Chapter Forty
CHAPTER FORTY
Dr. Patel
“Beena? Beena, darling? Time to wake up, sleepyhead.”
“Oh.” I open my eyes and there’s Vikram, already up and dressed. I am back in the living world.
“What would you like for breakfast? I’ll make it for you before I go.”
“Just tea and toast, please.”
“With ghee and lemon curd?”
“Yes, that would be lovely.”
When he leaves our bedroom, I try to bring back the strange dream I just had, but the details are leaving quickly.
I reach over to Vikram’s night table for the cover of the DVD we watched last night.
“ Monster’s Ball ,” it says. “Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Heath Ledger.” Before Vikram started the film, he said the actor who played the tragic son died before he was thirty from an accidental overdose of prescription medicines.
I was struck by his resemblance to Corby Ledbetter.
Perhaps that’s why I dreamed about Corby.
Of course he’d be on my mind. I learned just yesterday that he died in prison, a victim of the coronavirus.
When I join Vikram at the breakfast table, I tell him about my odd dream. “I was dead, but I was alive, advising the newly arrived in the afterworld about reincarnation.” His smile says he is more amused than intrigued. He goes over to the counter to check on my toast.
I’m still pondering the dream and my former patient’s appearance in it.
Corby was one of the first inmates at Yates to succumb to the coronavirus.
“Fagie Millman told me yesterday there have been four more deaths at the prison since then,” I tell Vikram.
“The men there live in such close proximity that, until the vaccines they’re developing become available, they’re terribly vulnerable. ”
“As we all are,” Vikram says. He looks at the clock, eats his last spoonful of egg, then stands and says he’d better get going.
His university students are all on Zoom now, but he still likes to go to his office.
He kisses my forehead and says he’ll return the DVD to the library and take out another on his way to work. “Any requests?” he asks.
“These are such sad times. Maybe a comedy.”
“I’ll look for one,” he says. “Wear your mask if you’re going out. Don’t forget.”
After I hear him drive off, I pour myself another cup of tea and go to the back window.
One of my favorite things about our house is the view from here—the way our yard slopes down to the tall grass and then to the marsh where all manner of animals and birds gather.
Last year when our grandson Rajesh came to stay with us, it was springtime.
He scooped up tadpoles from the water and caught frogs.
It took some time to convince him that they are the same—that one becomes the other.
A large bird in flight catches my eye. Ah, a great blue heron—a male, I think, perhaps the father of the family we watched last year.
He’s carrying a stick in his bill, probably preparing a nest for his mate and their young that, later in the season, will hatch, be fed and defended against predators, then fledge and fly away.
Vikram likes to observe these creatures’ habits with his binoculars.
Last season, he saw one of the chicks fall from the nest, presumably to its death.
The others, parent and siblings, were focused on feeding.
Vikram says he was the only one who seemed to notice.
Well, enough bird-watching for now. Time for me to get dressed and ready for my nine o’clock Zoom appointment, then put on my mask and go out into the world.