Talk Story episode 29

Aloha faithful readers! Brief update announcement: We are getting toward launch day for this TALK STORY book, so I’m going to add on Friday chapter postings to speed things along. I hope that’s OK with you! And just so you know, I’m already planning #8 in this series. CHICKEN SKIN! You can check out the preorder and description on my website, HERE. Per my practice, I will be posting chapters to the new book here for you to follow along…but more frequently as I’m feeling inspired by a fun new “save the monk seal” plot based on some recent headline news events on in Hawaii.

Episode 29:

The orthopedist’s office in Kahului was a modern building in a business park that always smelled of antiseptic; it was done in neutral colors that medical facilities everywhere seemed to have agreed upon.

Dr. Yamashiro had been Aunt Fae’s orthopedist for the duration of the cast and had, over that time, developed the same slightly bemused respect for her that most people developed. Aunt Fae was a patient who had been doing what she was supposed to do, as much as she felt like doing it—and was well ahead of schedule.

The X-ray was clean.

Her bone density was good.

The fracture had resolved itself in the tidy, competent manner of someone who had decided that a broken foot was a temporary state and was not willing to extend it even one day.

“Excellent progress,” Dr. Yamashiro said. “No complications.”

“Of course not.” Aunt Fae beamed.

The nurse removed the cast with an electric saw as Aunt Fae and I watched; when it came off she gazed at the foot for a long moment. Paler than the other one, the skin had the mushroom-like quality that comes from six weeks under fiberglass; her ankle showed evidence of the swelling that had been there when she’d come in.

She flexed her toes.

“Good,” she said. “Glad to put this little adventure behind me.”

Auntie had brought flip-flops—“rubbah slippahs” as the locals called them—in her bag. She slid them on and walked out of the building with the long-legged stride of a woman who had been patient with a gimp foot for six weeks; and now was done.

That was the stride that I associated with her walking the beach in the early morning in Maine, before anyone else was up. A stride that said she was herself again, fully.

I drove us home.

We didn’t talk about what came next in terms of living arrangements, though I’d moved back in from Keone’s to “keep an eye on her” while the foot was in the cast. We drove the back road in the evening with the windows down and the smell of the ocean and the wind on the barren hills, coming and going around fifty-nine or so curves. Aunt Fae had her elbow out the window; the posture of a New England woman who had discovered a new level of contentment.

“Well,” she said, about fifteen minutes from home, as she gazed at the ocean.

“Well, indeed,” I said.

“I suppose you’ll be making some changes.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Not right away.”