Chapter 72: You’re Out Of Line!

January 14, 1988, McKinley, Ohio

After band practice on Thursday, Kari and I had a nice meal at the diner, while Rachel napped in her carrier. After dinner, we joined Subdeacon Mark, Alyssa, and a dozen students for Vespers. At the end of the service, I bade Kari ‘good night’ and headed home, where I handed Rachel over to Serafima. I dressed for work in my usual slacks, long-sleeved shirt, and tie, then headed to the hospital.

“Hi, Mike!” Kylie exclaimed when I walked into the locker room as she was putting on her coat.

“Hi, Kylie. Didn’t your shift end two hours ago?”

“Yes, but I was in the middle of a consult. Sutures and a wrist cast on a five-year-old who thought his Superman pajamas conferred the ability to fly.”

“Jumped off his bunk bed?”

“Right the first time! The ability of boys to injure themselves never ceases to amaze me!”

“And to think, no beer was involved!” I chuckled.

“Give him about twelve years!”

“True!”

“Do you want to get some coffee sometime?” Kylie asked. “We’re going to be doing our Residency together, and I think having a friend would be a major plus.”

“Our schedules are something of a mess right now. What do you have in February?”

“Surgery. Those schedules are more conducive to actually having a life!”

“It’s even better during golf season!” I replied. “Ask me again next week, OK?”

“Cool!”

“How is your mom?” I inquired.

“I think the only possible answer to that question is that she’s ‘surviving’. Radiation therapy and chemotherapy are brutal. But she’s alive and has a chance. I really appreciate you trading shift schedules, so the coffee is on me!”

She left, and I went to the handover meeting, then performed my usual task of checking evening medications, test results, and other orders for eleven patients. Everything was in order, so I headed for the lounge but didn’t even make it before Doctor Olson came to tell me we had a consult, so I turned and followed him to the elevator.

“Pediatrics, Olson,” Doctor Olson said when we walked into the trauma room.

“Hi, Matt,” Doctor Casper said. “Hi, Mike.”

“What do we have?” Doctor Olson asked.

“Two-year-old male; restrained in a proper car seat in a high-speed, rollover MVA. Vitals good, but tenderness in his neck and chest. Parents both DOA.”

“Lord have mercy!” I said aloud.

“I agree, Mike,” Doctor Casper said.

Doctor Olson did an exam, then turned to Doctor Casper.

“Films?”

“Negative. They’re on the viewer.”

Doctor Olson walked over to the viewer and looked at the X-rays.

“What do you see, Mike?”

“No misalignment of the spine, no broken ribs,” I said. “It suggests bruising and whiplash.”

“I agree. Ghost, I’ll admit him for observation. Mike, call for an orderly and bring the patient up.”

“Yes, Doctor,” I said.

“Bob, Mike can take this,” Doctor Casper said to Bob Cuthbert, a Fourth Year.

The two doctors and Bob left, leaving me with Nurse Julie and a nursing student.

“How are you doing Mike?” Julie asked as she did her best to soothe the two-year-old, who was surprisingly quiet.

“Champing at the bit to get back to the excitement of the Emergency Department!”

“I bet!”

“Who’s your student?”

“Sorry! Tami, Mike Loucks, Third Year. Mike, Tami McCarty on her first emergency medicine rotation.”

“Hi, Tami,” I said.

“Hi, Mike!”

“Excuse me for one minute,” I said.

I called for an orderly and was promised one would arrive in about ten minutes.

“Tami, are you from the area?” I asked after I hung up the phone.

“Chicago. You?”

“West Monroe, a small town forty-five minutes west of here. Do you actually live in the city?”

“Yes, in Forest Glen. Do you know Chicago?”

“I’ve been in the city once,” I said. “I had a long layover on a flight and went into the city for a few hours. What brought you here?”

“I went to nursing school in Columbus, and this is where I was assigned.”

“With Northwestern and Loyola, why Columbus?”

“My aunt teaches at Chamberlain and strongly encouraged me to go there. I live with her family, which includes two cousins who are both nursing students.”

“Sounds like a family business,” I observed.

“Are either of your parents doctors?”

“No. Dad is a supervisor in the Harding County Building Department, one county over; Mom is a legal secretary. How about your parents?”

“Dad is a service engineer for IBM. Mom doesn’t work, and mostly volunteers at church.”

“What church, if it’s OK to ask?”

“All Saints. It’s actually a mission church.”

“Orthodox?” I asked. “Former EOC?”

“How could you possibly know that?!” she asked in surprise.

