Medicine Man

I claw my fingers on the glass in jealousy. The nurse tells me to move away from the window and the phone. She tells me it’s someone else’s turn. I don’t listen to her. I smash my nose into the glass, standing my ground.

I hate that he gets to feel the rain whenever he wants, and I can’t even see it without someone telling me to back off.

I hate that he can leave through those tall gates whenever he wants to and go back home. While I’ll be stuck here, forcing myself not to miss my mom too much.

Most of all, I hate that when he reads my chart, he’ll come to know everything about me.

Every single thing.

He’ll know I’m crazy.

So crazy that the nurse finally gives up warning me and physically removes me from the window, muttering, “Do you want me to call the techs?”

When I stop at the cemetery in the pouring rain, I don’t expect to see anyone there.

Let alone a small boy – a boy I know – in a black suit with his head bent and his knees drawn up, sitting under the tree as the lightning streaks through the sky.

He’s my neighbors’ kid. Well, my father’s neighbors’ kid. I don’t live in that house anymore.

My first thought is that he is lost; I don’t see his parents around. In fact, I don’t see anyone around. Then I spot a bicycle toward the far end of the dismal place. Must be his.

My second thought is that maybe he’s meeting someone here. A friend. Girlfriend? But a cemetery is an odd place to meet someone. Then again, I have no idea what kids are doing these days.

At last, I decide it doesn’t matter. It’s none of my business what he’s doing here. All alone, in the storm, with hunched shoulders.

I get out of my car, water beating down on me. When I walk through those gates, I have every intention of not caring and heading to the grave I came here to see. I have every intention of doing what I haven’t been able to do ever since I moved back from Boston a couple of days ago. I’m thinking today is the day I’ll do it.

But I pass by the grave I’m supposed to stop at. In fact, I don’t even pay attention to it. I keep walking.

My focus is the kid sitting under a tree.

I’ve only seen him once. Yesterday, when I stopped by the house because Beth said that the pipe in the upstairs bathroom was leaking and the plumber wouldn’t be there until tomorrow. I told her I’d fix it.

Although it wasn’t any of my business. What happens to that house, which looked to be in pretty bad shape – leaking roofs, broken stairs, loose floorboards – and the man living in it. Even the willow tree in the backyard looked like it was about to die.

The kid looks up as I approach, and I gauge his age to be twelve. His eyes are swollen; he’s been crying.

I clamp my jaw shut and tip my chin at him. “Hey.”

He sniffles and glares at me. “My mom said not to talk to strangers.”

I thrust my hands in my pockets and nod. “She tell you to sit under a tree during a thunderstorm, too?”

“No.” He shrugs. “I can do whatever I want. She’s not here to stop me.”

He looks away angrily, and I tell myself to move on. There’s nothing I can do here. He’s grieving, for whatever reason, and grief’s not something I can do much about.

Definitely not as a doctor. There’s even a thing called Bereavement Exclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Meaning, there’s a fuck ton of debate over diagnosing bereaved individuals.

Grief is not something I can fix – not medically. I should know for more reasons than one.

Still, I take a seat beside the boy.

“Where is she?” I look at the ocean of graves, resting my elbow on my upturned knee. “Your mom.”

He rips the drenched grass out of the ground and spits out, “Dead.”

I knew he was going to say something like that. But it doesn’t make it any easier to hear. Death never gets easier. Duller, perhaps. The pain of losing someone. But it’s always there.

“How’d she die?” I ask, running my hands through my soaked hair.

The boy doesn’t say anything for a while. I don’t know if he’ll talk. I wouldn’t. I haven’t, even after nineteen years. I’ve buried it like these dead bodies.

“Cancer,” he says at last, in a small voice. But then it rises, matches volume with the storm around us. “The doctor said she’d be fine. He said he was gonna do everything.”

“And he didn’t?”

“No. It was a minor procedure. I looked it up. She was supposed to be better after surgery. But she never even made it out.” Ripping out the grass once more, he snaps, “Fucking moron.” Then, “Sorry. I know you’re a doctor.”