Charlotte Rogan - Now and Again

5.4 Tula

The health-care clinic where Tula worked was twenty miles away. To get there, she either had to borrow her mother’s car or ride the bus, which took a lot longer. Because Will had baseball practice every afternoon, it wasn’t until school was out for the summer that she was able to arrange a day that was convenient for both of them. Tula was so preoccupied with the logistics of the trip that it was only when they were in the car that she thought about what the clinic was set up to do. How was she going to explain to Will that most of the clinic’s patients came in for gynecological services and prenatal care?

The car rattled whenever it reached cruising speed, making it noisy and hard to talk. After a few attempts at conversation, Tula pushed the button to turn on the radio, but the sound was mostly static, with only a few bars of music coming through. Will opened the window and let his hand lift off like the wing of an airplane. When a pebble flew up from the wheels of the truck they were following and made a tiny star pattern in the corner of the windshield glass, Will said, “Now they’re attacking,” as if Tula would know what he meant by it. And she did know. At least she almost did, for it seemed as if the car was traveling right along the frontier that divided the land of safety from the land of peril.

“They,” she said.

“You know, aliens, or terrorists. What would you do if they did attack us?”

“We couldn’t outrun them in this old rattletrap, so I guess we’d have to fight them off.”

“Never fear,” said Will. He pulled a scouting knife from the pocket of his jacket and waved it around like a sword.

They laughed, and then they didn’t talk again until they were pulling into the unpaved lot of the clinic. Before getting out of the car, Tula said with more confidence than she felt, “This is a women’s clinic, Will. I forgot to tell you that. So they’ll probably have you manning the phone.”

“What’s a women’s clinic?” asked Will.

“It’s a clinic dedicated to women’s health.”

“Okay,” said Will. “They don’t treat men?”

“No, they don’t. But sometimes husbands or boyfriends come with the women. And the doctor is usually a man.”

“What do they treat the women for?”

“You know,” said Tula. “It’s women having babies and stuff.”

Will rolled the window closed and unbuckled his seat belt while Tula gathered up her purse. “The doctor can be a little gruff, but you’ll like the midwife. Her name is Dolly.”

“What’s a midwife?” asked Will.

Dolly told Will he could straighten the magazines in the waiting room and then the contents of the supply cupboard. “I’d let you answer the phone, but some of our patients hang up if they get a man.” Then she passed out smocks and took Tula with her into the back. “I wish I could give your boyfriend something more interesting to do,” said Dolly while they waited for the doctor to arrive.

“He’s not my boyfriend. He wants to be a doctor, so I invited him to come along, but it wasn’t until we were on our way that I realized this probably isn’t the best place to bring him.” Tula laughed, releasing the tension that had built up during the drive. The two women were giggling over the awkwardness of the situation when the doctor walked in.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Will wants to be a doctor, so Tula brought him along. We were just hoping that the sight of all the pregnant ladies doesn’t scare him away.”

“You just leave your boyfriend to me,” said the doctor. “I’ll let him autoclave the instruments and show him how a fetal heart monitor works.”

“He’s not her boyfriend,” said Dolly with a wink, and Tula said, “Will’s in for a big surprise.”

When they unlocked the door at nine o’clock, two patients were waiting on the steps accompanied by their husbands, but a third said her boyfriend was a little freaked out and wanted to wait in the car. “He was in Iraq,” explained the woman. “He’s on crutches, so it’s a little hard for him to get around.”

“That sounds like a job for me,” said Will. “I’ll take him a cup of coffee and see what I can do.”

“Men,” said Dolly as the door rattled shut. “Always racing off to fix things. I guess you’re stuck with cleaning out the cupboard as well as answering the phones.”

Will was gone a long time and didn’t come back into the clinic with the empty coffee cup until the third patient was leaving. “What were you up to out there?” Tula wanted to know.

“Guy stuff,” said Will. “Nothing much.”

Toward the end of the day a new mother came in for a checkup. Her hair was unwashed and her husband had to help her fill out the form Tula gave her. “Get away from me!” the woman shouted when Dolly tried to take her blood pressure, so Dolly called in the doctor, who showed Will how to put on the cuff while Dolly and Tula backed out of the room. “It’s okay,” said Will. “I’m here now.”

“Well,” said Dolly. “Will you look at that?”

“What happened to her?” asked Tula.

“Her baby was born with severe deformities. It was horrible. Of course they blame me.”

“How could it be your fault?”

“It wasn’t! But I was there, so they link me to the experience.”

Tula told Dolly about Will’s mother and how she had quit her job at the munitions factory because of something about deformed frogs.

“Interesting,” said Dolly, but then she changed the subject to the coming-home party she was arranging for her boyfriend. “His name is Danny. Do you think I should go with a patriotic theme or just keep it simple? A barbecue would be fun, or what about a friendly baseball game?”

“I like the baseball idea,” said Tula. “Will’s a baseball player.”

“I’ll send you an invitation once I know when it’s going to be.” A few minutes passed, and then Dolly asked, “What’s her name?”

“Who?” asked Tula.

“Will’s mother. What’s Will’s mother’s name?”

“Maggie Rayburn. There was a lot of talk about her at one point — don’t tell me you heard about it all the way out here!”

“Interesting,” Dolly said again, and then she talked some more about the coming-home party until it was time for Tula to leave.

On the drive back to Red Bud, Will was even quieter than he had been that morning. “Thanks for coming,” said Tula.

“I should be thanking you,” said Will. “I learned a few things.”

“You were really good with those soldiers. What did you talk about with the guy in the truck?”

“Oh, you know. We listened to music and talked about baseball.”

“I’m glad they were there, since there wasn’t much else for you to do. I guess I didn’t think things through when I invited you.”

“I never really thought about where babies come from before, about how one minute there’s nothing and the next there’s a new life. And then when you die, it all happens in reverse. Nothing to nothing.”

“They’re just talking about the body when they say that. The soul is something else.”

“I used to believe in the soul,” said Will, “but I don’t anymore.”

“I think that right at the last second our souls will fly up to heaven and wait for a new body to inhabit. It will be like being born all over again.”

“Huh,” said Will. “That’s just a fairy tale.”

No sooner had they turned onto the highway than the clouds turned livid. Lightning forked in the distance, and then, closer in, the sky seemed to ignite. Pretty soon it was raining so hard that Tula had to pull beneath an overpass to wait for the storm to blow over. “We’re lucky it’s not a tornado,” she said.