viii
Petyr’s final seminar, “Illness in the analyst and professional wills” almost put me to sleep. Barely into my 30’s, I didn’t see foresee any need to worry about this in my work. At dinner, I mentioned the upcoming wrap-up meeting of the NIMH working group on C-L psychiatry.
“This might well be my valedictory working on big group projects like this,” I started.
“Where is it, again?” Jeanne asked.
“Burlington,” I reminded her.
Walking by with his tray, Petyr overheard, stopped, and asked, “You are going to Vermont, Sarah?”
I nodded, then explained the work I’d been doing for the Harvard psychiatric residencies the past 18 months. “It should be beautiful there, early February, but I’m a little worried about the drive, if there’s snow.”
“Surely all your years here in Boston, you’ve learned to handle winter’s adverse conditions?”
“Of course. Ever since someone told me, ‘You can drive as fast as you want on snow or ice, as long as you don’t have to turn or slow down,’ I’ve discovered that, as long as you keep going, and don’t try to stop on a hill, you’ll make it.”
Petyr sat down, unfolded his napkin, and, nodding at Jeanne, turned to me, noting, “Burlington, you say? Perhaps you might want to stop at Killington on your way back, at my condominium. It would ease your drive home, and you might even take the opportunity to go skiing?”
I quickly thought, what is he asking? I felt attracted to him, but I’d assumed his on-going disentanglement from his wife prevented any opportunity to pursue that for the time being. “Will you be there?” I ventured.
He straightened up, blinked several times, and said, “Oh. Yes. We do have several concerns, don’t we? First, there are two bedrooms, you could use the boys’. Now, this being the last seminar I’ll lead this year, I don’t believe there is any reason we can not shift our relationship from student/teacher, to amicable friends.” He paused, glanced again at Jeanne, then, somewhat flustered, went on. “I have enjoyed our weekly talks here, and would look forward to continuing them outside the confines of the Institute. If you feel the same, of course…”
I glanced at Jeanne as well, who ever-so-slightly lifted one side of her mouth and raised her eyebrows. I began to wonder what it would take to break through his formal veneer, or if that were Petyr through to the core. Only one way to find out, I decided.
“Thanks for the offer. I’d like that. And, no, we don’t have to talk about analysis at all. Fun in the snow in old Vermont. We could be like Fred and Bing in Holiday Inn…”
I drove my trusty Saab to Lake Champlain Thursday afternoon. The twisty two-lane was thankfully free of any ice, Vermont having suffered through one of its periodic cold, dry Januarys. My headlights reflected off the naked skeletons of beech and maple, and the dark green needles of ever-present white pines. My thoughts raced past the upcoming conference, to the Saturday evening, night, and Sunday I’d be spending with Petyr. I concluded he needed to be led out of his self-imposed isolation. I conjured a fantasy of us sitting by a popping fire, sparks showering as pockets of caught the heat. We’d share drinks with a jovial group of tired skiers, lifting or glasses to their tales of prowess on the slopes.
I easily found the condo, its first-floor covered entry sporting vintage cross-country skis instead of a standard lintel. Petyr greeted me wearing a shiny blue nylon ski pants, perspiring slightly in his grey woolen sweater festooned with small skiers and reindeer in alternating rows.
“Oh, Sarah,” he began. “It was an invigorating day, despite the icy conditions. I always marvel that my muscles retain the memory of skiing, after weeks, or even months of time away. Come in, come in!” He took my satchel into the boys room, pointed out the features of his compact vacation retreat, then asked, “I haven’t yet eaten. I suppose you might be famished as well, after your drive over the hill?”
I told him my fantasy of hot chocolate – “I’m not much of a drinker” – while resting my legs next to a stone hearth, amidst other tired skiers. “I could pretend I’m one of them, maybe some of the ruddy-cheeked energy will rub off.”
We walked to an inviting pub, where the German food proved too heavy for my taste, the stone hearth crowded with raucous collegians, and the noise far too dense and confusing to allow any real conversation.
