Mud Vein

The phone rang a second time. I almost didn’t answer it, but the area code is from Washington.

“Senna Richards, this is the office of Dr. Albert Monroe.”

I racked my brain trying to place the doctor and his specialty, and then for the second time that day, my blood ran cold. “Something came up on your scan. Dr. Monroe would like you to come in to the office.”

I was leaving my house the next morning, walking to my car when his hybrid pulled into my horseshoe driveway. I stopped to watch him climb out and pull on his jacket. It was casual, almost beautiful in its grace. He’d never come this early before. It made me wonder what he did on the mornings of his days off. He walked toward me and stopped just in time to keep two solid feet between us. He was wearing a light blue fleece, pushed up past his elbows. I was shocked to see the dark ink of tattoos peeking out. What type of doctor had tattoos?

“I have a doctor’s appointment,” I said stepping around him.

“I’m a doctor.”

I was glad to be turned away from him when I smiled.

“Yes, I know. There are quite a few others in the state of Washington.”

His head jerked back like he was surprised I was anything but the stoic, expressionless victim he’d been cooking for.

I was opening the driver’s side door to my Volvo when he held out his hand for my keys.

“I’ll drive you.”

I dropped my eyes into his hand and snuck another look at the tattoos.

Words—I could just make out the tip of them. My eyes slid up the sleeves of his shirt and rested on his neck. I didn’t want to look in his eyes when I handed him my keys. A doctor who loved words. Imagine that.

I was curious. What did a man who had held a screaming woman all night have written on his body? I sat in the passenger seat and instructed Isaac where to go. My radio was on the classical station. He turned it up to hear what was playing and then lowered it back down.

“Do you ever listen to music with words?”

“No. Turn left here.”

He turned the corner and shot me a curious look.

“Why not?”

“Because simplicity speaks the loudest.” I cleared my throat and stared straight ahead. I sounded like such a chump. I felt him looking at me, cutting into me like one of his patients. I didn’t want to be dissected.

“Your book,” he said. “People talk about it. It’s not simple.”

I don’t say anything.

“You need simplicity to create complexity,” he said. “I get it. I suppose too much can clog up your creativity.”

Exactly.

I shrugged.

“This is it,” I said softly. He turned into a medical complex and pulled into a parking spot near the main entrance.

“I’ll wait for you right here.”

He didn’t ask where I was going or what I was here for. He simply parked the car where he could see me walk in and out of the building and waited.

I liked that.

Dr. Monroe was an oncologist. In mid December I found a lump in my right breast. I forgot about the worry of cancer in the wake of a more immediate and needier pain. I sat in his waiting room, my hands pressed between my knees, a strange man waiting in my car, and all I could think about were Isaac’s words. The ones on his arms and the ones that came out of his mouth. A red bicycle in a stark white room.

A door opened next to the reception window. A nurse said my name.

“Senna Richards.”

I stood. I went.

I had breast cancer. I could talk about the moment Dr. Monroe confirmed it, the emotions I felt. The words he said to me afterwards, meant to comfort, reassure; but the bottom line was, I had breast cancer.

I thought about his red bike as I walked to the car. No tears. No shock. Just a red bike that could fly. I didn’t know why I wasn’t feeling anything.

Maybe a person could only deal with one dose of mental atrophy at a time. I slid into the passenger seat. He’d changed the radio station, but he switched it back to the classical one before he put the car in reverse. He didn’t look at me. Not until we arrived at my house and he opened the front door with my keys. Then he looked at me, and I wanted to disappear into the cracks between my brick driveway. I didn’t know what color his eyes were; I didn’t want to know. I pushed past him into the foyer and stopped dead. I didn’t know where to go—the kitchen? The bedroom? My office? Everywhere seemed stupid. Pointless. I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to die. I didn’t want to die.

I went to my barstool, the one positioned to get the perfect view of the lake, and I sat. Isaac moved into the kitchen. He started to make coffee and then stopped, turning to look at me.

“Do you mind if I put on some music? With words?”

I shook my head. His eyes were grey. He set his phone on top of the breadbox while he spooned grinds into the filter.

This time he played something more upbeat. A man’s voice. The beats were so strange I stopped my incessant ability to not feel and listened.

“Alt-J,” he said, when he saw that I was listening. “The song is called Breezeblocks.”

He glanced at my face. “It’s different, right? I used to be in a band. So I get a kick out of their beats.”

“But, you’re a doctor.” I realized how stupid that sounded when it was already out. I pulled an inch-wide chunk of grey hair free, and wound it around my finger twice, right by the roots. I left it there, with my elbow resting on the counter. My security blanket.

“I wasn’t always a doctor,” he said, grabbing two mugs out of my cabinet. “But when I became one, my love of music remained … and the tattoos remained.”

I glanced at his forearms where they peeked out of his shirtsleeves. I was still looking when he brought me my coffee. I caught the tips of the words that faced me.

After he handed me the coffee, he started making food. I didn’t have an appetite, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. I didn’t want to, but I listened to the words of the song he was playing. The last time I listened to this type of music the boy bands had just taken the world by storm and filled every radio with their cliché-licked songs. I wanted to ask him who was singing, but he beat me to it.

“Florence and the Machine. Do you like it?”

“You’re fixated on death.”

“I’m a surgeon,” he said, not looking up from where he was dicing vegetables.