Work Text:
Emergency centers thrive on systems ruthlessly followed. Not on spontaneity, as TV would have you believe. Gut feel and instinct don’t pop out of the blue, either—rather, they’re built on repetition and a five-second exception brought up in medical school that sticks to your subconscious until you need it for a life-or-death save. What calms chaos is precision. A single patient’s unit has been designed meticulously before any doctor starts practicing in it because even one out-of-place electrical cord could spell disaster during a code, where there are at least ten people crammed in that tiny room begging for Death to stall.
Such is the way my household operates as well. To flip an excerpt from the gospel of Luke, she believes that “she that is faithful with much is faithful also with little.” And so she has tended to our gardens, whatever form they may come in, with discipline and trust that carries over to me. One of us starts and the other finishes, so that we complete every task as a pair. So: I sweep, she brings the garbage out; she cooks, I wash; I wash, she dries; I do the laundry, I call her when it’s acting up and the door won’t close; she gets it to work, I bring the clothes outside for sunshine. I bring the groceries home and she puts them away in Tetris fashion. She defrosts the refrigerator and I say thank you however she wants me to.
Two weeks ago we decided to retire the refrigerator, whom we’ve fondly called “Referee”, due to its all-consuming power to calm the kids down when they think the world is ending and the truth is they just need some cheese and fruit. To my surprise, Baran asked if I wanted to do the defrosting with her. It was a “nothing” day, which we have very few of—the dogs asleep and the kids at Baran’s sister’s house. We were just counting down the hours until sunset. I said okay.
The first order of business is taking down the magnets (and the knickknacks they keep upright). Funny magnets from theme parks and consolations from when we’d leave the kids home for medical conferences and missions—honorable mentions are New York, Kyoto, Jordan, and Benguet. Graduation photos: high school for Kamran, kindergarten for Isagani. Their smiles are deliciously huge. Kamran is showing off his post-braces teeth, a triumph for us all, as it was such a headache trying to get him to the orthodontist on time for thirty-six months straight; Isagani is the poster boy of what a diet rich in calcium and collagen will do for a healthy grin. A photo booth strip of us four (plus our pair of Teddy Grahams: Cocoa and Honey), commemorating the debut of my silvering hair. Baran will hold each one after I take it off, spend a few extra seconds stroking her thumb against the lamination. We’d like to take credit for our boys, beautiful as they are. But we were blessed with them first, before they were blessed with us. Which is a sentiment that we brush away when we open the door and sigh at each other because nothing pleases Kamran more than leaving an empty water bottle inside the drinks rack. I take it out and dump it in the sink. Baran slides out the ice tray—empty—and I nearly offer to fill it before remembering the goal of this chore. This “date”, my wife corrects. And so on.
We work to a playlist of The Best of Broadway, occasionally nibbling on whatever we find that is too young to be thrown away but isn’t worth putting back later. Walnuts, sea salted almonds, pistachios, pili, sultanas, dried cherries, crushed salt-and-vinegar chips. I devour half a bag of dried green mango and try not to make a face. Trail mix for dinner, basically. All the milk passes the sniff test. But we dump all the pre-made but half-consumed drinks and snacks: Kamran’s protein shake trial and error, the overnight oats that stayed a couple nights too long (my bad), Isagani’s strawberry-banana-almond smoothie abandoned and forgotten after an upset stomach.
Jonathan Larson is next in queue and I wonder if he would appreciate me measuring my life in expired sauce packets. I grab fistfuls of ketchup, garlic aioli, calamansi drizzle, vinegar, fish sauce, chili oil, yogurt sauce, salt-and-pepper packets. This is from a date; this is from a post-game dinner; this is from we were all sick with the flu and Postmates was our only chance of survival. I ask Baran to at least let me take a picture before throwing them all out. She humors me, then even offers to keep them all for Isagani’s “Flavors of the World” project.
The sun has gone down. Mind you, we’ve only managed to clear the side of the door.
Baran finds an opened bag of frozen barbari, one step ahead of me. We throw some in the toaster, push the timer to the highest setting, and let the machine work its magic. When we still worked at the same place she’d sense when I was a little restless (or more than my baseline) and point me toward the break room, where there would always be a little sandwich or cup of fruit with my name on it. It was the most attractive thing.
We rake through rainbows of produce. The two of us have expanded our vocabularies largely through vegetables. Lechugas, pipino, khyar, gojeh farangi. Baran has a rule of only buying bruised fruit. She has also taught me that oranges are for more than fighting colds. We’ve had them in chicken marinade—and what we cook puts Panda Express to shame. Made marmalade. Orange peel candy to suck on at work, or on long-distance trips. They’re also terrific for juggling practice. Early on in our relationship, we discovered our favorite way to practice for surgery back in school was to use oranges. We would buy one sack from the grocery store every week, suture kits on top of peel and rind (to the horror of my roommate, to the amusement of her siblings).
The toaster tells us it’s time for a snack. By now, we’ve eased into a good rhythm. While Baran grabs a clean plate for nuts and dip to go along with the bread, I take a stab at the inch-thick ice crawling up the walls and grills of the freezer, a product of a good year of opening and closing the door.
One of these days Baran and I will close it for the last time. In the meantime, we will thank it for its service, greet our children at the door, and feast.
Thanks for reading. Here’s to finding healing, beyond the hospital.
xx
Trinity Santos, MD