Chapter Three
Nothing bends time like hard physical work.
It feels like way longer than four days ago that I packed everything I’d need for camp, took my valuables over to Liz’s, and gave my neighbor the keys to pass on to my subletter, an Australian mountain biker and TikTok star named Br!an.
My connection to the apartment felt so breakable despite my efforts to make it sturdy.
My art and furniture was scavenged from Buy Nothing groups on Facebook—nothing I would’ve chosen for the way it made me feel; nothing I saw and loved and had to have.
I hate that I could leave it behind and not feel sad.
The thing about having a con artist for a parent is that every con comes to an end.
If it succeeds, you take the money and run.
If it fails, you move on, hoping to find easier marks and evade consequences.
Whether we were broke or flush with dirty cash that didn’t last, Mom and Dad and I moved constantly.
I saw medicine as a way to stop packing my bags with an hour’s notice.
It was the opposite of everything I knew: honorable money in a steady supply and a profession whose first commandment was not to hurt other people.
If I didn’t feel called to it the way my classmates with comfortable childhoods did, I could live with that.
Wanting money is only embarrassing to people who already have enough.
The calling came little by little, sneaking up on me until one day I realized that every time I told a patient I would take good care of them, I was doing it because I wanted to. Because I meant it. Medicine tethered me to something deep and steady and good in a way I’ve never felt before or since.
I didn’t want to come back to this unanchored life, closing the door to an apartment that could belong to anyone, living in a tent I borrowed from Liz, whose orbit drifts further from mine every day. But it found me anyway, like a shadow at my feet, impossible to outrun.
At least the work keeps me busy. A morning of manual labor at camp is the equivalent of a day at any other job.
Afternoons scouting nearby rapids with McHuge feel like another whole day, me in a generic solo canoe and McHuge paddling his custom boat with Babe the dog chilling in the front seat.
Eating dinner and staring exhausted into the campfire is at least a half day.
We’re still behind schedule because Tobin can’t be here, but sometimes I have hope we’ll be ready for launch on Monday.
The best thing about this job is that today is Friday—payday.
Some employers play games, withholding the first check if you haven’t worked a full pay period.
McHuge paid me last night, early, for Tuesday through Thursday plus a small but meaningful signing bonus.
He made a choking sound— hrgack! —when I buried my face in the check to inhale the scent of solvency.
I didn’t care if he saw me being weird. I told him not to make me manage his airway, then took a solo paddle out to the middle of the river, one of two places to find a cell signal here, to electronically deposit the money.
For the first time in months, the volume on my financial crisis lowered from a full-on air raid siren to a manageable background hum of debt. I made my student loan payment in advance . I set up automatic rent checks to my landlord. I did budget math and didn’t have to go for a run afterward.
Emotion-wise, I haven’t needed to run at all since I got to base camp.
It’s been too long since I came out to the wilderness.
Too many years of putting my head down and pulling the plow of my life back and forth, back and forth over the same ground.
I let myself forget what it’s like to have a sense of flow, like the river.
That, and the daily level of physical exertion is enough to tamp my feelings down to a barely glowing ember.
I’m out for a morning run anyway, because the second place to get cell service is a fallen tree a couple of kilometers closer to the highway.
It comes in handy when I want to send my daily batch of texts to Liz without asking McHuge to help me unrack a boat.
Or worse, interrupting his “me time”: morning plunges in the river I highly, highly suspect are done in the nude, based on the way we both screamed when I accidentally spied either an extremely formfitting white bathing suit or McHuge’s pale butt cheeks flashing above the water on Wednesday morning.
It’s a very good ass. Unfortunately. High, round, with the sun sort of sparkling off rivulets of water. Which makes it all the more important for me to be far, far away.
At the fallen tree, I pull out my phone, freshly charged with the solar battery. The weak signal eats a lot of juice.
5:41
Good morning my loves! Three days old today! Sending you good vibes from beautiful Love Boat HQ, wish you were here
5:41
I hope you’re sleeping instead of replying to texts
5:42
You never have to answer, btw! I’ll text every day and you can reply when you have a minute and an extra hand. So I guess I’ll hear from you when Jess is hitting puberty
I met baby Jess on Tuesday. McHuge had to pick me up from the apartment because Tobin’s truck was still at camp. We made a detour to Grey Tusk General—an hour and a half we couldn’t really afford, given how much work there is—to visit the new family.
