017:

I waited in the hallway.

How many?

How many women?

This had been rare. This had been unprecedented. This didn't happen often. I'd never seen it. Heard of it yes, but not seen it myself.

I saw her pleading eyes in my imagination--- accusing me--- hadn't I told her she would be all right?

What could I have done differently?

Dr. Sempfle was going home. "You did everything you could, Doctor." He said as he passed me, his thin face showing signs of fatigue.

I shook my head and tried to wave to him as he passed me.

"Do you have someplace to go? Are you local?"

"Yes," I mumbled, leaning against the wall with one foot up.

He hadn't seen me around here, and I hadn't been here in months. He looked appropriately concerned. "I'd like to work with you again."

"I work out of ---- I don't know," I said rethinking what I'd been about to say--- about to offer. The thought that maybe this wasn't what I wanted to do the rest of my life really hit me hard.

"Listen, you were brilliant. There was very little indication that she was bleeding out under the diaphragm. We didn't catch it either." He'd come back to me, holding his small case under one arm.

I pushed off. I saw him analyze my ring and then step back. And the thought was--- seriously? You were looking at me like that--- tonight, after that? Who are you?

I waved to him, twirling to rush down the hall to the lockers, to change into street clothes. I showered, left my scrubs, and was to the car in a half an hour.

But I couldn't just go back and pretend like nothing had happened. I waited for the dizziness to pass as I huddled in my driver's seat. I felt the welling of tears--- knowing it was inevitable—I did cry after the deaths of patients, but also the state I am in has heightened my emotions.

I texted Rafe. I told him I was on my way home.

He texted back instantly that he was on his way home then as well. He must have gone out with Jeremy, Hannah, and Abby.

I did not feel jealous, I was glad he'd been occupied, and I just wanted to rest. It had been a long, long day.

I couldn't go straight in the house. I actually wanted to go home to my own house and was saddened that this action would trigger Rafe's caution button, and he'd be anxious if I did that. I didn't need or want him to be anxious.

So I went out on the beach.

It was cold and windy, the fire had long since died out, the waves were broadcasting the approach of a late summer storm, and lightning out at sea confirmed my suspicions. I sat down, resting my sore legs. I shouldn't be so sore, but I felt weary.

I had been around death my entire adult life, I thought. And now--- suddenly it affected me in a different way than it ever had before. That was perplexing to me. I had to see it clinically to make a good decision, and I felt I was seeing it clinically. But had I given it time? Perhaps the long string of baby deaths, and then Angelee and Jake had triggered some kind of mental breakdown I wasn't equipped to deal with.

I prayed.

As I prayed the wind on my left side seemed to buffet me less, and that side became warm. I felt the tickle of his finger against my leg, and nodded, finishing my prayer.

"How'd it go?" Rafe asked softly.

"I lost her."

"Her the baby?"

"No, her the mom. The baby wasn't a viable baby. It was an ectopic pregnancy, meaning it was a fertilized egg growing in the fallopian tube. She had to have endured a lot of pain, and finally, the tube ruptured, and blood collected beneath the diaphragm, but because there was so much external--- meaning vaginal blood--- we didn't catch the bleed out above."

"Was it her first?"

"Yes."

"Maybe she just didn't have the experience to understand that her pain wasn't right."

"Pain is usually the body's trigger that something is wrong. How can it be right?"

He sighed. "Some pain--- actually feels like--- relief. It feels good."

I tossed my hair out of my eyes and held it back. "What?"

"Haven't you ever been in so much pain, the thought of getting rid of it, by inflicting more pain--- different pain--- felt like a relief?"

My head shook in tiny negating jerks.

Rafe peeled out of his hoodie, leaving the loose fitting short sleeved white undershirt he preferred most of the time. The light from the house behind us lit the tattoos on his forearm, a design of dragon tail and amoebas. (They weren't really amoebas, but they looked like beautiful tadpoles, with intricate layers of designs inside them. Very cellular to one who had studied cell structure.)

