Chapter 7: Moira's mother's diagnosis

Moira had ended Medical School and her hospital internship and residency, and as it had been all her student life, her qualifications were at the top; she was a natural for a gynecology practice, most probably inherited from her father, and she had matured personally, sexually, and psychologically at the same time. She was no longer the immature girl or young woman had had her first sexual adventure with Valerie, her first year mentor. She wasn't the rebel girl of her teenager years either. Once she had time to calm down and process her parents' lives, emotionally and otherwise, she slowly began to understand them and to love them. That's what maturity is for, isn't it? She had matured.

Her experience had been different from that of her father's; once embedded in her gyno practice, the vaginas for which she felt a natural attraction not only didn't repel her, she was increasingly attracted to them. Her love life had been scarce however; a few, not many, one-night-stands which left her emotionally unsatisfied and confused, and a couple or wild parties. She asked herself, permanently questioning her sexuality, about what she was; was she bi-sexual? Was she a lesbian? What she never considered asking herself was whether or not she was straight. She didn't like most of the men she knew, and never considered fucking them.

Being in this kind of permanent mental turmoil about her sex preferences, and not being able to get a permanent emotional attachment to anybody, it was no wonder that she wasn't promiscuous. She always went out of town when she needed a night to vent her sexual pulsing, in fact, her own colleagues regarded her as asexual as her father.

When her rebellion against her parent figures had been appeased, and with her developing maturity, she had begun to realize that all human beings are different, with diverse interests, sexual appetites, and preferences. She had begun visiting her parents' house again, primarily to see her mother, whom she had gradually been able to identify with and understand. She had been seeing her father almost daily at the University and in clinical practice, so her parents' home visits were to bond with her mother again.

Her mother cried as if she had been dead and come back from the tomb the first weekend that she stayed and slept in her old room in almost five years. Her mother was forty eight years old, but looked older; her life had been empty devoid of love and intimacy for much of her existence, and had taken its toll. Her aging wasn't so much physical as spiritual; she retained much of her physical beauty, but loneliness was slowly withering her. Oh, she went out with her old time friends to eat or for tea, but she was alone, nobody to talk or laugh with when she returned home, and her libido was destroyed, after the night her daughter had faced them at dinnertime and told them what she knew of them and left home. It had been more than four years since anybody had touched or caressed her body. Her husband wasn't her gyno; she didn't have one in fact, and she hadn't even gone to her family doctor for her breast and cervical cancer exams for the last few years.

Moira's father used the house only to sleep in his wing, as usual, so the mansion was almost empty of life. This started to change when Moira, first came to stay and keep her mother company on weekends from time to time. She and her mother started going out to the movies or the theater, with a glass of wine later in some fashionable place during the later weekends that she stayed.

Moira, unlike some of her male colleagues, her father not included for obvious reasons, never used her prerogatives as a medical obstetrician to playfully touch the intimate parts of her patients in a sexual way. Not that she wasn't tempted sometimes, being bisexual as she was, but she respected people in her care were there in sickness or just to help them stay healthy. She avoided manually handling the erogenous zones of her patients' bodies as much as possible.

As an adult woman, the new bonding with her mother gave her occasion to try to understand her mother better. She discovered that she didn't know anything about her, didn't know what made her laugh, smile, or be sad; she didn't know what her favorite color was or what kind of music she liked to hear. As a mater of fact, her mother was a closed book that she had never been interested in opening to see what was inside her. Her mother was an absolutely unfamiliar person to her, and at twenty six, she wanted to know her, and begin to develop the relationship she should have when she was growing into adulthood.

They had been confiding in each other several aspects of their lives for several months. Their bonding was taking effect as if they were two female friends, separated for many years, who meet again and have to get to know each other again, starting from what the relationship was when they separated. They couldn't bond as mother and daughter, a relationship that never was.

On a cold winter Sunday months later, they had eaten and were having their coffee and brandy, when Moira's mother asked her daughter a question that was going to change their lives. She had been unusually quiet, and Moira let her be, knowing that they now had a relationship stronger that any they had had in the past, and that her new found friend/mother would tell her what was on her mind when she was ready. So she kept sipping her brandy and coffee, until her mother suddenly spoke to her, "I think I need your professional advice, Moira."

Moira came out of the reverie in which the good brandy and the logs burning in the fireplace had placed her, "Yes, Helen, what do you need?"

Helen, her birth mother, was hesitant to tell her daughter what was happening inside her body.

"If not as your daughter, tell me as your friend, Helen; what's the matter? How can I be of help?"

Helen was very nervous and didn't know how to address this young doctor, as a medical person, as her new found friend, or as her daughter?

Moira kept silent; she knew that the best way to earn the confidence of a potential patient was to let them speak when they were ready, not pushing them to conform to the doctor's schedule.

"God, I am about sorry of the long years we lost. You're very good at your trade, Moira; I know it because your father already told me with pride how good you were at the clinic and in diagnosing; I have a lump in my left breast, and I'm very afraid."

Moira perked up on the couch, left the brandy, and turned around to look at her mother, "Since when, I mean when were you first aware of the lump? How big is it? Have you talked to a doctor? Have you told your husband? He is one of the best."

"Please, Moira, one question at a time; no, I haven't told your father, and yes I know he is one of the best; no, I haven't seen a doctor since I was expecting to talk to you and ask that you make the diagnosis."

"I can't, Helen, it wouldn't be right for me to diagnose you..."

"I want you to treat me, Moira, I confide in you; I don't want a man, least of all your father, to see me naked, and touch and be inside me. You are my best friend, and have been for a long time, even before you started coming home on weekends; I have followed your career day after day and month after month. I want you to be my doctor."