Losses

Mike’s jump into the unknowns of medical school in some ways was not unlike parachuting from airplanes into different countries while in the Army.  He had no illusions this new experience would in any way resemble the camaraderie he’d experienced with the international NATO medical unit in Europe with Yves, and Joachim.  He kept in contact with them by mail and learned that Joachim was specializing in surgery and Yves was planning on a career in psychology.  They were happy for him and the choices he was making.  However, they were also concerned about America’s developing involvement in Asia.

One kind of camaraderie at the medical school he hadn’t anticipated was the friendly informality he was experiencing from one of the medical school professors, Inge Schulz.

“We’re all adults here.  Even though I am a few years older than you,” she said when she invited him for a drink at one of the Seattle watering holes with a sunset view over Puget Sound, after a particularly difficult week of labs and clinicals.

“Just look around you, the male professors see women as students to no one’s shock or amazement.  That’s very European, and I suppose typical in most parts of the world even here in the US.”

Inge was fascinated by Mike’s military experiences, where he’d used his skills as a medic to aid civilians in disaster areas.  She too had always wanted to make a parachute jump and was considering it during her stay in Seattle.  She seemed to know and was concerned about the fact the Army was still very interested in Mike.

“What will you do, if the Army calls you up to serve another two years, but as a doctor?  They are asking the medical school to identify graduating doctors who would be suitable to be inducted into the active military.  These new doctors would be sent to bases all over the US, but also abroad wherever the US has military personnel.  That wouldn’t be a bad way to complete an internship or a residency, but there are more and more people being sent to this little country in Asia, Vietnam, where American soldiers are taking more of an active part in the conflict.”

Mike considered himself as much a patriot as anyone, but he’d done with his enlistment and was embarking on a new phase of his life.

“How about some advice, Frau Doktor, as to what specialty would be less interesting to the military?” He hoped to pick her brain, but still not commit himself to a course of action that might not be in his long-term interest.

“Gynecology is not of particular interest currently to the Army.  Especially, I can imagine, if they will need someone to commit meatball surgery in a war zone.  Nor is pediatrics, I’m sure. My area of General Practice might be of interest to you in any event, but not as sexy for the Army as, say surgery or orthopedics.  Unless, of course, you really want to put on the uniform again.  You would look nice, I think, with captain’s bars and all your other medals and patches.  I’ll bet that recruiter, what’s his name, who’s keeps calling you, is drooling right now.”

Mike laughed and shrugged.  “Let him drool.  I’ll be damned if I’m going back in.”

Just as Inge found Mike’s story and exploits fascinating, Mike was intrigued by Inge’s story of immigration to America and becoming a doctor.

“As you probably know, after the war there wasn’t much left of anything in Europe.  Our cities were destroyed, and we were under occupation by the four powers.  My father was a good German in the best sense.  He didn’t join the Nazis and he did believe in the innate goodness of our people, plus he wanted to serve the medical needs which were great in Germany after the war.  There was a brain drain of mostly German scientists and mathematicians.  My father resisted joining in the mass exodus.  But he wanted a better life for his family, so in 1950 with my older brother, sister, mother, and me in tow, he accepted a position in a hospital in Connecticut just outside New York City.  I was a teenager and spent one year in the local high school with my very tortured English.  However, I was a good pupil with excellent grades and gained admittance to university with no difficulty.  Our education system in Germany, even with the destruction, was, how shall I say, far superior to what I found in my high school in Connecticut.  And I really didn’t have time for all the social life required to be popular.  Not if I wanted good grades and a future profession.  I come from a family of physicians.  My father was chief of staff at the local hospital and my mother trained as a doctor but practiced seldom after she started a family.  My brother is a surgeon, and my sister is an allergist.”

“It’s in your blood, isn’t it?”  Mike didn’t quite yet know what to call her, but it seemed a bit foolish to maintain the formality of titles, ‘professor’, or ‘doctor’, so for the time being he avoided her name.  She didn’t avoid using his name, however, nor touching him.  And it wasn’t just clinical.

“As you know, Mike, since you were in Germany, our system, which is slowly changing, has traditionally been very elitist and conservative.  It certainly was and is not as egalitarian as the system here where everybody has an opportunity to excel.  After the fourth grade in Germany, it was established that I probably had the genetic predisposition and the native intelligence to attend university.  Imagine that! At ten years old.”

“Yes, the German Gymnasium system, like the French Lycée, is a well-known source of producing high achievers.”   Mike had heard on several occasions from both Joachim and Yves how great their respective German and French educational systems were in comparison to the American system designed to integrate the immigrants.  If kids were educated in the American system, they had much more social development, Yves once said, because it was more important they fit into the famous American way of life.

“Just look at your sports in school and your clubs and activities that work to get people to think alike.”

“You seem to know all about our system, Yves.” Mike used to be offended by the overt superiority of the Europeans when comparing themselves to the Americans.  Later, he learned to understand that part of it was a disappointment in the Americans for being so casual about their educational and professional choices.  They were, after all, the leaders of the free world and everyone looked towards them.

“Well, I was still very popular in Connecticut, and I still have friends from that time”, Inge continued.

“Enough of this and me.  Listen Mike, I would like to invite you to crew on my sailboat next weekend.  Bring your books along and we can maybe catch some wind up in the San Juans.  I know a quiet harbour of an island, it’s called Sucia, which means ‘dirty’ in Spanish.  I’ll explain why later.  We can drop anchor there and put out the crab pots while we watch the moon climb into the night sky.  How about it?”

