our cars through the nearly empty parking lot at the medical school.

"Good. Tessa enjoyed the liturgy, even if she's pretty much an atheist. She treats Christmas as a secular holiday."

"We cast the seed everywhere, and one never knows where it might take root."

"You certainly cast YOUR seed everywhere!"

"Not quite 'everywhere', I chuckled. "I may have been promiscuous, but I didn't sleep with every available girl."

"True. Just the ones you wanted to!"

"Including you!"

"Can I say something completely and totally out of line?"

"Can I stop you?" I asked with a grin.

"No! Tessa said it was too bad you were married..."

"Tessa can keep her fantasies to herself!" I chuckled. "And I know you only told me to plant that image in my head, which, dear Lissa, was already there from what you said before! I do have a bone to pick with you, though!"

"What?"

"'Mount Kitten'?"

Clarissa laughed, "I knew she'd find it amusing! And it clearly didn't hurt you in any way!"

"You were playing with fire," I said.

"Which you do every moment of your life being married to Lizochka! And I'm not just talking about sex!"

"You do seem to have a one-track mind these days!"

"As if you haven't in the past?"

"Perhaps," I grinned.

"Or your pussy cat?"

"Definitely!"

We went inside to get our coffee, and there was no line, which pretty much told the entire story.

"When's the last time we didn't have to wait?" I asked.

"Never!" Clarissa declared. "Both Peter and Nadine chose to blow off class today, and I'm betting we have a quarter of the class at most."

"Elizaveta suggested I play hooky but admitted it's not in my nature."

"No kidding," Clarissa agreed dryly. "How is she doing?"

"She's as content as any Russian woman can be."

Clarissa laughed, "Always a spark away from an explosion!"

"I like certain kinds of explosions!"

"Obviously! Both hers and yours!"

"Obviously!"

We paid for our coffee, then went to class with Maryam and Fran and discovered that only about ten percent of the students had shown up.

"I'm sorry to have dragged you all here today," Doctor Harding said, "but it is an official class day for Second Year students. Given the low attendance, we're going to take a field trip and observe a kidney transplant, which is scheduled for 9:00am at Moore Memorial Hospital. I'm going to go over the procedure briefly, and then we'll take a ten-minute walk over to the hospital. The surgery takes about three hours, so you should be able to leave at the planned dismissal time."

Doctor Harding spent twenty minutes discussing the procedure, which was fairly simple, as surgeries went. The one surprising thing was that the diseased kidneys would not be removed, and that was the normal procedure for patients with kidney failure not related to cancer.

The new kidney would be placed lower in the abdomen and joined to the external iliac artery and vein rather than the abdominal aorta and inferior vena cava, as they would have been in the donor. The donor ureter would be anastomosed with the recipient's bladder, leaving the recipient's ureter connected.

When Doctor Harding finished the brief lecture, we left the lecture hall to walk to the hospital.

"I'm glad we didn't skip," Fran declared.

"Me, too!" I agreed. "Watching from the small gallery will be different from being in the operating room. I'd much rather participate, but if I'm just observing, the overhead view is WAY better."

The surgery went off without a hitch, and we left the hospital just after noon. We walked back to the medical school to get our cars, then I headed home for lunch and an afternoon of lovemaking with Elizaveta.

December 27, 1986, McKinley, Ohio

There was no band practice on Saturday, so we slept in, then did our weekly grocery shopping at Kroger.

"Don't let your mom bait you," I said as we put away the groceries. "No matter what she says, just smile sweetly and allow your dad to handle things."

"I am NOT happy she complained to Father Nicholas!"

"If that helps her blow off steam, then fine. I'm glad you have other ways!"

Elizaveta giggled, "Blow?"

"You do seem to enjoy doing that, and I very much enjoy it, though I like making love more."

"But isn't that making love, too?"

"OK," I chuckled, "I like fucking my seventeen-year-old wife much more!"

"You know, we do have time before we have to go over to the house..."

The groceries were put away very quickly, and clothes were strewn on the floor from the kitchen to the bedroom. Forty minutes later, we gathered them, then showered, dressed, and walked over to the house. As usual, I joined Viktor and Geno in Viktor's study. Joe had come home for Christmas, so he joined us a few minutes later.