“Very, very bad luck,” he said. “I can give you penicillin for the strep, but
there’s not much I can do for the mono. You’ll have to wait it out. Still, once
we’ve cleared out the strep, you should feel better.”
The doctor asked a nurse to bring some penicillin. “We should start you on
the antibiotics right away,” he said. I held the pills in my palm and was
reminded of that afternoon when Charles had given me ibuprofen. I thought
of Mother, and of the many times she’d told me that antibiotics poison the
body, that they cause infertility and birth defects. That the spirit of the Lord
cannot dwell in an unclean vessel, and that no vessel is clean when it forsakes
God and relies on man. Or maybe Dad had said that last part.
I swallowed the pills. Perhaps it was desperation because I felt so poorly,
but I think the reason was more mundane: curiosity. There I was, in the heart
of the Medical Establishment, and I wanted to see, at long last, what it was I
had always been afraid of. Would my eyes bleed? My tongue fall out? Surely
something awful would happen. I needed to know what.
I returned to my apartment and called Mother. I thought confessing would
alleviate my guilt. I told her I’d seen a doctor, and that I had strep and mono.
“I’m taking penicillin,” I said. “I just wanted you to know.”
She began talking rapidly but I didn’t hear much of it, I was so tired. When
she seemed to be winding down, I said “I love you” and hung up.
Two days later a package arrived, express from Idaho. Inside were six
bottles of tincture, two vials of essential oil, and a bag of white clay. I
recognized the formulas—the oils and tinctures were to fortify the liver and
kidneys, and the clay was a foot soak to draw toxins. There was a note from
Mother: These herbs will flush the antibiotics from your system. Please use
them for as long as you insist on taking the drugs. Love you.
I leaned back into my pillow and fell asleep almost instantly, but before I
did I laughed out loud. She hadn’t sent any remedies for the strep or the
mono. Only for the penicillin.
I awoke the next morning to my phone ringing. It was Audrey.
“There’s been an accident,” she said.
Her words transported me to another moment, to the last time I’d answered
a phone and heard those words instead of a greeting. I thought of that day,
and of what Mother had said next. I hoped Audrey was reading from a
different script.