“I’m Russian Orthodox,” I replied. “And I was a strong supporter of Father Alexander Schmemann and his attempts to bring the EOC churches into the OCA. I followed things closely, and was actually invited to visit an EOC congregation, but couldn’t work it into my schedule because of school. One of my study group members, Maryam Khouri, is Antiochian; she’s from Fort Wayne.”

“I haven’t met her,” Tami said.

“Where do you go to church?”

“An Antiochian mission church in Columbus. You?”

“Saint Michael the Archangel, just north of town. Are you commuting here from Columbus?”

“My aunt and uncle live about twenty minutes south of Columbus, so it’s not too bad.”

The orderly arrived, and the four of us carefully moved the two-year-old to the gurney.

“Nice to meet you, Tami,” I said.

“And you!” she replied.

“Julie, do we have a name for our patient?” I inquired.

“Just a last name,” she replied. “Peterson. The police are trying to find relatives.”

“OK. I’ll call the social worker first thing in the morning.”

I held the door for the orderly to push the gurney through, heading up to pediatrics. I checked in with nurse Peggy, who directed me to a room our new charge would share with another toddler, who was in due to an impacted bowel, and I was VERY happy he’d been disimpacted before I arrived. He’d be released in the morning. Stephanie came in and, with help from the orderly, transferred the patient to the bed and got him settled.

“I heard both his parents D-I-E-D,” Stephanie said.

“That’s what was said downstairs,” I replied.

“So sad! Doctor Olson wrote an order for a mild IV sedative. Peggy will bring it in.”

“OK,” I said.

I signed the chart, noting the time our patient had been admitted to our service, then put the chart into the rack at the end of the bed. Stephanie and I left the room as Peggy was coming in.

“Stephanie,” Peggy said. “I want you to sit with him until he falls asleep, please.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

I checked with Doctor Olson, and as there was nothing pressing, I decided to try to catch forty winks.

January 15, 1988, McKinley, Ohio

I was fortunate, and had only been woken once during the night, to help with a twelve-year-old who had gone into respiratory distress and was moved to the ICU. That left me with a total of about five hours of sleep, which helped a lot. I went to the cafeteria and bought a bagel with cream cheese and a cup of mixed fruit, along with a bottle of grapefruit juice. I took my breakfast upstairs, got a cup of coffee from behind the nurses’ station, then went to the lounge to eat.

After I finished my breakfast, I called the social worker and explained the situation. She promised to come up as soon as she contacted the McKinley PD to see if they had any more information. Doctor O’Neill was on, so I did rounds with her and Ken, the Fourth Year who had a shift that matched mine.

When we finished rounds, I went to Psych to check the schedule for February and was very happy with what I saw: ‘Loucks, M — M–F 0400–1600’ and ‘Saunders, C — Su–Th 1100–2300’. Having that schedule for the entire month of February would make my life much easier and allow for regular sleep. I was very happy when I went back upstairs.

“Did you see the schedule?” I asked Clarissa when she arrived on Friday morning.

“Yes! We can have normal lives for a month! I really hate our current schedule because we have so little time together.”

“Working opposite twelve-hour shifts sucks. With the new schedule, we can fix that.”

“What are you doing tomorrow night?” she asked.

“Sleeping!” I declared.

“Mind if I share your bed?”

“The real question is whether Tessa minds.”

“You and I are just going to sleep, so it’s not a problem.”

“Then come by around 9:30pm,” I said. “Natalie will certainly have left by then. I’ll feed Rachel, we can say evening prayers, and when she goes to sleep, we go to bed. I do have to be up early on Sunday to drive to Columbus.”

“I remember.”

We hugged, and I headed home to get some sleep. The blackout curtains worked exactly as I had hoped, and the room was almost pitch-black, with just a small amount of light coming under the door, which didn’t quite touch the wood floors. I only slept six hours, then spent time with Lara and Rachel, before Kari arrived, bringing burgers and fries with her. Lara left, and Kari and I sat down to eat.

“I have an awesome schedule starting February 1st,” I said. “4:00am to 4:00pm, Monday through Friday.”

“You’ll have to get up around 3:00am, right?”

“Yes, but with every evening and both weekend days free, it’s good. It’s going to be a bit of a challenge for Rachel’s caregivers, but I discussed it with Lara before you arrived, and she’ll speak with Serafima to work it out. We’ll see if we can shift Rachel’s naps around so she’s awake longer when I’m home, now that she’s only sleeping about thirteen hours.”

“Band practice will go back to Saturday, right?”

“Yes, and I won’t need to get anyone to cover for me for the concert on the 12th.”

“I’m not sure I can be there,” Kari said. “It’s my dad’s birthday.”

“Family always takes priority,” I replied.

“What if we were married?”