“Anywhere else we can go, might be more quiet?” I asked.
“Do you like board games, Sarah? We have a trove back at the condo, the boys and their…” He trailed off as he often did when thoughts of his family surfaced.
Quickly, I intervened. “I love Scrabble.”
“Oh we have that, of course. But are you sure you want to test your verbal prowess against me? I don’t like to lose.”
“You’re on, Dr. Cohen!”
Once back, I asked if he had any schnapps, for hot chocolate. I was delighted when he started to drink his straight, while I poured a thimble-full into some hot chocolate he eagerly created for me. I thought, “We’ll see how straight his thinking is when he gets a little drunk.”
He graciously offered to go first, placing “under” across the center star, saying with a hint of pride, “Twelve.”
I eyed my tray, filled with several e’s, an s, t, an o, j, and a q. Instantly, I slammed down “joust”, and snickered, “ Twenty-eight!”
The game remained close as we filled the squares ever-closer towards the edges, where my favorite spot, the bright red “TRIPLE WORD SCORE” beckoned. I’d been saving my “q”, and had also managed to get “z”, so I knew I had the game won as I started to line up my tiles in the lower corner, using “usurp” as the seed.
When he saw where I was headed, Petyr moaned, “Oh, no…what have you got there?”
“Don’t worry, it’s only three more letters. This “i” goes here,” I said as I laid it carefully one up from the triple word square. I gave him a sideways glance, then proceeded to spell “quiz”, for 96 points. “That should do it. Want to give it another try?”
He reluctantly shook his head, saying, “I see your competitive spirit is every bit as sharp as your insights. I fear you are too quick and well-read for me. I still do not believe that ‘jabiru’ is a word. Where did you learn that?”
“I told you, it’s a stork, has a big bill. You’ve never heard of it? I don’t know where I saw it, everything I read sticks with me, for some reason. Lots of useless information in there,” I said, tapping my temple. “It’s kind of a curse, really. Most people find it off-putting, when I start telling them stuff they don’t know.”
“I find it rather alluring,” he said as he gathered up the tiles and rack, placing them carefully in the box, which he returned to the bottom shelf of a converted television cabinet. “What do you say, tomorrow we go out to a Nordic trail?”
“I didn’t bring anything to wear, no ski clothes.”
“We can find something for you here. You’re about the same size as…”
ix
On my return home, I found a letter waiting for me from my mother. Starting with cheery news about her new neighbors in their apartment complex, she went on to describe her frustration with Henry, who insisted on working every day, even though his doctor told him he had to “slow down, until the blood pressure meds are doing a better job.”
“I don’t know how to get him to see he’s ruining his health. He still smokes, he forgets his pills, he won’t drop the steaks from his diet. I don’t know how to help him, Janie. Any advice?” she wrote. She ended with, “Oh, I’ve been going through all the boxes we took with us after the move, and found one full of of your stuff, from h.s. or college. Enclosed is a small sample. What should I do c it?”
Two yellowing sheets from one of my high school “math pads”, neatly folded in quarters, fell out. I’d forgotten about those poems I had written in the spring of 1966. I read them quickly, unable to immediately absorb their message, and stuffed them into my purse, along with the Kleenex and loose change.
Petyr called later that week. “Sarah, I need to see you, talk with you. I hope you’ll agree to have dinner with me, Saturday night.”
We met at one of those cloistered, wood paneled gourmet establishments near Back Bay. Men in suits with thinning hair accompanied women in designer frocks, somehow not wobbling on their impossibly thin four-inch heels. I’d worn my non-nonsense blue skirt with a jacket over a white buttoned shirt, and felt more than a little out-of-place, wishing I’d investigated the place after agreeing to meet him there.
During the wait between ordering and the arrival of our salads, he began, “Sarah, this is awkward, for several reasons. First, as you can imagine, I am not used to a formal night on the town with someone other than my wife. It may have been 15 years or more since…” He shook his head slightly, almost a shiver, then went on. “But more important, is what my invitation implies.”
