The Return(35)

She continued to eye me almost warily. When she crossed her arms, I noticed a bruise near her elbow. “They’re bees. Can’t they take care of themselves?”

“You’re right,” I admitted. “They’re not like Termite in that you have to feed them, but they still need a little tending now and then.”

“Do they like you?”

“Who? The bees?”

“Yes, the bees.”

“I don’t know. They seem okay with me.”

“You’re wearing a suit. I never saw your grampa wear a suit. When I walked past here, I mean.”

“He was braver than I am.”

For the first time since I’d seen her, she cracked the slightest of smiles. “What did you want?”

“Nothing. I saw you walking past and thought I’d say hello.”

“Why?”

Why? I hadn’t expected the question and for a moment, I couldn’t think of a response. “Just being neighborly, I suppose.”

She seemed to stare right through me. “We’re not neighbors,” she said. “I live a ways down the road.”

“You’re right,” I said.

“I have to go,” she said. “I don’t want to be late for work.”

“Fair enough. I don’t want you to be late, either.”

“Then why did you stop me to talk to you?”

I thought I’d answered that with the whole being neighborly thing, but I guess to her mind, I hadn’t. But feeling as though she wanted to end the conversation sooner rather than later—again, like Natalie at the farmers’ market, which made me think how similar they were in temperament—I took a step backward toward the wheelbarrow.

“No reason,” I said. “Have a great day.”

She waited until I’d retreated a few steps before starting to walk again. And though I didn’t turn around to check, I was certain she didn’t cast so much as a single glance my way. Not that it was any of my business.

I put on the hood and gloves, then moved the wheelbarrow closer to the first of the hives. I got the smoker going, puffed enough to calm the hive, and waited another minute before removing both lids. I added the excluder to the top of the upper deep, put the shallow upper super on top of that, and put the lids back on. Same things with the second, third, and fourth hives. I refilled the wheelbarrow multiple times, lost in the routine and remembering my grandfather, until all the hives were done.

Fortunately, all the queens were still in place—eating food and laying eggs, doing their thing—and I was able to finish in under three hours. By then, it was coming up on lunch, and thinking my morning had already been exceedingly productive, I treated myself to a beer with my sandwich.

Sometimes, it just hits the spot. Know what I mean?

*



After lunch, there were two more things on my agenda, both of which I considered important for my own peace of mind.

Natalie had been right about the possibility of finding answers in my grandfather’s truck. She was also smart to suggest that I call the hospital first. For all I knew, my grandfather had been transported from another county. I found the phone number on the internet and spoke to an older lady with an accent so thick it could have been bottled, who had absolutely no idea how to help. After hemming and hawing for a couple of minutes—in addition to her drawl, she spoke incredibly slowly—she finally landed on the name of one of the hospital administrators and offered to connect me. While she was doing so, unfortunately, I was cut off.

I called again, asked for the appropriate name, and then was connected to voicemail. I left my name, number, a brief message, and asked him to return my call.

Maybe because of the experience I’d had with the first lady, I wasn’t all that certain I’d receive a call back. Even so, I felt like I’d just taken the first step on a journey to find the answers I needed.

*



In the various phases of my life—high school, Annapolis, medical school, residency, and the Navy—I became friends with some extraordinary people. In each of those phases, I became particularly close to a small circle of individuals, and I simply assumed that I would remain close with them forever. Because we were hanging out then, my thinking went, we’d hang out forever.

But friendships, I’ve learned, aren’t like that. Things change; people change. Friends mature and move and get married and have children; others become doctors and deploy to Afghanistan and have their careers blown up. Over time, if you’re lucky, a few—or maybe just a couple—remain from each of the various phases of your life. I’ve been fortunate; I have friends who date back to high school, and yet, I sometimes find myself wondering why some people remain in your life while others drift away. I don’t have the answer to that, other than to observe that friendship has to flow both ways. Both of you have to be willing to invest in the friendship in order to maintain it.

I mention this because I sometimes wonder whether to consider Dr. Bowen a friend. In some ways, he is. We speak every week and he knows me better than anyone. He’s the only person who knows how much I actually used to contemplate suicide after my injuries—daily, if you’re curious—and he’s the only one who knows that I feel very low every year on the day my parents’ plane crashed. He knows how much sleep I get, how many beers I drink in the course of a week, and how hard it used to be for me to control my anger in situations where I should have simply rolled my eyes and gone on with life. Once, about nine months ago, I was standing in the checkout line at Home Depot when the next aisle opened up. The clerk there said he could help the “next person in line,” which was me, but the man behind me rushed over instead, taking what was rightfully my place. No big deal, right? Maybe an irritation, but what was really at stake? A few minutes? On a day when I wasn’t really doing anything at all? The point is that it shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. I was bothered, then angry, and then, as the emotion continued to build, enraged. I stared at the back of his head with death rays, and I ended up walking out the door less than half a minute behind him. Watching him in the parking lot, I had to fight the visceral urge to chase after him and tackle him to the ground. I imagined pummeling him with my fists, even if I could make a fist with only one of my hands; I imagined driving a knee into his kidneys or his stomach; I visualized ripping his ear off, just as I’d lost mine. My jaw was set, my body bracing for confrontation as I began to walk faster when all of a sudden, it dawned on me that I was experiencing a symptom of PTSD, one that Bowen had repeatedly warned me about. I’d been in therapy for a while by then, and like a steady voice of reason amid an orchestra of emotional noise, Bowen was telling me what to do, telling me to change my behavior. Stop and turn away. Force yourself to smile and relax the muscles. Take five long breaths. Feel the emotion, and then let it go, watching as it dissipates. Weigh the pros and cons regarding the action you want to take. Check the facts and realize that in the broad scheme of things, what really happened doesn’t matter at all.