You’ve got to give credit where credit is due, and Martha deserves all the praise this time. She singlehandedly was responsible for the successful Opioid follow-up meeting in February. It had been postponed because of Irma, and she picked up the pieces and re-did everything, even finding a new event space, since the usual hotels were in rehab after flooding.
Irma, the one that sunk Memorial Park, turning homes and businesses into houseboats.
Another unforgettable name for this group around the conference table should be Martha Stubbs.
That’s who they should be thanking, not me. Do they even remember her?
Looking at my co-workers, I’m not sure how they would answer. Every expression is inscrutable, faces like clam shells, lips pressed flat.
Well, who can blame them? When Mr. Capper (“call me Rod”) gets going on his typical North Florida Medical Society propaganda, you just want to tune it all out. Hunker down in your own mind, boycott NFMS bull. Besides, there he sits, all gung-ho, all praise for the staff, “there’s never been better,” “no one delivers like you guys,” “I’m so proud,” blah, blah, blah. And then that very same lauded staffer will be called to the HR Director’s office one Friday morning and summarily dismissed.
That’s what happened to Martha last month. I wasn’t even in the office, had taken Chum to the vet and was stretching out the appointment as long as possible.
Martha was stunned, caught off guard. So was I, when she called me in tears. They didn’t even have the decency to tell me, her supervisor, they were going to let her go. Our department had been riding high; the annual meeting in May received the best feedback of any NFMS event ever. Capper and crew personally thanked us at the closing gala, called us onstage and handed us bouquets.
Looking back now, maybe those were kiss-off flowers.
Technically, Martha wasn’t fired. Nope, they “eliminated her position.” Said live face-to-face activities were less important than online ones. One meeting planner (that would be me) was sufficient for traditional events. Never mind that the Online Education Director has no experience in the process of securing physician credits, which live or online, you need to know like the back of your own hand, and Martha did. No one understands that bureaucratic bag of tricks like my colleague.
And never mind that the members have stated in surveys (over and over) that they want more in-person, traditional meetings. Martha was in the beginning stages of planning two roundtables (one on pandemic response, the other on Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell) championed by some of our most active physicians. Pooh-poohed by one or two of the Old Guard, of course. Who had the ear of Mr. Capper. It remains to be seen what will happen to those events.
I miss Martha, I think, more than she misses me. After the shock of losing her job wore off, she embraced the change. A good severance package helped her mood, plus the fact that she could now travel at will with her retired husband, go visit their son and new grandbaby for an extended time, go to the Grand Canyon, to Italy. Martha told me that, once the news sunk in, she felt a joy she hadn’t experienced since giving birth.
Peter will miss her too, I’m sure of it. Martha played Cupid for him right from the get-go—I’m almost certain she helped him in his dog search, urging him along the Cavalier King Charles path until he found the perfect puppy.
I still believe he thinks the way to win my heart is through my dog. This tactic has Martha Stubbs written all over it.
When he showed up at my door last year at the bitter end of Hurricane Irma, my first thought was that my co-worker had arranged this pop-in beautifully, superb event planner that she was. My second thought was that his puppy Lana was absolutely adorable. And my third thought, I admit it, was that her owner was cute too, so excited was he to be a dog daddy. His enthusiasm was catching.
And I think I caught a bit of Dr. Peter Redmond’s positivity. So, my thing with him is not only about the dogs. I enjoy his company.
I’m not alone. There is something about Peter Redmond that attracts women; maybe it’s his goofy side that comes out every now and then, sort of an overgrown surfer dude that appeals to women who came of age in the 1980s. And Peter is terribly brilliant, Emory undergrad and medical school, University of Florida residency and fellowship. He is one of the best hematologist/oncologists in the region, yet maintains a solo practice in an unassuming concrete block building off Blanding Boulevard. It is very difficult to keep a single physician practice going these days, I can tell you. It is almost unheard of. But Peter manages, his patient load is growing every year. Those with blood disorders adore the one-on-one, personalized care he gives.
To wit, he cured Fairfax’s anemia and she promptly fell in love with him. You should see how she talks about the man, all dreamy-eyed. Well, no one could blame her. Because everyone loves Peter Redmond.
Well, maybe not everyone.
“Nancy, do you have anything to report on the Annual Meeting CME application?” Capper’s staccato voice interrupts thoughts of Dr. R. All for the best, put it aside for a moment, the problem with Peter. Oh man.
To Capper, I say smoothly. “Application is in process, goal is to submit for continuing medical education credit six months in advance.” I shift in the uncomfortable pleather chair. “We’ll make it.” The chair makes a farting noise. I almost laugh.
“Good! What I like to hear!” Mr. Capper voice bounces off the popcorn ceiling. He takes a sip of coffee from a mug. Number One Boss, it says. An ego that knows no bounds. “Now, you’re handling the credit applications for the recorded spin-off sessions too, correct?”
Ah, here it is. Martha used to handle these, now it’s supposed to be the Online Education Director’s job. Not mine. “Um, that would be Cara.” I glance at the girl beside me. I say girl because, even though she’s thirty, she looks like a teenager. Cara has never mentioned continuing medical education credit to me. I doubt she knows much about it, much less that she is now responsible for procuring it for a chunk of NFMS content.