At this point in my life, I no longer felt a need to ease tensions on a date, if that’s what this was. “Petyr…Petyr, I like being with you, talking with you, very much. I want to do more of it, but I can tell, you’re still worried about where you stand in your marriage, your wife, your sons.” He fiddled with his silverware, re-arranged his water glass, but said nothing. I plowed forward. “If you’re feeling hesitant about spending time with me, I can understand. I can wait.”
He took a deep breath, and said, “I have the same feeling, about you. It’s disconcerting, not having known it for almost two decades now, at least the newness of it. My worry is not whether it’s reciprocated – I can pick up the signs very well – but the impact it might have on my separation and intended divorce.”
I frowned and shook my head quizzically. “Oh?” was all that came out.
“Yes, there is no doubt my marriage is over. It only remains to call in the lawyers, unweave our financial entanglements, and decide on the future of our children. Up until last weekend, I had hoped that would work out favorably for me, as she is the one instigating the proceedings.”
“And you’re worried, I guess, that if you’re seen with another woman, seen with me on a steady basis, at your place or mine, that might be discovered, and used against you.” As I spoke , the phrase, “other woman” flashed across my inner vision. “And for my part, I couldn’t live with myself, knowing I might have have played a role in breaking up a family, your family.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” he interjected. “As I told you last fall, our separation began for other reasons entirely, before I ever arrived in Boston. Meeting you was such a happy occurrence, but it did not, most emphatically did not, end my marriage. That was over, I see now, several years ago. With you, I’ve found a reason to move forward with letting it go.”
I sensed we had a common goal. “I don’t want to sneak around to enjoy time with you, don’t want to feel like we might be surreptitiously observed.”
“And nor do I, nor do I. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He straightened up, and announced, “Next week, I’m going to ask if she intends to move forward with filing for divorce. If she does, and she gives ‘incompatibility’ or some such legal jargon as the reason, then my lawyer says it would be safe to enjoy the company of other women.”
There was that phrase again. I observed, “Until then, we can talk on the phone, and confine our meetings to public places, like this, separate cars, and all?”
“Yes, he says that’s best.”
“Sort of like teenagers, who aren’t allowed to date without a chaperone?”
He laughed. “I’m glad you see the humor in it, in addition to the frustration.” The server brought our entrees. Knife poised ready to carve his filet mignon, Petyr asked, with a growing twinkle in his eyes, “What I’m saying, Dr. Sarah Stein, is – forgive the sentimentality – ‘Will you be my Valentine?’ It is February 14th after all.”
I laughed out loud, startling the neatly coiffed couple closest to us. “I thought you’d never ask, Dr. Cohen!” I suddenly thought of the two pages of verse from 15 years earlier, and drew one out, gave it a brief glance, and handed it over to him. “Funny,” I said. “Mom sent this to me out of the blue a few days ago. Said there was a box full of stuff like this. I wonder if she was trying to tell me something…”
Dated 4-23-66, the one I pulled out read, with several words crossed out and replaced:
Just once I wish that you I could join my your world
Together, until there were was no longer need to talk
Seeing the stars and feeling new thoughts
No longer needing explanations or words
Smiling without questions
Crying and understanding why.
It seems it would be so nice to know
What is really there between the talk and silence
To know what is being felt
So that I could know how to act.
Yet despite the frustrations, I cannot change it now
We must remain separated
To join your world, I could no longer own mine
We are not allowed to learn too much
But do we really want security?
“Do you remember writing this, what you were trying to say?” he asked.
“I remember when I wrote it, what was going on in my life. But the actual writing, that’s buried in a mental fog. It does seem to fit us now, though, doesn’t it?”
Petyr wrinkled his forehead in thought. Looking over at me, he said, “It might be interesting to get the rest of that box from your mother, no? I would like to learn more about you, who you were, and suspect that might be a good place to start.”
x
Despite Petyr’s hesitance, we started spending more and more time together, that winter and early spring. By March, we began sharing our weekends. Falling into domesticity came easily to us.
