Safe Harbor

7 - Kathleen-2

The city was a spattering of gray and pastel houses evenly distributed along Main Road like a cloud data diagram.

You don’t find the Safe Harbor town center, it finds you.

First came a small, Mom-and-Pop linear mall, the closed Giant Tiger store, the gas station, then a poor excuse for a municipal library, the church and, finally, the streamlined monstrosity of City Hall.

The first City Hall building had been a serviceable three-story bricked house. It had been teared down and rebuilt in a grandiose concrete affair, is nautical curves at odds with the rest of the architecture, with a concert hall to boost. (What the architect had been smoking, I didn’t want to know.) That remodeling had had something to do with the old canning factory construction, a glorious time of high hopes and tax breaks.

The grandiose architecture fitted well with the ambitious, sepulcher-white shopping mall erected in the same period.

Sitting on its own gray parking lot opposite City Hall, the Safe Harbor Mall soared like a white sailboat, the nose pointed toward the distant sea, over a line of glassy revolving doors. The floors already harbored upscale coffee shops, clothing outlets, one hardware shop selling fishing and hunting gear, sports outlets, an optician, a pharmacy and… a state-of-the-art clinic manned by a councilor’s relative.

Maeve didn’t know any of the backstory, but she shared my opinion of the work.

“Ugh,” she groaned. “Consumer’s paradise…”

Yes, the project reeked with opportunity and ambition, too much ambition for a small fishing town. That had been Bryan’s opinion, too, except he had used stronger words (and his huge fists on the kitchen table). The mall’s blueprints had just been released then, but the forest around the site had already been cut down by the condo promoter eager to build new neighborhoods “with a view.”

Looking to the north, I could see the white cliff of the old sand pit (minus the sand) where a series of round concrete enclosures, like big pills, announced the Prodigal Fish Farms.

My destination was a quieter residential street, not far from the concrete curve of the City hall. The mature trees lining Mimosa Street told of an older neighborhood, as did the primary school. A small hardware store sat at the intersection of Main Street, its doors and windows boarded over. It had been unable to compete with the brand-name outlet in the cozy mall.

The Dr. Salim’s Family Clinic had been set in a red-bricked cottage with a wide front porch and wicker chairs. When the weather was fair, patients would sit and talk outside while waiting to be seen by the doctor.

The clinic would have gotten more roomy offices in the mall, but the astronomic rent requested by the current mayor’s brother had convinced the new arrival to set up shop in his own cottage. I ran up the steps to the front porch and rang the door. The door was painted in white, with a half-circle transom overhead. A loud buzzing let me in.

It was a slow day, with only one young harried-faced mother bouncing a toddler on her knee to calm him down. Her eyes rounded when she saw Stan following me

Stanley had some genes from his giant dad, my uncle Peter, a younger brother of my husband’s dad Oscar Marchand. So his presence cast a powerful impression, especially with our latest visitor in his arms.

My dear Bryan had inherited from those family genes too, as the long and wide bed in my room could attest. I could have changed the bed with the insurance money, but had decided against. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine he was still sleeping besides me. (But not snoring.)

The waiting room had been a small living room, floorboards sanded and waxed. Large, paneled double doors separated this area from the examination rooms (two rooms, one encroaching on the corridor kitchen). In the angle of the wall near the front door sat a small, pulpit-like desk, with a large chair.

The doctor’s assistant-c*m-receptionist lifted her eyes.

“Hey, Kathleen.”

Sasha has been a front-line worker in the pandemic, working impossible hours before being casually dismissed when the dreaded virus whittle down. She had been later hired by the doctor, who needed a competent nurse. Her warm and outgoing personality brought us soon on a first-name basis.

“Hey, Sasha. Sorry to barge in like this.”

I explained the injury. Before I finished pronouncing “poisoning,” Sasha punched her intercom box.

“Doc, we’ve got a jell’fish sting,” she said with her peculiar sense of concision.

By reflex, I patted my hair down. There was no mirror, but I knew how loose and wild my hair usually looked. If I had planned to visit the clinic today, I would have washed, brushed and tied them up. I counted only three seconds before unequal steps sounded from the other side of the door.

The door opened and a man with warm brown eyes and a full head of black hair speckled with gray walked in. When he saw me, his perfect, white teeth shone amidst his short beard. The doctor was a bit shorter than me and slim, but his wiry arms were strong from handling patients in the week and pulling fish lines in the weekend. We knew each other since more than thirty years, having met at the same high school where Bryan studied.

Stan was already moving toward him.

The doctor cast an apologetic look to the lone patient waiting, then he ushered us through the doors. I heard Sasha’s quiet voice talking to the mother.

That part must have been a large living room. A curtain on a circular rod separated two cubicles. He swapped aside one curtain. Stan helped Maeve lie down, the white paper crinkling under the slight pressure of her weight. She did her best no to cry out, but she winced so hard that lines fanned her smooth temples.

My hulking cousin stood back. He fidgeted, his eyes roaming the shiny instruments, the spotlights and other medicine things. On sea, Stan was a decisive man. Here, he looked like the proverbial elephant in a porcelain shop. I took pity on him and led him back to the waiting room.

Behind me, Maeve was answering the doctor’s questions in a slurred voice. The jellyfish venom, even with most nematocysts removed, was affecting her.

When I got back, the doctor was swabbing the knee with antiseptic. He prepped the dose in no time and injected in the same spot. I lowered the backpack in a corner so Maeve would find it.

She was in good hands. As I turned toward the door, I heard her voice, still groggy from the toxins.

“Why did you leave me, Rowan?”

She must have been hallucinating, but the sheer despair in her voice clinched my nerves. To elicit such a longing, this Rowan must have been one mean son-of-a-b***h.