Educated(73)

I moved to a new apartment on the other side of town where no one knew me. I wanted a new start. At church my first week, my new bishop greeted me with a warm handshake, then moved on to the next newcomer. I reveled in his disinterest. If I could just pretend to be normal for a little while, maybe it would feel like the truth.

It was at church that I met Nick. Nick had square glasses and dark hair, which he gelled and teased into neat spikes. Dad would have scoffed at a man wearing hair gel, which is perhaps why I loved it. I also loved that Nick wouldn’t have known an alternator from a crankshaft. What he did know were books and video games and clothing brands. And words. He had an astonishing vocabulary.

Nick and I were a couple from the beginning. He grabbed my hand the second time we met. When his skin touched mine, I prepared to fight that primal need to push him away, but it never came. It was strange and exciting, and no part of me wanted it to end. I wished I were still in my old congregation, so I could rush to my old bishop and tell him I wasn’t broken anymore.

I overestimated my progress. I was so focused on what was working, I didn’t notice what wasn’t. We’d been together a few months, and I’d spent many evenings with his family, before I ever said a word about mine. I did it without thinking, casually mentioned one of Mother’s oils when Nick said he had an ache in his shoulder. He was intrigued—he’d been waiting for me to bring them up—but I was angry at myself for the slip, and didn’t let it happen again.



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I BEGAN TO FEEL poorly toward the end of May. A week passed in which I could hardly drag myself to my job, an internship at a law firm. I slept from early evening until late morning, then yawned through the day. My throat began to ache and my voice dropped, roughening into a deep crackle, as if my vocal cords had turned to sandpaper.

At first Nick was amused that I wouldn’t see a doctor, but as the illness progressed his amusement turned to worry, then confusion. I blew him off. “It’s not that serious,” I said. “I’d go if it were serious.”

Another week passed. I quit my internship and began sleeping through the days as well as the nights. One morning, Nick showed up unexpectedly.

“We’re going to the doctor,” he said.

I started to say I wouldn’t go, but then I saw his face. He looked as though he had a question but knew there was no point in asking it. The tense line of his mouth, the narrowing of his eyes. This is what distrust looks like, I thought.

Given the choice between seeing an evil socialist doctor, and admitting to my boyfriend that I believed doctors were evil socialists, I chose to see the doctor.

“I’ll go today,” I said. “I promise. But I’d rather go alone.”

“Fine,” he said.

He left, but now I had another problem. I didn’t know how to go to a doctor. I called a friend from class and asked if she’d drive me. She picked me up an hour later and I watched, perplexed, as she drove right past the hospital a few blocks from my apartment. She took me to a small building north of campus, which she called a “clinic.” I tried to feign nonchalance, act as though I’d done this before, but as we crossed the parking lot I felt as though Mother were watching me.

I didn’t know what to say to the receptionist. My friend attributed my silence to my throat and explained my symptoms. We were told to wait. Eventually a nurse led me to a small white room where she weighed me, took my blood pressure, and swabbed my tongue. Sore throats this severe were usually caused by strep bacteria or the mono virus, she said. They would know in a few days.

When the results came back, I drove to the clinic alone. A balding middle-aged doctor gave me the results. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re positive for strep and mono. Only person I’ve seen in a month to get both.”

“Both?” I whispered. “How can I have both?”

“Very, very bad luck,” he said. “I can give you penicillin for the strep, but there’s not much I can do for the mono. You’ll have to wait it out. Still, once we’ve cleared out the strep, you should feel better.”

The doctor asked a nurse to bring some penicillin. “We should start you on the antibiotics right away,” he said. I held the pills in my palm and was reminded of that afternoon when Charles had given me ibuprofen. I thought of Mother, and of the many times she’d told me that antibiotics poison the body, that they cause infertility and birth defects. That the spirit of the Lord cannot dwell in an unclean vessel, and that no vessel is clean when it forsakes God and relies on man. Or maybe Dad had said that last part.

I swallowed the pills. Perhaps it was desperation because I felt so poorly, but I think the reason was more mundane: curiosity. There I was, in the heart of the Medical Establishment, and I wanted to see, at long last, what it was I had always been afraid of. Would my eyes bleed? My tongue fall out? Surely something awful would happen. I needed to know what.

I returned to my apartment and called Mother. I thought confessing would alleviate my guilt. I told her I’d seen a doctor, and that I had strep and mono. “I’m taking penicillin,” I said. “I just wanted you to know.”

She began talking rapidly but I didn’t hear much of it, I was so tired. When she seemed to be winding down, I said “I love you” and hung up.

Two days later a package arrived, express from Idaho. Inside were six bottles of tincture, two vials of essential oil, and a bag of white clay. I recognized the formulas—the oils and tinctures were to fortify the liver and kidneys, and the clay was a foot soak to draw toxins. There was a note from Mother: These herbs will flush the antibiotics from your system. Please use them for as long as you insist on taking the drugs. Love you.