🎧 Chapter Thirty-Nine | Rebuilding the Heart's Sanctuary
On Divine Protection and Human Goodbyes
What you need to know:
After discovering Dr. Rick's web of lies to include his double life - living with his wife while seeking refuge in Jennifer's home - Jennifer details the last bits of the story for Abrams. Now, her life is about to pick up pace with a new legal challenge placed before her that could prevent Dr. Rick from harming others in the future.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Rebuilding the Heart's Sanctuary
The long rest on Abrams’ table ends and I awaken with the courtyard of my heart rebuilt and secure. How long had it been little more than a ruin? I don’t have the answer yet but will soon...
“Welcome back,” Abrams says, stepping up to the table and cradling my wrist in his palm. His fingers tap. Pause. Tap. Pause. That warm smile on his grandfatherly face. “Good rest?”
“Yes,” I say. “I feel…odd…but different, too. Better. Changed.”
“I can hear that in your pulses,” he says, lowers my hand, steps around and takes up the other. More taps. More listening. “Yep. We’ve done it. You’re good to go.”
Abrams steps back, shoves his hands into his pockets and lifts his chin in the direction of the two chairs in the far corner. “Go ahead and get dressed. Then we’ll wrap the last of this Rick story.”
The rest of the “Rick story” is easy to tell. After the incident with his wife leaving a note on my car, we broke apart only to draw back together. Again and again. Each time, Rick made new promises: “I love you. Not her.” And, “we can work this out.” And, “I’ve never met anyone like you.”
And I responded in my typical way: Forgiveness leading to allowing him back in our lives leading to fury at a new challenge leading to separation. Six long years of a pattern that helped him hobble through a nasty divorce and then, when it was done, recreate himself with a new name and a new job at a different clinic across town. We moved in together, married, and then it finally fell apart the day those lug nuts flew off our rig.
Abrams now sits across from me in his chair, a file folder on his lap, and I am in the rocker.
“So that’s it?” he asks, hand flat on the file.
“Yeah. That’s it,” I say and then laugh. “Thank goodness.”
He laughs too, a deep, rich sound. “Okay then,” he says. “Good. Thank you for telling me all of it and now…” Abrams eases open the file on his lap, slides out a slip of paper. He holds this a moment, looks at me and then passes it over. “I have something I’d like you to think about…”
It’s weird, these careful pauses. I lean in, take the sheet. On top it reads: Oregon Medical Board.
“I was on the state’s medical board for several years,” Abrams says. “Which means I’ve heard cases of doctor abuse before. Many times. And I’ve made rulings on them.”
A flutter of fear in my chest. Wait. What are we talking about?
“I highly suggest you file a complaint against this guy,” Abrams continues, lifts his chin to the form I hold which is…a complaint form. “Frankly, I could have filed one myself. In fact, I have an obligation to do so but I think you would benefit more by taking this step.”
A shrinking within like a snail compassing into a pea-sized version of itself…file a complaint? “I don’t understand,” I hear myself say. “If you are on the board, that means you know Rick…you must know him? Right? Are we talking about the Oregon Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine?”
“That’s not the state governing board. That’s an association.”
“But Rick said…” and now I’m the one pausing, my mind filled with static.
“I know what he told you,” Abrams says and looks at me pointedly. It’s true. I’ve spent hours telling the story, from this chair, how Rick told me he was on the board of that association, that doctors and patients “fall in love all the time,” that the rules were for some people but not him, or me, and that he disappeared my medical file.
I open my mouth, about to say something else but then close it again and study the form in my hand. So flimsy and yet weighing a thousand pounds.
“We’ve done good work. We have,” Abrams says, “but you’re still in a battle for your life right now. You need to take definitive action and grab it back.”
I shake my head because I can’t imagine doing such a thing to Rick. I’ve spent years building him up, helping (when I wasn’t so pissed that I walked away). This would kill him. And it’s wrong. I can’t. I won’t.
“You can do this,” Abrams says, as if reading my mind.
For the first time in our work together, I feel angry at Abrams for pushing this on me. I don’t say it but inside, I think this is a line I cannot, will not, cross.
It’s just past noon that same day. Friday. That complaint form in my purse, folded and folded again with the sheet that detailed the proper structure of protection for my heart. One, a map, the other an imperative that I chose to ignore. For now.
I pull into the Trader Joe’s parking lot, stuffed to the gills with the cars and trucks of all the shoppers getting a jump on the holiday rush. Thanksgiving is Thursday, then comes Christmas, evidenced by the bell-ringing Santa who now stands between two crates of wreathes positioned next to another of pumpkins.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
I turn off the ignition and from inside my purse, my phone chimes with Spencer’s ringtone.
“Hey, Bud,” I say.
“Where are you?” he asks.
“Trader’s.”
“Oh! Get more cheesy doodles. And some burrito roll-ups.”
“Done,” I say, grateful for the normalcy of Mom-mode. I finagle my pen and list out of my purse, write both down. “Anything else?”
“A guy called. Pretty uptight. Merrill? Brant? He wants you to call him at a special number. He seemed pretty pissed.”
“At you?”
“In general. I just texted you digits.”
“Okay. Great. Thanks,” I say, peer at my phone, and the number sent. Brant Merrill, my so-called-lawyer who took five grand of my money and has yet to call me back.
“You’re home early,” I say. “Again.”
“Teacher conference day,” he says.
“Do those people ever work?”
“I don’t mind. Want me to get Jo?”
“No, after this, I’m heading over to help with swim-hour,” I say.