One Saturday afternoon in bed, after we’d rolled apart, I lay on my side admiring his face. Stroking his eyelids, I murmured, “Kirghiz eyes.”
Startled out of his languid reverie, Petyr rolled to face me, asking, “Come again?”
“I said, ‘Kirghiz eyes.’ You know – Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain.”
“Ah yes, Hans Castorp. His initial schoolboy homoerotic infatuation with Pribislav Hippe, reflected later in Madame Chauchat.” I worried he’d drop into his professorial mode, tell me the whole underlying leitmotif. Instead, he smiled and said, “Davos. My parents took me there, each winter. We’d ski, of course, then sit on the porch in the alpine sun the same as Hans and Settembrini, snug under a warm wool wrap. My father would recount that book, one of his favorites, to me on that deck. I’ve never read it, not wanting to spoil those memories.” He smiled again, then asked, “What do you know of it?”
“Your eyes, they have that Eurasian look…”
“Brought west by some Mongol marauder, no doubt…”
“I never read it, but Michael – I’m sorry to bring him up, you don’t remind me of him, but…he read that book for two different classes his freshman and sophomore years, never stopped talking about it. For several weekends one fall, every time I turned on the light, he’d call me ‘Settembrini’.”
“I’m flattered,” Petyr began. “Reassured, actually, that you see a bit of Michael when you look at me, in a metaphorical way.”
Quickly, I interposed, “I’m sorry, what? I didn’t mean to being him up, it’s just that…”
“He’s still in there,” he said, pointing to my temple. “As I said, I’m flattered. First loves, whether a father, mother, or a boyfriend, are so very important. They set a pattern, a template, against which the future can be judged. I trust I’m not found wanting?”
I paused to take measure of my feelings, discover what they meant. “With you, it’s deeper, broader.” I pursed my lips, wanting to make sure I got this right. “I feel…I feel, with you, it’s about creating something, someone new. Not about either of us as individuals, more like creating an ‘us’. Does that make any sense?”
“If it feels right, Sarah, it doesn’t have to make sense.” He sat up, pulled on his pants, and said, “Two becoming one, I didn’t know I was searching for that, but I see now you have brought that to me.”
Sunday morning we strolled to a deli, to pick up the New York Times, coffees, and a couple of bagels with schmear.
“How can you tolerate that cinnamon raisin with the strawberry cream cheese?” he teased. “And then cranberry sauce instead of lox – where on earth did you learn that?”
“Cincinnati is a very provincial town, you know. Be thankful I’m not putting chili beans on top,” I countered. “And downing it with beer.”
He laughed, then turned serious. “What we talked about last night? All I want now is to share my life. With one other person. Sharing and companionship…it’s like the sound of one hand clapping. If there’s no one to reflect or relate to…”
I finished his thought, “You don’t really exist at all.”
He smiled, wiped some cream cheese from my lips, then kissed me softly there.
The next day, Charlie called. “Sis, we’ve got to go home,” he began.
An ominous beat reverberated in my chest. “What?”
“It’s dad. Mom called. Sarah, dad…well, he must’ve had a heart attack.”
“Oh, my god, how is he?” I stammered.
“She said he was at dinner, just moaned and fell over. They didn’t make it in time…”
“Oh…” More softly, “oh…” was all I could manage.
Charlie drove up from Connecticut, bought our tickets, and shuttled me through Logan. By the time we arrived, Miriam had steeled herself to Dad’s death, insisting on making arrangements, a caterer for the keriah, friends to help us through sitting shiva. We said little, spending most of our time sorting through the boxes Mom brought out for each of us, the salvaged flotsam of our youth.
“You kids have to deal with these. I’m going to find a smaller place, one where your father isn’t around to haunt me every day.”