"When Daniel died----." Rafe began with a catch in his throat. "There was so much pain. I didn't understand the kind of pain that caused him to take his own life. I didn't understand the social and mental agony he had been in. His life from my side of things seemed perfectly patterned."

"He --- you all—had been active in church your whole youth? Didn't you tell me he'd gone on a mission?"

Rafe nodded, swallowing against his own emotions. "There is a feeling of security that comes with being in the church. The feeling that your life is acceptable to God, and that God is aware of you. I'm sure it can be the same in other churches, but our church teaches that we have the fullness of the gospel, so there is this security."

"And you take it for granted."

He shrugged, crossing his arms protectively over his bent knees. "You might. You just believe whatever you've been told. You feel safe because there is nothing to question. It all makes sense, and you feel a little superior also because we aren't told to keep it to ourselves, or have our religion quietly. We are told it's our job to go out and give it to everybody in the world. As if we had the corner on religion and nobody else does. No other way is the right way."

"But no other way is the right way."

He tossed out a hand to encompass the ocean and all its vastness. "Right." He said bitterly. "So anyone within the walls of our church who differs in any way--- who has their own path to follow and it veers away from the straight and narrow--- they are outcast."

I blinked. "Outcast? Isn't that a little strong?"

"No. I think Daniel gave his whole life to the security of the church. He did everything the right way, everything he was told to do, he did it, and it betrayed him."

I was silent. He'd told me before that Daniel had chosen to act on his impulses. When he'd gone to the Bishop to tell him--- as he should--- his recommend had been confiscated. The recommend--- your badge of security, the thing that told you and everyone else you were worthy, on the right path, and working toward perfection with all your might. No deviance.

Without it--- one feels--- unworthy--- bereft.... Unacceptable.

"May I suggest something? Put this out on the table, so to speak?"

"No, wait, Aubrey. I want you to understand his pain. It was a pain so great, so devastating, so crucial to his survival, that it overcame him."

I swallowed audibly, feeling my own reaction to Daniel's debilitating pain.

"But----."

"No, Aubrey! You can't make it better! You can't take it away! You can't undo what is done, or change the reasons it was done. It is what it is."

I heard his pain then. Deep, soul wrenching pain--- horrible and irretrievable. It ached inside him always. It was where the deep, gut-wrenching performances came from--- that pain. He was right--- I'd never felt such pain. I'd never wanted to take my own life in order to end the pain and suffering.

"We all have felt pain, Aubrey." Rafe finally said, stroking my leg with one finger to get my attention. He lifted his arm as if it were too heavy to move, and rested it on my leg. In the faint light, I could see the tattoos clearly. With his other finger, he traced the lowest ones. "Look carefully."

I bent forward and then moved my head to unblock the shadows. There etched in the darkness of ink were the faint white scars of cutting. You'd never notice them, with the ink on top, unless you studied them. I'd certainly never seen them before, and I'd seen cutting a thousand times.

My eyes snapped up to his.

They were steady on me.

"This is what comes of trying to rid yourself of inner pain so deep and misunderstood you can't get away from it. When there is no solution--- no surcease. No way around the pain. And you've seen death--- and you know it doesn't make the pain go away--- it just transfers it to someone else."

I couldn't breathe. That terrible, deep, inner anguish etched into his skin as a reminder of days when there was no relief literally stopped my heart. I had known that Rafe had to overcome prejudices in order to come back to church--- I'd known he kept a lot buried inside. But I had not understood the depths of his anguish.

Rafe leaned into me, knocking against my shoulder till I let out my held breath. "That part is over for me, Aubrey. I came to terms with it and found an outlet years ago."

"Music?"

"Music helps. It helps everyone who will search for it, and allow it in. It can't help if you can't hear it, though. Like Daniel--- he wouldn't let himself hear it. His darkness and misunderstanding were too great."

