Going Overboard (9 page)

The next day, Owen and I were scheduled for back-to-back appointments with Dr. Ashley, aka Cute Doctor. Owen was having
his six-week checkup, and I was having my six-week postpartum exam. Because military hospitals are often understaffed and Dr. Ashley was technically our “family physician,” he scheduled the appointments one after the other to save me time.

I told you he was great.

I didn't think I was nervous about the appointments until that morning, when I found myself painting my toenails and feeling nauseous each time I thought of Dustin.

It was true what I had told Courtney and Jody: While I once saw Dr. Ashley—with his slightly rounded shoulders, gold-rimmed glasses, and receding hairline—as a bit geeky, at some point he miraculously morphed into the world's most incredible doctor and the sexiest, smartest man alive.

Once, when I was pregnant with Owen and obsessing over the possibility of having gestational diabetes, Dr. Ashley calmly said to me, “I know you worry about things, Sarah, but don't lose sleep over this. It's going to be OK, and I'll call you just as soon as I get the test results back. Promise.”

Dustin, however, sat in the corner of the exam room, fed up with my hysteria. “You just need to chill out,” he said angrily.

We fought the whole way home that day, and when I told Dustin that Dr. Ashley had been sensitive where he was, let's see . . . a
jerk
, Dustin said, “Yeah, it's real easy for him to put up with you for twenty minutes every two weeks, but I'm the one who has to live with you!”

From the very beginning, Dr. Ashley and I had a certain kind of chemistry. Even before he became so cute, I always knew if he weren't my doctor, we'd be friends. He was close to my age, single, and we shared the same sense of humor. Even the unpleasantries of being pregnant and going to prenatal exams were made easier with his lighthearted jokes and his radiant, toothpaste-commercial smile.

But that was before everything started to change. It was
before Dustin, in predeployment mode, became distant; before I was facing another six months alone; and—most of all—before I was twentysomething years old with two kids and a house.

Ford, Owen, and I got to the hospital just after lunch and just in time to smell the aroma of heated meats and sauerkraut coming from the vendors on the sidewalk outside.

I have always said that going to a military hospital is a little like going to the store to buy Pepsi and coming home with the store brand “cola.” They are stripped of everything but the essentials. There are no carpeted waiting rooms with aquariums and glossy-covered copies of
Child
magazine. No, military waiting rooms are more likely to be littered with public-service brochures with titles such as “How to Discipline Your Children When Your Spouse Is Away,” and “Is It Postpartum Depression or Predeployment Blues?” And the brochures are never fanned out in a pretty way on the coffee table. Usually they're just scattered across the seats and floor, with boot marks across the places where they've been stepped on. And like the lobby they reside in, the brochures are also stripped down to the essentials: stick-figure illustrations in black-and-white.

I went to a civilian hospital once. It was like arriving at a Saks Fifth Avenue after shopping at Wal-Mart: The automatic doors slid open, cool air-conditioned air feathered my hair, and the mahogany receptionist's desk looked like a majestic ship surrounded by plump waiting chairs and sofas. I could swear I heard choirs singing and joyous bells ringing when I stepped onto the ceramic-tile floor and gazed at the wall filled with oil paintings and hanging greenery.

I had been admitted to the civilian hospital to deliver Ford because the military facility was full and could not accommodate me. The room I gave birth in was nicer than our living room. It had wood floors, an oak armoire for hanging up my clothes, and believe it or not, an actual remote control (with batteries and no
duct tape holding it together!) for the large-screen television hanging across from the bed. The room was so cozy, I could almost forget I was there to give birth to an eight-pound baby and that my mother-in-law was bugging me about the pecan pie.

It was almost like a vacation. “But where are all the instruments?” I had asked the civilian nurse. “Where are the forceps and needles and speculums?”

At military hospitals, I was used to seeing these things—things a patient never should have to look at if she doesn't want to vomit.

The large redheaded nurse turned and looked at me as if I were crazy. “For Heaven's sake,” she said, “why would you want to see those things? We tuck them away in that wooden dresser over yonder.”

What a concept!

Yet, despite all my complaining about military hospitals, it felt like “coming home” when I stepped through the sliding double doors and walked the boys up the stairs to the family practice wing. After all, I was literally born and raised in military hospitals, and there was a certain amount of familiarity and safety in them for me.

Dr. Ashley had made my appointment near lunchtime, so there was no wait, and a nurse escorted me to one of his exam rooms as soon as I had checked in.

The barren room with fluorescent lights was frigid, so I bundled more blankets around Owen in his carrier and made Ford put on a jacket. Then I got out books and crayons from the diaper bag and handed them to Ford.

“Be good,” I told him. “And remember, no touching the dirty hospital floors and walls! If you need waterless soap, Mommy's got it in her purse.”

I fidgeted with my hair and tried to find the best, most slimming, way to sit when Dr. Ashley came in.

A few minutes later, he came into the exam room dressed in
blue scrubs and a white overcoat. He seemed to be moving in slow motion, like a Diet Coke commercial. I could almost imagine him with his shirt off and beads of sweat dripping down his back. My knees went weak at the thought. No, no, no, I told myself. I can control my feelings. . . . I can control my feelings.

Dr. Ashley smiled at me and the boys, then collapsed into a chair like an old friend falling onto his neighbor's sofa.

“Man, what a day!” he said and pulled off his glasses to rub his eyes. “How have you guys been?”

“Great,” I said, “the weather's perfect.” Then I immediately cursed myself for doing small talk. Dr. Ashley wasn't a small-talk kind of person—was he?

He pulled a pen out of the front pocket of his coat and flipped through Owen's records. “So any problems with this little guy?” he said. “How's his sleeping? And eating? Are you still nursing?”