Charlie and I drove Dad’s car back to New England, hoping it would help us decompress. We talked of our days together, the old home in Clifton, summers in Martha’s Vineyard, visits with Arlene and their kids in Cambridge – anything to keep our minds off the diminution of our family, the knowledge that, as Charlie put it, “I’m the patriarch now.” All through Ohio and Pennsylvania, new leaves appeared, almost neon green as we sped by, the annual sign of rebirth and future’s promise. I couldn’t wait to return to Petyr, share my healing grief with him, and explore what that future might hold.
I showed up at his apartment door, carrying my two suitcases while Charlie man-handled a cardboard box labeled simply, “Janie – H.S./Rdclff”.
Petyr appeared bemused. “Moving in, are we?”
“No, this is that box of childhood memorabilia I told you about. I haven’t opened it yet…”
“Sort of like a buried treasure,” Charlie blurted. “Good to meet you, I’m Sarah’s brother, Charlie?”
“Ah, yes, the father of her children, she sometimes calls you.”
Charlie looked askance at me, then said, “I have to get back to them. Arlene’s been alone ten days now, I can’t imagine…”
Petyr brought out a small box cutter and sliced through the tape, while saying, “Let’s see what we have here, all right?” He pushed the box towards me, “You do the honors?”
I pulled out first a yellow slicker hat, some play handouts, from which several tickets fluttered to the floor, stacks of folders with labels of a few high school and many college courses, fading photos, old yearbooks, yellowed newspaper pages from the Times, Enquirer, and Crimson. Amongst other odds and ends, I pulled out a thick, pink diary, its clasp locked shut. From the bottom, I extracted a peach-colored folder labeled “Love Rhymes”, containing all those onion skin papers, filled with Michael Harrison’s verses and stories.
While I went took the diary into the kitchen, Petyr lifted the crinkly onion skins, asking“May I…?”
“Oh, go ahead…what can it hurt?” I muttered.
In the kitchen, I managed to jimmy the lock, and, opening the diary, became lost in a different world and time, the spring of my junior year in high school. Time stopped while I floated through those memories.
By the time I returned, Petyr was half-way through the stack of poems. “These are..interesting,” he announced. “Appropriate, I guess, for a young man finding his first love. He was smitten with you, you know.”
I began to cry. He dropped the papers and came over, enfolding me in warmth while I shook with sobs. “Shh, shh,”, he said, stroking my hair over and over.
I calmed down. “I don’t know what it is,” I sniffed.
“Sarah, your father just died. It’s OK to cry, to keep crying. It doesn’t end after only a week, you know.”
“It’s not that. It’s this, all this,” I said, drawing back, sweeping my arm from the diary to the box now half-filled with reminders from another life . “I don’t know what to do with it. What am I supposed to do with it?”
“You’ve thought about this before, I’m sure?”
“Of course. All three of my therapists, they told me I need to put him away, behind me, in order to move forward.”
“And how did you feel when they told you that?”
“Angry. Angry and sad.”
Petyr gently grabbed both my shoulders. “Sarah, you should not, you do not need to, put him away. He will always be a part of you, informing and enhancing your future, if you let him. You need to put the anger and sadness somewhere they won’t overpower those lessons he gave you.”
“How? How do I do that?” I asked.
“The anger, the sadness, those are you, not him. You need to honor your memories, to let them go, learn from them.”
“OK, you’re so smart, you’re the analyst, how do I do that, if I haven’t been able to after ten years of trying?”
“If you wrote about it, if you had an inner conversation, you could find the box to hold these feelings in, and learn what he had – has – to teach you.”
“You really think that would work?” I asked with exasperation.
“Our lives are stories, in which we are the main character, no? It’s time to uncover yours, Sarah.”
xi
Petyr spent August in Vermont with his sons, while I continued to cobble together a career. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I worked in Wellesley at the state mental health clinic. Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I met with individual clients in my little office, slowly growing a reputation for taking on the most recalcitrant and rebellious teenage girls, brought in by mothers passed exasperation. Now desperate, they saw me as the last stop for their daughters before a life on the street loomed. I listened to and agreed with the girls, until our routine built into trust, and the trust could seed a return to a stable life, even if not to their families.