I’m right. Cara’s tan face has blanched to the ivory of her Rayon top. I debate letting her twist in the wind, for Martha’s sake, but I can’t do it. It’s not Cara’s fault Martha lost her job. It’s just the whole organization, their sole goal. Online is cheaper than face-to-face and money talks. What Cara doesn’t know, she can learn. And fast.
I pat Cara on the shoulder. “Between the two of us, we’ve got it, Mr. Capper. Don’t worry.” She shoots me a grateful look, and I smile back.
My good deed for the day.
The staff meeting concludes, and I gather up my yellow pad and pen. I don’t bring my laptop to these meetings anymore, everything is so rote to me now, and Rod Capper’s instructions are the same every year. I notice the newest staff members, Cara included, in brisk motion— closing tablets, tapping on phones to take them off vibrate.
I grab my phone from the table and see that Fairfax has texted me. I trot down the hall to my office, shut the door. Cara will be along shortly, I’m sure of it, and I need a moment to myself.
I plunk down in my desk chair (amazingly comfortable, I swiped it from the Publications Director’s office when she was fired) and click into Fairfax’s text:
Don’t hate me but I called Peter today. there’s a darling bed & breakfast in Amelia that he is going to take you to. You will love it I promise!
I need a moment to process her words. I don’t know why I’m surprised; I should have known Fairfax, take charge person that she is, would feel responsible for my love life. Like Martha, she has a Cupid complex.
My thumbs hover over the keypad. I really don’t know what to say to her. Fairfax has been digging for intel ever since Peter and I started walking our dogs together. When he finally asked me to have dinner at Biscotti’s (on what Fairfax called a “proper date”), I think she started planning the wedding.
And last weekend, Fairfax stepped the interrogation up a notch. “Have you slept with him?” she asked me.
And WHOOSH, my mind went through a wormhole to 1989. Right back to when my mother asked me the very same question. An exchange burned into my brain, coded thereafter in anger, separation, and emancipation. Growing up.
Well, have you? Have you? Answer me, Nancy Anne, have you?
I would not answer my mother. All I wanted to do Christmas of 1989 was lie around and watch TV, and she chose to interrogate me. My first term in at Guilford College had been exhausting. There was a boy who liked me, but he was sort of intense. Knocking on my door in the middle of the night because he just had to tell me something, annoying my roommate then and countless other times, taking me on study breaks which lasted hours. My time management habits hewn in high school went to hell. He was good-looking, this college boyfriend—heart-stopping—yet his personality kept getting in the way of his attractiveness.
When Ruth Plumb asked me a fourth time, I shot her such a dirty look, she quit her questioning. I stormed out of the living room, slamming the front door. I walked down the front steps, into the snow.
Yep, you read that right. Snow. In the yard. In Jacksonville, Florida, 1989. Personally, I’d had enough of ice for one season—there’d been plenty in Greensboro right before the break started. It had been cold in North Carolina, and I wanted warmth. The boy was pressuring me to get physical, but I found myself rejecting that kind of warmth. What I needed was homemade cookies on the couch, favorite books on my shelves, my Dad’s goofy puns.
And my mother. I needed her to be there, to sit alongside me. Quiet, unassuming. A comforting, benign presence. Not a nosy Nellie, with a pointing finger and the wrath of God in her voice. Ruth Plumb had delivered many a warning on the horror of unwanted pregnancies and diseases. AIDS was her latest nightmare narrative.
The snow crunched beneath my white Reeboks. There was a tiny icicle attached to the poinsettia plant my mother had placed by the front walk. I kicked the plant, and the ice broke off, taking the red petal with it. Funny how I couldn’t feel the cold then—I was flushed, burning up about my mother’s intrusiveness, her thinking she had a right to control me, my body.
Because my body was not hers.
Ironically, she never knew it, but Ruth’s questions, her preaching, her absolute conviction against something, caused me to do the very thing she forbade. My mother’s warnings drove me straight into that college boy’s arms.
A sharp rap at my door, and my thoughts of the past and my mother and the choice I made, right or wrong, disperse. Cara pokes her head into my office. Ah, yes, work. Still here.
“CME?” I say and greet her with a smile.
****
That evening, Peter and I sit on his balcony, watching the river. Whenever I see the St. John’s spread out in front of me, I feel like I’m on vacation. I like to think the breeze blowing across my face, through my hair, is cleansing away the trials of the day. Except tonight, the wind does not bring peace—instead, it feels like a rebuke.
Peter shifts in his chair, and Lana shuffles a bit in his lap. His profile in the gloaming is distinct. The Roman nose, curved tortoiseshell frames. Thick lips, so attractive to some. Lips that kiss with intention. Peter strokes his puppy’s fur. His arms are muscular, heavily freckled, though you can’t see that now. His hands look pale out here in the twilight, the nails flat and clean as tools.
I remember other hands now, long slim fingers touching mine. A boy’s ragged nails, a man’s carefree grasp. A rightness to the shape and texture through time. Welcoming. A feeling of certainty, knowing, safety. Of home.
“If you don’t want to go, just say so.” The hurt in Peter Redmond’s voice is still there. It upsets me because I don’t want to hurt him. I want to rush in and soothe that rawness, make everything okay. Give in, agree. Go along.
Accommodate.
Be casual. Why not? I am forty-seven years old; too old for fairy tales. I should just get on with it. Not take everything so seriously. Just have fun.
But I cannot.
Because I am not a casual person. I ended up just the way my mother intended.
