Read Online Mirrors by Karl C Klontz - Free Book Online Page B

class thereafter. When I tried to drop out of the course, he called me to his office.
    “I won’t sign it,” he announced, waving the drop form.
    “Why not?”
    “Because, you need to face your fear, and I’ll help you do it.”
    “Which fear?” I asked.
    He smiled. “You have more than one?”
    “Look, I want to drop the class because I need credits elsewhere to apply to medical school.”
    “Anton Chekhov and W. Somerset Maugham became doctors, but they found time for literature. Can’t you?”
    “Fine, give me hell,” I said. I left his office empty-handed.
    In class, he continued to call on me to read, although he did so with a different tack: He assigned only a few lines each time and praised me after I finished reading them, not in a way that made me feel like a teacher’s pet, but with a crisp “Yup” or “Great.” Slowly,
painfully
, the burden eased but not entirely.
    “Congratulations, you stuck it out,” he told me after the course ended.
    I thanked him.
    We met periodically thereafter in his book-lined office. During one visit, he told me we shared an experience.
    “Which?” I asked.
    “My father left me, too. That’s when I turned to books. I found refuge in them.”
    At graduation ceremonies, I introduced him to my mother. It was the last time I saw him, but in the years that followed, we kept in touch through Christmas cards.
    I greeted him now on the phone.
    “Are you calling from a conference?” he asked. “I hear voices in the background.”
    “I’m at an airport.”
    I told him about the outbreak and my CDC affiliation.
    “Missives?” he asked.
    I read each aloud.
    “Yes,” he said, “I think I know their source, but let me check something first. May I call you back?”
    “Will five minutes do?” I asked.
    “
Five minutes
?”
    I told him I had always wanted to see what it’d feel like to assign a professor a deadline.

    With the three-hour time change between coasts, it was 10 p.m. when I arrived home. I found Eve in the bedroom unfolding a Batik maternity dress she purchased six months earlier in Indonesia shortly after learning she was pregnant. She traveled to Indonesia after quitting her job at
Qantas
to volunteer at a shelter for battered women, a cause she held dear. With plans to move to the U.S. after that to prepare for marriage, she felt it was her last available window to volunteer.
    She set the dress down as I walked into the room.
    “Did they feed you?” she asked as we hugged.
    “Nothing,” I replied.
    She shook her head. “They treat people like cattle now. How about we go out for a bite?”
    We stepped into a hot, heavy night. Beads formed across Eve’s forehead as we walked, and we stopped periodically to allow her to catch her breath. Eventually, we came to a small grill, and she sighed with relief in the cool air.
    “Last night was a bear,” she said. “The baby kept poking me in the ribs with its feet.”
    “Did you nap today?”
    “Briefly … until the doctor called.”
    I sat straighter. “What did he say?”
    She dabbed her mouth, her large brown eyes peering over the napkin. “He wanted to schedule a Caesarian-section so a surgeon could biopsy the breast mass at delivery.”
    “Great idea.”
    She frowned. “You know how I feel about Caesarians. I told him I wanted to deliver naturally.”
    “What did he say?”
    “He relented, but reluctantly. He didn’t want to delay the biopsy.”
    “Nor do I.”
    She took my hand. “Step-by-step, Jason.”
    When it came to health care, Eve was less main stream than I. After learning she harbored the
BRAC1
gene that placed her at increased risk for breast and ovarian cancer, she turned to Ayurvedic medicine, Buddhism, and Zen philosophy. She began meditating regularly.
    “There’s more travel ahead,” I warned her. While riding home from the airport, Bird called to insist I go to Ecuador with Muñoz.
    “Yes, I heard. Randy Flagstaff dropped by today.” She reached into her purse and