Thursday afternoons and evenings in the summer were free, no classes at the Institute until the start of my second year in September. Occasionally, I’d accompany psychiatric residents and psychology interns on their rounds at the hospitals, talking with them afterwards about what we’d heard, what they’d learned, and where to look for help and information. I appended “Clinical Instructor, Harvard Medical School” to my business cards and stationary.
On his return, Petyr announced that he and his wife had signed a formal separation agreement, recognizing each of them as independent agents, allowing them free rein to openly date.
“So,” I teased, “I’m no longer alienating your affection?”.
Petyr smiled. “You seem less worried than I do about the risks we still might face. It’s true, according to my lawyer, she has no cause to complain, but if we were to move in together, he says a judge might consider the timing of that suspicious, wondering when our…affair might actually have begun. It may be a man’s world in politics, business and the university. But in divorce court, we do not get the benefit of the doubt.”
“Affair?” I challenged him. “Is that what this is? All I know is I’m no longer going to feel as if I’m, as if we’re sneaking around. I can’t hide anymore.” I took a deep breath, and risked, “I love you Petyr. You’ve got to l know that, and we need to start acting like that, as if it really means something.”
“What should it mean, beyond what we’re doing now?” he asked.
“I have to be absolutely sure this is not some rebound thing, that we’re together for our future.”
“Sarah, whatever happened in the past, for either of us, that’s where it is, and should stay. Yes, I want a future with you, for us, however, whatever, wherever. How can I make you see that?”
“Well, there is that little saying, ‘in sickness and in health’,” I blurted out.
“Oh, come on, you know that’s not possible, not until…”
“I know, I know.”
“What might convince you?”
A sudden thought raced through my mind. “Another symbol, Petyr – maybe I should bring you home to mother, announce our intentions?”
He laughed, then saw I was serious. “Well, taking off to go back there…can either of us afford that?”
That night, I called her. “How are you, Mom?”
“Oh, don’t worry about me, sweetie. I’ve got so much to keep me busy now, finding a new place, packing up again, meeting with the ladies at the temple. I’ve even started reading again, novels. Found a book club – I like that, making up for what I missed all those years. What about you? You must be very busy?”
Suddenly, I felt very tired, thinking about all I did, the stress of Petyr’s hesitance, dad’s death. “I’m exhausted Mom. I sleep 9, 10 hours a night, only have energy to go to work, then flop down after dinner, can’t even read or watch TV.”
“Oh, anything I can do? I could come see you, help out a bit.” She paused. “You think it might be lingering from his passing? Sadness can make you tired, I’ve heard.”
“I don’t know. But yes, could you? You can help me tidy up, there are friends, new friends, I’d like you to meet? Can you?”
She agreed to come in early October. After the call, Petyr seemed pleased I’d gone ahead and invited her to Boston. “But don’t you think it’s time, before she gets here, to look into that box she gave you? “
I remembered my promise to him, to try writing my story. Not knowing how to start, I re-opened the diary for inspiration. Reading those first glimmerings of curiosity about, as Petyr called him, “that boy”, I envisioned writing a letter to Mike, a missive explaining myself at that time, trying to decipher what it all meant. Not knowing exactly where he lived now – Oakland, or was it San Francisco? – proved a boon, as I didn’t imagine he’d ever actually be reading it. I simply needed a mental image of an audience to get started.
Even so, I found myself stumbling as I worked through those first few months in my diary, unable to write more than half a page at a time, before dropping my pen, feeling exhausted, a piercing pain between my eyes. I set it aside for a better time.
Mom arrived on the 7th, taking a cab from Logan out to my place in Somerville. I greeted her at the door with a prolonged hug, while Petyr stood awkwardly on one side, smiling, not knowing where to look. As we pulled apart, Mom noticed him and said, “Hello. I’m Miriam Stein – Janie – Sarah’s – mother.” She looked back at me questioningly.
