Obstetrix(50)

“I don’t know how she’s feeling about everything. She might not want to see me,” I said. “But there’s something I want to give her, anyway.”



* * *



THE FAMILY SHELTER HAD a check-in desk for visitors, it was not somewhere I could just wander in, so I told them I was hoping to see Bethany. And maybe her parents, but mostly Bethany.

The receptionist paused and in even tones said, “Can you please tell me your relationship with this family?”

I realized she thought I was one of the cult members. I said, “I’m the doctor their cult kidnapped.”

“Oh!” Her whole demeanor shifted. “Right. I’ll go find Bethany.”

“One other thing,” I said. “If she doesn’t want to see me, I don’t want her to feel like she has to.”

“I’ll let her know that. Wait right here.”

I could hear the pounding footsteps of someone running down the hallway and then Bethany burst out through the locked doors into the lobby. “Dr. Liz,” she shrieked. Unlike Joy, she looked exactly the same: long red braids, long dress. When she flung her arms around me I did notice one thing, which was that the capacious pocket in her long skirt was now occupied by a paperback book.

Emma came out a minute later, saw us together, and quietly took a chair at the other end of the lobby. It was strange seeing her in blue jeans.

“How are you? I was so worried,” Bethany said.

“Why were you worried?”

“Because they wouldn’t let me see you! I was afraid you wouldn’t ever want to speak to me again.”

“Oh,” I said. “No, Bethany, I’m not mad at you at all. I just had a lot of people I needed to talk to, and it didn’t occur to me until today that I could just come find you. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to see me, either.”

“Of course I wanted to see you. Can I still be your apprentice?”

“Bethany.” I took her gently by the shoulders. “You will make an amazing obstetrician someday, if that’s what you decide you want to do. But you will need to go to high school. And college. You’ll have to do the premed requirements and apply to medical school, and go to medical school. And once you graduate from medical school, then you will be an apprentice obstetrician. And maybe, if I’m still practicing, you will get your residency at my hospital and I will train you. But probably you will learn from someone else. I’m sorry.”

There was a long pause and then she said, her voice cracking a little, “That sounds really hard.”

“You will do it one step at a time, just like I did. And maybe you’ll decide you want to be a midwife instead of an obstetrician, or maybe you’ll decide you want to do something completely different—it’s your choice. But the first step is school. Your parents are going to have to send you to school.” I glanced across the room at Emma, who lowered her eyes and gave me a quick, silent nod.

“We visited the school here yesterday,” Bethany said. “But my dad wants us to move out of Idaho.”

“That might not be a bad idea,” I said. “But there will be a school wherever you go.” I remembered the other thing I wanted to ask. “Did you see a dentist?”

“Yes, he gave me a filling.” She opened her mouth and pointed. “And I saw an eye doctor and my new glasses work so much better. And JJ also saw a dentist and they pulled one of his teeth, but it was one of his baby teeth. The dentist said I needed braces but we’re going to wait on those, my dad said, because we’re maybe moving.”

“I’m really glad you got the things you needed,” I said.

She nodded. “If I’m not going to be your apprentice … can we still talk sometimes, at least?”

“Yes,” I said. “Now that we’re out of Harvest, we can use phones or email or we can send regular letters. And I wrote all my information down for you, in this. On the last page.” I opened my bag and pulled out the paperback book I’d brought along.

Bethany’s eyes went wide. “The Onyx Dagger! Is that the story you told me? It’s a real book?”

“It is, in fact, a real book, and this is a real copy. And it’s yours now.” I laid it in her hands, reminding myself that other used copies existed and also I had the ebook. “You can read all the parts I forgot when I was retelling it. There were bunches, actually.”

She gave me a last hug and then she and her mother went back in, Bethany’s nose already in the new book.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I swear standards for acknowledgments sections have gone up in the last five years. Instead of a straightforward set of paragraphs, they’re long, detailed, poetic, beautifully written. Or maybe I’m just noticing the beautifully written ones more than I used to, who knows. It’s my understanding that most regular readers don’t actually read these, just writers who want to see if they’re mentioned, or if they know anyone who’s mentioned, or if they can suss out any interesting gossip. Anyway, I apologize in advance: these aren’t going to be particularly poetic. Also I think the only gossip I share is old and pretty dull.

Anyway, I want to start by mentioning two books that helped me fill in some sense of what Liz’s father might have experienced as an American pilot during the Vietnam War. I read One Trip Too Many: A Pilot’s Memoirs of 38 Months in Combat over Laos and Vietnam by Wayne A. Warner, and Cheating Death: Combat Air Rescues in Vietnam and Laos by George J. Marrett. Marrett was the CSAR pilot who actually was told shortly after his arrival to just count himself as dead. I also want to thank Debra Freisleben for answering some questions about the Air Force by email.