“See you later then? Three?” Spencer asks.
“Yep,” I say and hang up, dial Merrill who picks up before it rings.
“We’ve got a counter here,” he says, voice clipped. I can see him in his swanky million dollar office wearing his swanky thousand dollar suit. And my newly established heart space contracts. This guy is way outside the outer courtyard.
“A counter?” I ask. “What does that mean?”
“A counter offer,” he says with a sniff. “For the original letter Cal sent? To get the proceedings going? Hello? Does any of this ring a bell?”
“Hey! You can drop the attitude Mr. Merrill,” I say in my chop-chop Mom voice. “The last time you and I spoke, and I want to point out that was nearly a month ago, you said you were calling Cal, that you would ‘feel him out’ and get right back to me. I’ve called your office three times. What’s up with that?”
Silence stretches through the line and this is the first definitive proof I am different. Two weeks prior, with my leveled heart and my inability to breathe, I would have never had spoken this way.
“Well,” Merrill finally says, “I’ve been in court. I didn’t realize that much time had passed.”
“So, it seems you sent a letter to the other side and you’re telling me there is a counter to your counter? What did you ask for?
“Like we agreed. The house.”
“So…what did they say?”
There is commotion on the other end of the line, a woman’s voice from his side.
“Look,” Merrill says. “I have to deal with something here. I’ll send the counter via email. Read through. We have forty-eight hours to respond.”
Then he’s gone.
Two days? That’s nothing.
I’m about to call him back but the phone rings again. Burt, the accident attorney.
My car is now my office, it seems.
“Well, I told you Farmer’s was crap,” Burt says in his grumpy grizzled voice. “You picked the worst damn company out there and the worst damn auto policy, too. You have a ceiling of twenty-five grand. And DQ has limits, too, which means you’re all screwed, including me as your attorney, and your pal Franny who’s now going to go to her own insurance to file a separate claim for damages.” He pauses, draws breath, and then starts up again. “Let me tell you what I already told her. All is not lost. We have the deposition and I’ll do what I can but you’re all the way out of that deal, too, because it’s her policy.”
It’s like a pick up truck has backed up and dumped a huge load of reality on top of me. File a complaint. Deal with Rick. And now insurance issues and Fran going her own way?
Before, I would have melted down at this news but a deep inhale and calm heart hold me steady
“Sure, okay, that makes sense,” I hear myself say.
“You might want to check that policy out,” Burt says. “You shouldn’t be driving around with insurance like that. I’ll see you for the deposition after the holiday.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll be there.”
Through the doors of Trader’s, I’m greeted by more bell ringing and the hoot-hoot of a checker announcing some kid successfully spotted Joey—a stuffed kangaroo they hide among the shelves.
I can never spot Joey, but whenever we come to Trader’s together, Spencer and Jo hunt him down in five minutes then hurry to the front to claim lollipops and stickers.
Without them, I am free to weave into, down, and around all the packed shelves. Fill the cart. My last stop is the freezer aisle. I pull my cart aside, grab two Count-Down-to-Christmas calendars and then stop. Stare.
They say life is stranger than fiction and I’m here to testify it’s true. There, turning a cart up the aisle is a compact, dark haired woman draped in a cashmere shawl who looks exactly like Fran.
Closer and closer she rolls, hunched over the handle of her cart, cell phone wedged between her shoulder and ear.
I consider backing up, turning around, hurrying away but then Fran looks up. “Gotta go,” she says, snaps her phone closed.
We stand there, awkward, staring. “That’s weird,” I finally say. “Burt just called about the insurance. He said you’re using your own? I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Fran says, voice curt and shoves her phone into her purse. “I’ve got it figured out.”
“Of course you do,” I say. Her affect: Tough. Detached. Her eyes: Flat. Her heart: Encased in stone.
Around us, harried shoppers wheel into and through the frozen foods section grabbing, tossing, and walking on.
“Hoot, hoot,” a checker calls out. “We have another Joey sighting!”
Fran and I look at the ceiling, then at each other. There will be a deposition, there will be a settlement, and we will see each other again but I know that right now and right here we’re done with each other as dear friends and this hurts my own protected heart more than I can say because I love Fran who is truly a lovely person. Caring. Good. Hardworking, too. But I said the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong time, or perhaps its something else she hasn’t the courage to discuss and work through and that’s how it goes sometimes. I’m not saying Fran cannot forgive me. I have no idea the interior of her heart but I’ve been cast out of her inner courtyard. There’s no more to do, or to say. It’s done.
“I hope you get all the money from your insurance you want and deserve, Fran. I really do,” I say. “I’m so sorry about the accident. I’m sorry you got hurt.”
“Yeah. Well…” she says, takes hold of the cart handle then. “I’ve gotta go.”
“Yeah, me too,” I say. “Take care.”
We back up our carts and Fran wheels into the stream of shoppers. I stand there a moment, lost. Was she even here, before me? Did this conversation just take place? Or is it all a dream, or a nightmare, of the way life works among human beings being played out again and again on the repeat setting with only the stage and the players shifting places?
What was I after again? Oh! Right. Countdown calendars. I grab one for each of the kids and wheel to the front of the store where yet another cry peels out: “We’ve got a winner.”
Next:
Chapter-Forty - Through a Child’s Eyes
During a routine afternoon at her children's swim class, Jennifer's conversation with Jo's teacher about "stinken thinkin'"collides with news of Cal's aggressive counter-offer - a legal move that threatens both her hope of keeping the house and her reputation.