"What else?" I could hear it in his voice that there was another outlet for him.

"Many people--- many, many people--- who can't deal with the pain, the fear, the doubt, turn to drugs and alcohol. They turn to sex."

"Searching for someone and something to take away the pain."

"I spent a lot of time with psychologists and psychiatrists, trying to understand my pain. The answer they gave was that in time, and with concentrated effort, pain can dim, and become tolerable. It doesn't go away and it doesn't change inside you. It is always there, but you can learn to cope in healthy ways."

"What were your healthy ways, Rafe?"

"I made a lot of money--- and I gave a lot of it to organizations that support those who are in extreme pain. I disengaged myself from the organization that had betrayed my brother--- whose intolerance and prejudice had given him the pain. And not just that--- I actively supported those who I felt were on Daniel's side--- who understood him, and who accepted him."

I sighed as I tried to picture it. Satan's opposites--- I thought. Turning from the good and making it seem like it was bad. Turning to the bad and making it seem logical and right.

He leaned into me again. "I didn't mean to cut you off. You had been about to add something to the conversation."

"Oh." I said, still pondering the sadness of deathly separation and the ways people coped with their pain. "I was going to point out that---- you probably have already thought of this--- but, Daniel went to his Bishop for help. I don't know his Bishop, I don't know what kind of help he offered, or if Daniel understood what was being offered to him. But just analyze it yourself--- an alternate ending if you will---." I sighed again, thinking that my thoughts right now might be irrelevant, but he'd asked for them, and now I was giving them. "If Daniel, or anybody in this situation--- had wanted to keep living the gospel--- had seen his error as taking him on a path away from God. If he had done an about face--- and relied on faith instead of the arm of the flesh.... Maybe that could have given him the hope he needed to go on."

Rafe shrugged. "Hope is what the gospel offers us, isn't it?"

I nodded. "I'm not saying that this particular trial isn't serious, or fraught with agonizing decisions. It would be very hard in the face of all your earthly emotions to identify the one strand of light that will take you to safety. It would take everything in you to do that."

"In a way, you're saying he was weak?"

"We're all weak."

"But Daniel, and Lance for that matter, in this particular trial, have chosen to rely on their love, and their attraction and their own emotions? In your opinion?"

"I mean--- how can it be otherwise? Love and attraction as we've seen—and are still seeing--- are very powerful emotions. They are utterly the most convincing feelings we have. If we haven't come to know the Savior--- if we haven't really opened ourselves up to deep faith--- deeper than our emotions--- how can we resist temptation?"

"How can you even identify it as temptation?" He quipped bitterly. "If you don't even know you're going through a trial?"

"But the gospel provides guidelines, Rafe. If you are up against something that seems impossible to change--- impossible to live without--- ask yourself if there is anything about it in the scriptures, or in the writings of the prophets--- or go and talk to somebody. There are so many ways God has provided us to get answers. He didn't leave us here with no guidance."

"How can you see through that blaze of pain?"

I thought about Daniel's pain. It had to have been horrific. The magnitude of it was tremendous. And Rafe's pain--- inflicting pain and feeling physical pain in order to alleviate the inner pain.... No, I'd never felt that hopeless.

"Maybe...." I felt tears gathering. "Maybe you can't."

"Then...? How...?"

"Maybe only He can. The Savior. Maybe He can see through the blaze--- He and only He." Tears dripped down my cheeks, and I wiped at them carefully.

Rafe's arm behind me braced me. It felt secure. It felt like we were figuring things out together. I wasn't trying to change his opinions, and he wasn't trying to change mine. We both just wanted to come to an understanding.

"I think aligning our will with God's will has got to be the hardest thing there is." Rafe finally said slowly.

I leaned into him. It was the most natural thing to do. He was stalwart, original, protecting me, and I him.

In that moment, cold seeped into us, and Rafe decided it was time to go inside. 

******