“Same answer, just different meaning!”

“Spouse trumps parents?”

“Absolutely. Do you agree?”

“I think that has to be the case, or you’re asking for all kinds of trouble. I take it that’s how you and your wife handled things?”

“Much to my mother-in-law’s chagrin. I forgot to ask, did you stop at the video store?”

“Yes. I got The Karate Kid and The Karate Kid Part II.”

“I promise not to make snide comments about what is likely to be BS about martial arts.”

“Are you going to restart your martial arts classes?”

“I’d like to, and with the schedule, I might be able to do it, though the Sensei will not be happy because I can’t keep anything resembling a regular schedule. My biggest problem with my current schedule is getting enough exercise. That’s why I do my best to walk when I have a chance. It’s something, though not as much as I need by any stretch.”

“Did you get any sleep last night?”

“I did, though we had a pretty rough one.”

“What?”

“Two-year-old who was in a high-speed rollover accident. His parents died in the crash, and he has a pretty bad case of whiplash and severe bruising on his chest.”

“Whoa! That’s horrible! Do you know what happened?”

“No. I didn’t speak to the police because that’s handled by the trauma team or social services. I did speak to the social worker, but she didn’t have any more information.”

“What happens?”

“Family Services will try to find a relative who can take him; otherwise he’ll go to a foster home.”

“But he’ll be OK?”

“He should be. They kept him in a cervical collar overnight, but we removed it this morning.”

“Does he know what happened?”

“That’s up to the social worker,” I said. “She’ll decide when and how to tell him.”

“It almost seems as if you don’t care,” Kari observed.

“I do care, but it’s a team effort, and each of us has our area of focus. Mine is doing what is usually called scut.”

“But you like it?”

“I don’t see it as beneath me or that it’s someone else’s job. And the next two months will be doing psych assessments and intake.”

“You sound happy about that.”

“I told you about my friend Angie, and I want to get experience working with patients. I actually have a second psych rotation as one of my electives. Depending on how things go, I may or may not keep it.”

“What would make you change?”

“Frustration. It’s a long story, but has to do with my friend Angie and her treatment.”

We finished our burgers, put the bags and wrappers in the trash, then went to the great room to watch the movies. I held Rachel and Kari cuddled close. When Rachel fell asleep, I paused the movie and put her to bed, then returned to watch the rest of The Karate Kid with Kari.

When it finished, we popped popcorn, then watched The Karate Kid Part II. I’d kept my mouth shut about the horrible representation of karate in the movies, but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut when for a second time they showed Kumiko with her kimono wrapped improperly.

“OK,” I declared, pausing the movie, “that just tears it!”

“What?”

“My friend Kimiko would be outraged at this entire movie, but this is just too much! Twice now, they’ve shown Kumiko’s kimono wrapped the wrong way. You always wrap it left over right, except for a dead body, where it’s right over left. The same is true for our karate uniform, called a ‘gi’. Seriously, if you can’t even understand how to wrap a kimono, you have no business making a movie about ANYTHING Japanese!”

“I haven’t met her.”

“That would be a neat trick,” I chuckled. “She and her husband live in Japan. They met at Taft and he moved there so they could marry.”

I decided against saying I’d dated her, and absolutely would not mention Kimiko’s enjoyment when I was the octopus. But I could mention the framed print she’d given me.

“Have you seen the print in the study?” I asked.

“The pornographic one?” she asked. “I wondered about that.”

“In English, it’s usually called The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, but the Japanese title is Octopus and shell diver. It’s one of the more famous wood prints.”

“I was surprised you’d display it, but wasn’t sure I should ask.”

“I had it in my dorm room, but then put it away when I was ordained a deacon, and brought it out again after I moved here. It was a gift from Kimiko.”

“It’s kind of an explicit thing to give to a friend.”

And I’d walked right into revealing what I hadn’t intended to reveal because an evasive answer could create problems with Kari.

“We dated for a bit,” I said, “but once she decided she was going to return to Japan, it ended. My friend Brandon asked her out, they got along really well, and he agreed to move to Japan.”

“You really did stay away from Orthodox girls, didn’t you?”

“I did, but as I said to someone recently, a lot of it had to do with them being Sunday School students I had taught, or them being too young. Elizaveta decided she wasn’t going to put up with any objections.”

“Doing that at sixteen is, well, no sorry, it would be rude to say.”

“Crazy? I don’t disagree. Let’s watch the rest of the movie.”

I pressed play, and we cuddled while we watched. Rachel woke up just before the end of the movie, so I paused, changed her diaper, made her bottle, then took her to the great room to feed her while we watched the last five minutes of the tape.