I couldn't look at Dr. Ashley's deep blue eyes without feeling nervous, so I stared at a poster with a diagram of a uterus on it above his head.

“Yep. All good!” I said, purposefully avoiding the last question, lest I be forced to say “breast” or anything similar.

Why did I always feel like a teenager around him? I wondered. Why was I suddenly overly aware of my nose and my lipstick and my breath?

My foot tapped uncontrollably on the cement floor. I put a hand on my knee to steady it.

Dr. Ashley looked at me thoughtfully and put down his clipboard and pen. “Are you sure everything's OK? You look a little tense. What's up?”

“Nothing's up,” I said. “Really! We're doing great. And, oh, it's a beautiful day out. Did I already say that?”

Damn!

Dr. Ashley smiled crookedly and pulled his spinning stool closer. Since when are crooked smiles sexy? I thought.

“You can talk to me about anything,” he said. “You know that, right, Sarah?”

I nodded and looked away. My foot started tapping again. I knew Dr. Ashley was going to grill me until I gave him an answer; he knew me well enough to know I was nervous. I had to come up with something. Wasn't there anything that had been bothering me in the last few days? Anything that didn't involve fantasizing about Dr. Ashley's wispy blond hair?

Then, with a rush of adrenaline that reminded me of standing on the edge of the high dive when I was ten years old, I blurted out, “Well, so long as you're asking, there is this little thing with Owen. It's silly, really, but he . . . well, he sometimes smells like pancake syrup and . . . and . . . um . . . his pe . . . his pe . . . pe . . .”

“Penis?” Dr. Ashley supplied.

“Yes, that. Well, it's . . . um . . . it's, you know, kind of purple.”

Dr. Ashley cleared his throat. “I'm sorry. Did you say he smells like syrup and his penis is purple?”

Oh, my gosh! Is that what I just said?

He picked up the chart and started to make notes.

“Yes, and I think I read something on the Internet about that being a sign of some disease,” I said.

“I've told you to quit reading that stuff on the Internet,” he said, smiling.

“I know. I know.” I covered my face with my hands.

“Well,” he said, “there is a metabolic disease involving amino acids which can present itself with urine that smells like syrup, but Owen had a PKU test after birth.” Dr. Ashley stood up and kicked away the rolling chair with his foot. “Nevertheless, let's get him undressed and do a little exam.”

I took Owen out of his carrier and took off his footed pajamas and diaper. He wriggled and cried when the cold air hit his stomach, but Dr. Ashley was thoughtful as always and rubbed his
hands together briskly before touching him. Then he was poking and probing around Owen's groin.

I had to look away.

“I think that purple tint you're seeing is normal,” Dr. Ashley said. I heard the latex gloves snap as he took them off. It was safe to look again.

“He's still recovering from the circumcision and things will be irritated for a while,” Dr. Ashley said. Then he turned around and searched through a drawer cluttered with tongue depressors, Band-Aids, and cotton balls.

Owen's chart was lying on the paper-covered exam table and I inched closer to peek at it. There, in all capital letters, it said: MOTHER EXTREMELY ANXIOUS. COMPLAINS OF SYRUP SMELL AND PURPLE PENIS.

Oh, no! That was going in his permanent record? Mother “extremely anxious”?

Dr. Ashley turned back around and I quickly looked up from the chart.

“As far as the smell goes,” he said, “it may be a reaction to something he's sensitive to in the breast milk. But I'm not worried about it.”

I blinked when he said “breast.”

“Now,” he said with a sudden loudness and clapped his hands together, “go ahead and get Owen dressed and back in his carrier. I'll give you a few moments to get yourself into one of the paper robes on the counter, and then I'll be back with an assistant to do your exam.”

He winked and patted my shoulder before turning to leave and closing the door behind him.

My heart was pounding in my throat. I looked over at Ford sitting in a plastic waiting chair with a Superman book in his lap. His chubby shoulders were hunched over and his short legs stuck straight out across the seat. He was absorbed in the picture book
and didn't notice me, but I felt my eyes moisten when he distractedly bounced the heel of one of his chunky white tennis shoes on the plastic edge of the seat. He looked so much like his dad, it was stunning, and I wondered why I had never noticed the resemblance until just then.

When Dr. Ashley returned a few minutes later, I was sitting on the exam table, completely naked—except for my watch—and wearing a mint green paper gown like a toga.

I chewed on my thumb and stared at my feet dangling from the table. My knees were purple from the cold, and that made me feel somewhat like a child sitting at the lunch table with a carton of milk. Plus I had red bumps up and down my shins from shaving.

Dr. Ashley sat down on the round twirling stool and looked at me with a thoughtful frown.

“I've decided to wait a moment before we do the exam,” he said. “My assistant will be here shortly. But first I want to talk with you. You seem a little on edge, Sarah. Where's the peppy girl I know?” He playfully punched at my shoulder. “Where's that smile? Is there something on your mind?”

“What would be wrong?” I said with a little laugh. “Besides the purple . . . um . . .
thing,
and pancake smell, everything is great.”

“Come on, Sarah,” he said. “I know you better than that by now.”

I instinctively ran my fingers through my hair.

“Tell me what's on your mind,” he said again.

My eyes met his and suddenly I relaxed. “Well, Dustin left for deployment,” I sighed. “They weren't supposed to leave for a few more months, but with everything that's going on . . . but I'm doing fine. Really.”

A crease formed between Dr. Ashley's eyebrows. His head was tilted slightly back, and he seemed to be studying me from underneath the rim of his glasses. I knew by the way he turned the corners of his lips down that he saw right through me.

“And you're scared, aren't you?” he said.

I waved my hand. “Oh, gosh, no. Are you kidding me? I've done this before. . . .” My voice trailed off and started to crack.