Chapter Thirty-One
Rochelle

I go to the doctor. I play “guess what” and tell him all about Kimber, my living situation. Dr. Cohen is one of my most favorite people on the planet. I’ve known him since our primary physician recommended him the first time breast cancer decided to ravage my body.  Even though I avoided treatment for over a year that last go round, he still talks to me. He’s a gentleman like that.

He’s also small, Jewish, on the skinnier side with thinning hair and glasses on the slight bump of his nose. He’s younger than me, a strong forty, maybe. When I talk to him, I feel like I’m talking to Job, a man who had everything and lost it, but God’s blessed him again. Dr. Cohen’s first family died in a car he wasn’t sitting in. He was at work, and his wife and two kids were coming home from school. And the first time he met me, he said it just like that. Factually. I suppose he wanted to clear up why he had two photos of himself with two very different families on his desk. The before and after.

I guess he wanted me to know that I didn’t have the monopoly on misery.

“I can’t imagine that’s been going well,” he says. His voice is as steady as his hands. His new wife looks taller than the older one, a bit more filled out. Substantial. I wonder if that was on purpose.

“You imagine correctly.” I’ve been avoiding both of them, Kimber and Glenn. I wake up early, even earlier than Glenn who meets the sun every morning on his daily run. I make a frantic egg white and spinach scramble and eat it in my bed. I listen for footsteps to determine when I can leave my prison cell.

It’s awful.

“Why did you agree to this arrangement?”

“That’s funny. You make it sound like it’s something that happened to me. Really, I almost requested it.”

“Is that so?” I can tell Dr. Cohen is intrigued. He told me once that he writes short stories in his spare time. I wonder how he’ll describe my aging face and hands. A vain thought but I don’t know how to reel it back in.

“I wanted to fix it. Her, I guess. He’s a lost cause,” I say, counting the sunspots dancing across my knuckles. “Maybe I shouldn’t think that way. I’m sure you’re aware I’m supposed to share the Gospel.”

“Oh, I’m aware,” he says, not condescendingly but respectfully, like he too knows what it’s like to hold somebody’s soul in his hands.

“I feel like a failure. I wanted to get to know her and change her mind, not for my sake but for hers. For Glenn’s. They’re the type of people that live on a merry-go-round. I was that type of person too. But now I want off.”

“And you’re disappointed they won’t follow you?” It gut punches me because it’s true. Here we are trying to map out the best course of action for the stage I cancer inside of my nonexistent breast, and instead, Dr. Cohen is stating the obvious I’ve been shoving hard in the back closet of my mind.

Selfishly, I’m just pissed off about the whole thing.

“I mean, maybe on some level. It’s not easy you know. People look at you like you’re a freak when you start following Jesus. You’re totally different than you used to be, and somehow, this is an evil thing. And I know why. It makes them consider that maybe they don’t have it all figured out. That maybe I’m onto something. Or maybe they’re just scared that I’ll drag them along into a life of sobriety and knee pain from all the praying.” It wasn’t hard to determine which camp Glenn was in. “But that’s not it at all. I’m just trying to show them the danger in believing in yourself and yourself alone. It’s a house of cards.”

Dr. Cohen nods his head, sandwiched between his two families. “‘If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.’ I believe that’s in Matthew.”

“You know the New Testament?”

“I’m somewhat familiar. I enjoy reading. A lot. And I think your Jesus was fairly wise.” It stabs at my heart to hear the “your.” I want to replace it with “our” because that’s the only way to look at Christ. But I think of what Dr. Cohen just said.

“It’s time to dust off my feet?”

“In this case, I’d say it’s long overdue.”