medicine {h.s.}

CHAPTER TWO

The house that I grew up in is the house that I live in now.

I come from a family of "holics." My father was an alcoholic who left before I was born. As a child, I used to ask for his name. I wanted to know who my father was. The only answer I ever got was: "a fucking asshole" so, eventually, I stopped fucking asking. From a young age, I was good at following directions.

My mother was a workaholic. She was a psychologist who worked out of the Seattle Medical Center psych department. To a T, my mother fit the stereotype of a psychologist who did not know how to take their own advice. Habitually my mother exercised her notoriously consistent ability to choose horrible men. I was born in January, and her hysterectomy was in February. Hardly a month after I was born, she already realized the mistake she had made. (She couldn't undo me, but she could remove the risk for any future me's!) I used to wish that she had the hysterectomy in April; before I was even conceived. People typically know if kids are in their plan for life, or not. I like to think that my mother knew before she even conceived me that she didn't want kids. Abortion was around. I don't know why she didn't have one.

Childhood is not something that I remember fondly. Parts of it, I suppose I do. But, the majority of my time was spent alone in my room, reading books or playing with dolls while my babysitter sat in the kitchen and used our landline. She was from a rough part of town and her mother frequently forgot to pay the phone bill.

It was not like my mother cared for me. Her time was spent with patients. The time that she didn't spend with patients, she spent parading men through the front door of our house; to the point I thought it would be beneficial to all parties involved to install a revolving door. Vividly, I remember being five years old and sitting at the kitchen table. The babysitter had told me not to move. I don't remember where she went, but, like I said: I was good at following directions. So good, that I didn't move from my spot when my mother crashed through the door of our family house, lips attached sloppily to some man who was not my father—I later asked. (The question exasperated her so much that she drank some pill concoction and did not wake up until the next day.) Her shirt was off and they were on the couch. I couldn't tear my eyes away. I couldn't turn my ears off. After, she fell asleep. I still said nothing as the man got dressed. His sneaky hands snuck into her pant pocket. He took out her wallet and stole the cash there. He came into the kitchen, then. He tore through the place, eventually procuring a spoon that he tucked away in his own pocket. Only then did his eyes land on me. There was no panic in his eyes as he approached me. Without hesitation, his hands cupped under my armpits as he picked me up. Quietly he made his way up the stairs, looking around blindly for my room. Casually, he set me down on the bed and turned out the light.

I never saw him again.

And he was one of the good ones.

☤☤☤

"Oh, look," Ruth points a pastel pink painted fingernail to the entrance of the bar. "I think that's TJ."

My eyes follow along the same path as her point. Sure enough, there stands a tall man who could pass as the same one that I'd seen in the hospital cafeteria this afternoon. Though, after spending three hours curled over a bar—broken up by sporadic winning games of darts—I do not trust my judgment on someone I haven't officially met. "Introduce me," I spring up, the urge coming out of no where. I sway lightly on my feet as I clutch the edge of the bar to stablize myself.

"Me?"

"Who else?"

She shrugs her shoulders as she gets up. Like me, it takes her a minute to right herself. For each tequila slammer I did, she had one of vodka. I know that I can drink, but I was shocked to find that little, petite Ruth could keep up with me. The Fat Monk is one of the places I feel most at home in Seattle. Majorly, the patrons are employees of the hospital—owing their loyalty to the proximity. Right across the way, always open late, it makes for the perfect way to decompress after a shift. That's what my mother had always told me. Of course, there are regular patrons here, too. Sometimes, family members of the patients find themselves slung over the bar, drinking to another hopeless day—or celebrating good news. Sometimes, people just like the way that Hal in the kitchen can make a burger. They couldn't have all been hospital employees. This is where my mother picked up the majority of her slew of men.