McHuge handed Tobin some healthy prepared meals and nonlatex balloons, then gave me side-eye when I slipped Liz a six-pack of tiny bottles of champagne.
I stand by my choice. I took care of countless new parents at the hospital, plus I’ve delivered a lot of takeout to people with bad hair wearing bathrobes covered in spit-up.
They’re relieved to get the meals, but it’s the booze that makes tears of gratitude well up in their purple-shadowed eyes.
Holding my best friend’s baby with her new smell and her squeaky little cry was the closest I’ve come to crying myself in I don’t know how long.
Despite how exhausted they looked, Liz and Tobin seemed somehow forged into a single Borg consciousness by this experience.
Watching them together reinforced the rightness of what I’m doing.
If I’m not the person Liz needs, then I’ll give her the person who is.
It’s what a sister would do. I think. As we were leaving, Liz’s actual sister, Amber, arrived with an arsenal of snap containers filled with precut fruit and vegetables and a liter of chocolate milk nestled in a bucket of ice.
“Trust me,” Amber said. “It’s what you need, even if you don’t know it yet. ”
Since I’ve known Liz, she’s never been as close to Amber as we’ve been to each other. But now Amber and Liz are both parents, members of a club I can’t see myself joining. I’m not jealous, exactly. I’m just aware we’re entering a period of friendship adjustment, and I’m determined to adjust.
I’ve done it before, following Liz to Grey Tusk after a couple of years of long distance, when I was training in Vancouver and she was here.
She’s worth the effort. She gets me. I may have a hot temper and keep slightly obsessive track of who owes what to whom, but she loves me anyway because I’m her best, most loyal advocate, and she’s mine.
I’ve always treasured her the way she is; she doesn’t push me to change.
Except she did, that day with the crib. You need something.
My brain turns her words over as I shuffle in place, light brown silt collecting on my damp calves.
5:46
Okay, better get going. The artisanal knots for the hand-lettered trail markers aren’t going to tie themselves, lol. Ttyl
I know Liz would text me back if she could. I’ve worked in labor and delivery; I’ve seen how destroyed first-time parents are in the first few days.
I’d feel better if I heard from her, though.
If, after my three texts, there were three replies.
I get nervous without hard evidence that people care as much as I do.
That’s not just a me thing, either; the internet is rife with memes of cats spooking themselves over nothing and destroying entire rooms, captioned “when my friend leaves me on read.”
But last year I left town for barely twelve weeks, and when I came back Liz had made all new friends. When I move back to Pendleton three months from now, will she be going for chai lattes with all the yoga moms? Will there be room for me at that table?
I don’t know. All I can do is run to the tree every day and hope she texts me back sometime. Until then, I have work to do.
Technically, I’m not avoiding McHuge by doing my postrun stretch in the parking lot. I can hear him chopping the wood our chef, Jasvinder, requested for his pizza oven. When the axe is swinging, it’s safer to stay clear , I tell myself.
I’m working on my hamstrings when a black Escalade rolls up behind the Mystery Machine. A fiftysomething woman with silver-blond hair slides out of the driver’s seat and hooks her oversize sunglasses on the neckline of her athleisure top.
Sharon Keller-Yakub is the CEO-in-waiting of Keller Outdoor Epiphanies, an adventure tourism conglomerate in Grey Tusk.
She’s also my ex’s aunt. It figures I’d run into her when my hair is sweaty and my face matches the bright raspberry shade of her yoga pants.
McHuge told me Sharon was bankrolling the Love Boat, but I thought she was a silent partner, as opposed to one who turned up unexpectedly at 6:23 A.M.
“Hi, Sharon. You’re up with the sun.”
“I keep telling you, Stellar, it’s Aunt Sharon. Is McHuge around?” She offers me a drink tray with three tall go-cups. “Coffee?”
Sharon’s a generally awesome person, but something in the set of her shoulders is making me nervous. And she’s here so damn early . There are a million half-done projects around camp she can’t help but see.
“No, thanks. Love it, but haven’t been able to drink it since I burned a hole in my stomach lining in residency. That’s nice of you, though.”