I ushered her inside, taking her coat while Petyr picked up her suitcase, a valise with several decals plastered along the side – “France”, “GB”, “Israel”.
“Mom, this is Petyr. Dr. Petyr Cohen. He and I … he’s at the Institute, an analyst. I met him last year.”
“So glad to meet you, Dr. Cohen. How are you?” Mother’s eyes sparkled as she eyed him up and down.
“Mrs. Stein, Sarah has told me so much about you, your family.” His smile dropped as he went on, “I am so sorry, was so sorry, to hear of your husband’s passing. How are you doing?”
Mom smiled wanly, “Always a fraught question, coming from an analyst.” Petyr gave a polite chuckle while she went on. “Actually, I feel a bit relieved. Sad, of course, and devastated. In shock for a few months after. Now, I see it as his final gift to me, the gift of time, and perspective, about what is real, what is valuable, in life.”
“And that is…?” he asked.
“Time, Dr. Cohen. Time and love.”
We spent next day, Yom Kippur, with Petyr quizzing mom about my childhood, my brothers and sister, and finally, gently, about my father. She learned about his cultured upbringing in Switzerland, his parents’ disappearance in the Holocaust, and, finally, his sons and his pending divorce. After sunset, mom and I went into the kitchen, working on dinner, while Petyr left for his place, to catch up on the work he’d left idle on this Day of Atonement.
“Sweetie, he’s so charming, so precise. I notice he spent the night here…”
I knew this was not a comment, so I answered, “Mom, I’m…we’re in love.”
“Love?”
“I know, it never makes sense, does it? All I know is, it’s there, I feel it, I need it, and he does too.”
“Are you sure? He’s not just reacting to his wife leaving?”
“All I can go by is what he says, what he does. I can’t know what’s in his mind, can I? Not for sure, not with anyone, can we?”
“That’s true, that’s true. And you’ve always known your own mind, Janie, never let anyone tell you what to do. I trust you, that’s one reason why I’ve always been so proud of you.” She stepped back, collected herself a bit, and said, “One other thing, sweetie. How are you feeling?”
“About Petyr? I told you…”
“No. I mean, you look so pale. All we did was sit around today, and still, you’re sighing, rubbing your forehead, you seem so tired. Are you working too much? I know how you drive yourself.”
“I am tired. I thought it was a delayed reaction to Dad, or all the newness, Petyr, growing my practice…”
“Have you lost weight? I can’t tell, it’s been five months, you look thinner. Have you seen a…”
Exasperated, I knew she wouldn’t let this go. “OK, mom, OK. I promise I will see a doctor, get checked out. All right?”
Mother left several weeks later, before I finally saw my FP at HCHP in early November. Stepping into the small exam room, he seemed distracted. When he learned I was on the med school faculty, he unloaded with a brief diatribe against the increasing workload. I finally got his attention directed to my problem, and he quickly went through a history. Upon learning of my weight loss, and lack of a period for two months, he said, “Hmm…could you be pregnant?”
“I’ve been taking pills.”
“Well, we should check anyway. A urine test for that, some iron pills and a B12 shot. If you’re not pregnant, and you’re still feeling like this after the shot, let me know, we’ll look further.”
While waiting at the pharmacy to get my pills, I saw Stephanie Seacrist bustling by, her white coat flowing behind her as she sped toward Women’s. She stopped abruptly when she saw me, did a double take, and said, “Sarah, hi!” She frowned, then sat down next to me, resting her hand on mine. “I’ve gotta get to L&D. Delivery. But, listen, you look so pale. What’s going on, can I ask?”
I filled her in, and she blurted out, “B12 shot? No CBC? Really?” She pulled out a prescription pad, wrote quickly, ripped off the page and handed it to me. “Go to the lab, get this blood work. I’ll call you this afternoon with the results. OK? Please!” Then she jumped up, off to bring another life into this world, I presumed.
Bewildered, I looked down at her scribbles, hoping they would translate into some answers.