Mike was a little nervous about the whole idea of fraternizing with the professional staff.  It couldn’t be much different from the rules the Army had concerning officers and enlisted.  But he hadn’t done much sailing or boating of any kind since his Sea Scout days on the Columbia River, and the thought of getting outside in the beautiful area he’d heard so much about, with a very attractive woman, was reason enough to accept the offer.

Crewing on Inge’s twenty-eight sloop rigged, fibreglass-hulled sailboat meant simply casting off the bow and stern lines when they pushed off from the marina in the Ballard section of Seattle.  It was fall and there was some expectation of finding wind to sail by, instead of relying on the motor as one was forced to do during the summer months.  Inge was quite skilled at handling the lines, sheets and tiller and bringing him up to date on the commands that would propel the sailboat forward to their island destination.

“Sucia is the Spanish word for ‘dirty’.  But in the sense of ‘foul’ as in ‘foul weather’.  The San Juans were explored and named by the Spaniards who were looking north from California for areas to colonize.  The weather reports are good for most of the weekend.  Did you bring the wine?”  Mike noticed for the first time Inge’s high cheekbones and the strength of her muscular arms and legs.  Her light tan, he had noticed before, could be explained by her almost weekly forays onto the water, whether under cloudy or sunny skies.  The anchorage at Sucia Island in the San Juans was just as Inge had described it.  Mike wondered how many students she had brought up here before.  But it was none of his business.  Besides, he wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship.  As if reading his mind, she started to tell him about her previous marriage.

“Drop the anchor there, will you Mike, after I drop the sail and I’ll start the motor to back it up.  Afterwards, we’ll bait and drop the crab pots into the water and see what comes to call.  I’ll start the snacks and you can open the wine, a Chardonnay.”

It can’t be all bad being with an older, more experienced woman, who also happens to be my advisor and professor, he thought to himself as he opened the chilled bottle of wine and looked around for cups.  His uneasiness about the situation wouldn’t quite let him off the hook to completely relax and enjoy the experience.  ‘Damn my lack of confidence’, he thought to himself.

“I married David after college, and he knew of my plans to go to medical school.  He was seven years older, and I should have put it in writing, I suppose.  We had discussed it with my parents and his as well.  But his mother was convinced that he would be too old to father children if we waited to have them until I finished med school.  He was a stockbroker, one of the men in the gray flannel suits they told us about in college.   He was really looking for a domestic brood mare.  His mother got to him finally, about grandchildren.  And she would not be denied.  He has four children now and is firmly ensconced in the suburbs and the country club.”

The rise of the full, yellow harvest moon which cast its reflection on the still water, while expanding the silhouettes of old-growth fir on the dark shape of the island had the effect on him of an accelerated heartbeat.  The stillness over the water, only occasionally broken by the lingering sounds of loons calling to each other, as well as voices and music from neighbouring boats etched its serenity on his very soul.  Mike had never been with a woman on a rocking sailboat at anchor after a meal of fresh-caught crab and wine.  Inge’s carnality felt, to him, as though the stitches around her inner being she had so skillfully placed were slowly coming apart, drifting away, and opening up to the possibility of new wounds.  It seemed to him She had gone into herself, denied herself, lost confidence in herself even after her loss of David.  She had made whimpering animal noises in her sleep as the boat rocked with the swelling currents and tides.  And Mike wondered in his own half-sleep what part of her former life in this country, or her homeland was still embedded in the amber of her memory, never to be fully liberated.

The next day they went ashore and explored Sucia, the island the Spanish explorers had discovered and named, and when they returned to the boat, he got into his books.  He refused to ask for help and she didn’t offer.  The weather turned foul the next day, as befit the Spanish name, with wind gusts and a lot of rain, and they had to use the motor most of the way back.  Mike hummed one of his favorite songs by the Mamas and the Papas, Monday, Monday which seemed to sum up his immediate feelings about going back to the tedium of classes after such an idyllic weekend afloat in a beautiful setting.

Weeks flew by and became months and the Christmas break was upon him.  He wondered if he should invite Inge to his family festivities for the holidays.

“Thank you, Mike, but I must visit my parents in Connecticut.  My brother and sister will be home as well.  We will drive to Vermont to ski for a while.  And then I must prepare for my winter classes.  I would invite you as well, but, you know how awkward those things can be.  We’re not undergraduates anymore.  That would signal something to my family and to yours that neither one of us wants.”

Mike knew she was right and really only asked out of a sense of duty.  He didn’t want to answer a lot of questions his mother would have, and he could imagine the same scenario for Inge in Connecticut.  Besides, he was questioning whether any long-term relationship would probably work out.  He would always be the junior partner and he wouldn’t know how to handle that for the long haul.

During the course of the year, they met for romantic dinners when their schedules permitted it. Mike felt he was gliding into a relationship despite both their disinclination as well as the difference in their ages and status.  Some things she said when they were together intimately hinted at the feelings she was developing for him.  But in the fall of his second year, during an evening together, she broke the news to him that she had developed a malignant growth on one of her ovaries.

“When were you going to let me in on this, Inge?  Didn’t you feel you could share this with me?”

Inge started to cry.

“You have to understand, Mike, I view this quite clinically, even though it concerns my own body.  And I know by the time they get through carving me up and all the things that will happen to me suddenly and almost overnight, things will not be the same with me at all.  And I do realize and understand your hints at being together correctly, ours would not be the ideal kind of relationship you or your family or even mine would expect.  Please understand I want to be alone with this.”

Mike tried not to let the nightly news of the conflict in Vietnam overshadow his feelings of Inge’s news and her loss to him.  But the horrible images of conflict in the small Asian country, with nightly casualty losses and especially the news of the huge number of civilian lives lost in the village of Mỹ Lai on 16^th March 1968, made him poignantly aware of the overriding probability of his own impending loss of freedom and his destiny.