It was only through the luck of the economy that I had managed to lose enough weight to fit back into my college clothes. In all truth, my college clothes were actually big on me now. They hung loosely from my shoulders; I was like a goldfish in Lake Erie. I was careful, however, to keep my body looking healthy, not emaciated. Although the depression had rid my diet of fat and most nutrients, my abs were muscular and toned rather than sunken in over my ribs.

My reason for remaining in shape extended back to medical school. Most of our professors had been basic science professors whose main concern was Which protein? Which mechanism? Which syndrome? Which treatment? There was one professor near the end of first year who seemed to jump up and down on another point.

Dr. Redding was a man whose age you couldn’t discern. Through diet and exercise, he had managed to keep his body as a young fill-in-the-blank age. If he turned sideways, he almost disappeared; his build was enviable among the males in my class. He was a pure osteopathic physician: he had learned, used, and continually refined his osteopathic technique. He approached his patients holistically, and when necessary, used the fear of God to instigate change.

“Do you want to enjoy your retirement?”

“Do you want to enjoy your grandkids?”

“Do you want an amputation?”

“Do you want to be able to breathe?”

He was one hell of a guy.

He was responsible for our single nutrition lecture in medical school. For two hours, he added spice to the basic message: “Be a role model for your patients! Be truthful! Knowledge becomes wisdom when it’s your personal experience!”

His kindly-spoken stern message had haunted me ever since. From then on, I made sure to drink eight glasses of water a day, to work out at least thirty minutes a day, to give up McDonald’s and Joey’s BBQ and to squeeze my sausages dry of as much grease as I could before indulging in something nutritionally naughty.

In the wake of the new depression, some things became harder to do while others became easier. Water could be difficult to come by as sanitation fell to the wayside, companies like Brita went out of business, and the only affordable food was high-calorie junk food.

In moving to the country, however, it was easier to find healthy food – that which could be grown. Meat was a rare luxury and thus, would have little effect on my blood work. Commuting to work consisted of a short run twice a day. When not working, I could find a good strength and cardio workout in the garden with my husband – or in the bedroom.

It was these changes that allowed me to sit out in the field after chores in a Corona bikini I had purchased during medical school. I had bought it two months after getting married in anticipation of a delayed honeymoon. The linked triangles that composed the top barely covered my breasts – a result of not trying it on before buying it – and the bottom now sagged slightly over my shrunken behind.

I accepted the glass of distilled water offered to me. “You look good, dear.”

“Thank you. You too.” I smiled briefly at my husband. Pulling my sunglasses down, I winked at him, pulled them back up and took a sip.

“I remember you wouldn’t wear that when you first got it.”

“That’s because I was fat.” I shifted my weight between my elbows behind me. We lay on separate beach towels between two lanes of carrots. “Didn’t realize it until I got home.”

“You were not fat,” Chris replied, exasperated as he took the water glass back. He’d been doing this song and dance almost since we met. “You were average, and muscular.”

“Fat.”

“You were not fat.” He paused before repeating, “You look good.”

Silence fell between us as we looked over our fortune. Our two acres of land were a mine of food that would (with any luck) sustain us through another winter. They were a joint effort of ours: my meager savings from the Army had served to get us started, and my practice was a source of new plant seeds – most of my patients could only afford to spare seeds as payment. Chris, however, was a wonder and whiz at teasing out nutrition from the dusty patches of dirt.

The living was good. As the only doctor for miles, I had been in a unique position to negotiate. I was offered these two acres, complete with house that needed quite a bit of work, with no realty taxes or requirements for insurance or licensure, in exchange for being on call twenty-four hours a day for Harlow’s seventeen hundred residents.

It was quite fair.

For the most part, my practice was from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon. On a busy day, dinner would be pushed back to eight o’clock. This was usually only the case in flu or allergy season. I would be called upon to (once again) give the holistic approach to combating common complaints, or to deliver lymphatic techniques to help clear the congestion in patients’ chests or throats. Only occasionally would an emergency come charging down my driveway in the wee hours of the morning. There were times when all decorum would be thrown out the window, and I would wake up to a breathless runner standing at the foot of my bed.

That could be awkward. Other than that, it was a good living.

Some days it was unusually quiet, like today. These were days when I could don my sunglasses, lose my professional attire (t-shirts and shorts could be so annoying, after all), and lounge around in the fields. I called this my “Vitamin D therapy.”

In the distance, I could see some dust being kicked up along the driveway. Excusing myself, I went to meet the visitor. I hoped that it wasn’t a patient; after all, I wasn’t exactly dressed for the occasion. Approaching the dust storm, I saw it was Wolfie, our postman. We exchanged pleasantries as he handed me an envelope. I barely had a chance to look at it because Wolfie immediately began, “Dr. B…”

“Yes, Wolfie?”

“I, uh, I have a problem.” He was suddenly very meek and avoided my eyes (or more accurately, my breasts).

“What is it?” Apparently, the visitor was a patient.

“It, uh…”

It was ridiculous watching this six-foot-three man being shy around a five-foot-three female. I resisted the urge to settle my hands on my hips, mostly because it would have drawn attention to my low-riding bathing skirt. “What’s wrong, Wolfie?”

“Well, it, uh… it hurts when I, um… you know…”

“No I don’t know, Wolfie. You have to tell me.”

“Well you know, when I, uh… when I…” Very quietly, “pee.”

I silenced my sigh as I took his arm and led him towards the house. “And when did this start…”

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