When Rachel finished her bottle, the three of us went to the study, stood before the icons, and said the evening prayers. I rocked Rachel until she fell asleep, then took her up to her crib. Once I had her settled, I went to my bedroom to join Kari.

January 16, 1988, McKinley, Ohio

“Ugh,” Kari groaned when the alarm went off. “I hate getting up early on Saturdays.”

“You seemed very happy when we went to sleep! Not worth it?”

“Never mind!” Kari said, laughing softly. “I very much enjoyed it! It’s a reasonable trade!”

“Reasonable?” I teased.

“Just stop! It’s too early!”

We showered, then dressed and changed the sheets on the bed. Once that was done, I changed and fed Rachel, and then Kari and I had breakfast. When Serafima arrived she gave me a dirty look when she saw Kari, and Kari and I left the house.

“She’s not happy with you!” Kari observed as I backed the car out of the driveway.

“That’s her problem, not mine,” I said. “Just let her have her snit. It’s up to me whom I date and whom I eventually marry.”

“You don’t think it’s because I’m sleeping with you?”

“It is, but only indirectly. To her, that’s a sign that things between us are serious, which is the real problem. The rest of my friends are happy if I’m happy.”

“You don’t think she’ll try to poison the well?”

“No, she’s not like that. She’s looking out for her friends’ best interests, as she sees them. Honestly, she’s doing what the older ladies have done for as long as there’s been a church — trying to match Orthodox kids together to keep them faithfully in the church. Usually, the girls bring their husbands, but guys end up going to their wife’s church.”

“That’s not going to happen with you!”

“No kidding!”

I pulled up in front of Rickenbacker, and Kari and I exchanged a kiss.

“See you Thursday at band practice?” I asked.

“Yes! Can you get a babysitter for Friday?”

“I’ll speak with my in-laws.”

We kissed again, she got out, and once she was inside, I headed to the medical building for four hours of regular office visits. At noon, I headed home to find Serafima with her hands on her hips, staring me down.

“What is it with you?” she groused.

“Serafima,” Elias said. “Don’t.”

She ignored him, as I expected.

“What’s wrong with Orthodox girls? Hmm?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I’ve seen Oksana a bunch of times.”

“Yes, and the non-Christian girl spent the night with you! Is that your reason? Orthodox girls will make you wait until you’re married?”

That made it clear that the girls who had slept with me were not sharing it with Serafima, which was a good thing. I wasn’t about to reveal that, not wishing to violate the girls’ privacy. It also removed any doubt, though I actually had none, that Oksana was offering to go to bed with me because some of the other girls had actually done it.

“Serafima!” Elias warned. “You’re out of line!”

Serafima screwed up her face much as Elizaveta had when she was unhappy with me, and Elias was on the receiving end of a death stare.

“I’m going to change,” I said.

I walked past Serafima, stopped to pick up Rachel, who was on the rug in front of the fireplace. She gurgled happily, I kissed her forehead, then put her back down. I went upstairs to change. I was not surprised to find Elias was waiting for me just outside my door when I opened it.

“I’m sorry, Mike.”

“Thanks. We both know why she’s annoyed. I would appreciate it if you two kept the information private.”

“I’d never think of saying anything, and I honestly don’t think Serafima would. I’ll talk to her. I do have to say I was surprised Kari was here this morning.”

“It was probably an error for her to be here when you two arrived, but I can’t undo it at this point. As for the spiritual aspect, let’s just say it’s a serious struggle and leave it at that.”

“Will you be at church tomorrow?”

“No. I’m going to the Cathedral for the rest of the month.”

“I assume you discussed it with Father Nicholas?”

“I did. And His Grace.”

“Then there is nothing for me to say! See you on Sunday evening.”

We went downstairs and Serafima and Elias left. About ten minutes later, Natalie arrived, and I picked up Rachel so the three of us could go to the kitchen to eat the lunch which Serafima had prepared.

“I hear you’re working for Mr. Orlov,” I said after I had given the blessing.

“Yes, mostly running the register, but also stocking small hardware.”

“Full time?” I asked.

“Yes, though the pay isn’t great. I want to move out, but can’t really afford it.”

“What about college?”

“I wasn’t a very good student in High School. Mostly Bs with some Cs.”

“But did you want to go?”

“Not really, no,” Natalie replied

“What were your plans?”

“I didn’t have any, really, though being a doctor’s wife seems like an excellent option.”

From her point of view, I was sure that was the case. From mine, I couldn’t see a future with someone with no goals and, from all appearances, no ambitions beyond moving out of her parents’ house. Add in the lack of discipline to make all Bs, and I simply couldn’t see it.