Love On Call

When she’d arrived at the Albany Airport lugging everything she planned to start a new life with in two suitcases and a taped-up carton of books, she’d rented a car and, following a printout from Google Maps, driven on increasingly narrow, twisting roads through countryside vaguely reminiscent of the fields and green valleys beyond the sprawl of Los Angeles. The farms she passed here, though, were so much smaller and the land so much hillier and the air so much cleaner. Maybe the East Coast seemed so alien because she’d never known anything other than LA. She’d rarely spent much time outside the city, because why would she? Everything that had seemed important growing up was there in the teeming streets—entertainment, shopping, school. Her parents almost never took a vacation—her father was always working in the store, her mother often joining him during the welcome busy stretches, and on the rare times when they weren’t both busy, there was always something going on with one or the other of Mari’s siblings. With barely a year and a half between them all, the after-school sports, clubs, and social events were a never-ending cycle that repeated year after year. Dances and finals and sports practice occupied everyone’s time, and when her mother was too busy with the younger ones, the older ones—the girls at least—stood in for her. Mari’s life had been the family, and she’d never imagined it any differently until everything had changed.

She’d dropped the rental off at the nearest return site as soon as she’d unloaded her belongings and the household essentials she’d picked up at a Target before leaving the city. She couldn’t afford to lease or buy a car, and so she would walk. She didn’t mind walking and it wasn’t very far from her studio apartment to the hospital. Or to anywhere else in the little village, either. Everything she needed in terms of food and necessities she could get at the grocery store she’d discovered just at the opposite end of town, its parking lot filled with pickup trucks and Subarus. She’d wondered on her first exploration of the village four days before if people drove anything else at all. Since then she’d found a surprisingly big pharmacy at the intersection of Main Street and the county road that ran through the center of town, a diner, a bakery that also served decent coffee and beyond-describable muffins and pastries, a pizza place, and a number of other shops. She could survive without a car, and walking felt good. Using her body felt good, and even after a week, her muscles seemed stronger.

And she’d better get her butt in gear now with just over an hour before she needed to start her new job. Her stomach squirmed with nerves. This wasn’t at all how she’d imagined her first day as a newly minted physician assistant. The silence of her tiny apartment reminded her every minute of all the voices that weren’t there, encouraging her, teasing her, quietly supporting her. Now there was only the voice in her own head telling her she could do this. She’d done much harder things. And she wanted to do it, needed to do it. Work gave her a reason to get out of bed in the morning, that and her stubborn refusal to be defeated.

She showered in the miniscule pocket bathroom, barely able to dry off without bumping her hip on the corner of the sink. She blow-dried her hair, thankful again for the natural waves that required little more than a decent cut to look acceptably stylish, and put on the minimum of makeup to cover the smudges beneath her eyes. Sleep was sporadic still, and she hadn’t quite gotten over the jet lag. She’d never been very good at traveling on the few occasions she’d visited her father’s distant relatives in Mexico or interviewed for PA-training positions. She always missed her pillow. The one she’d slept with forever, it seemed, shaped to her arms and the curve of her cheek.

She smiled at her weary image in the mirror and admitted what she really missed. The smell of coffee floating up from the kitchen in the morning along with her mother’s voice reminding Joseph of some errand he had to do after work or calling to Raymond to get out of bed before he missed the bus or singing snatches of some old song as she fixed breakfast and packed lunches. Even with four of the kids gone, the house had still felt full with her and the two boys and Selena still living at home. The house always felt full of life.

Her tiny apartment was neat and airy and sunny, but oddly sterile, as if the silence scoured it clean. Getting to work and occupying her mind was exactly what she needed to remember she was damn lucky to be able to complain about anything—including a nice, clean, quiet place to live and a job she’d wanted all her life. Self-pity was an unbecoming pastime, and she needed to be done with it.