House Call

On our night walk to visit the Doctor’s patient, I watched a pack of stray dogs crisscross

through a thin triangle of light broadcast from a dim streetlight. Each time they crossed into the

light, I noticed their ribs threatening to puncture the thin layer of skin and mangy fur that protected them from coyote bites and kicks in the gut from disenchanted passersby. The dogs trotted in a tight pack, noses to the ground, sniffing. The Doctor’s patient lived on the outskirts of the small town we were visiting for the weekend. One lone streetlight illuminated her block, which wasn’t a block so much as a short stretch of dirt road with rows of dark adobe huts on either side. Hers was the only house with lights on.

“So this woman we’re going to see,” I said in Spanish as the dogs scattered into the darkness and we approached the front door. “She’s your patient?”

“Sort of,” the Doctor replied. “She needed help earlier and I was here, so I took care of her.”

“What kind of help? Is she OK?”

“That’s why we’re going,” he said, flashing me a half-smile as he knocked on the door. “To check.”

The Doctor and I had only been dating for a few weeks when he invited me on a weekend

getaway to a friend’s house in the mountains just outside Tegucigalpa. We met a month earlier in

San Marcos de la Sierra, a small, rural village tucked away in Honduras’ southwestern mountains

where I was living and working as a Peace Corps volunteer. The Doctor, a neurosurgeon from the

capital, organized and led volunteer medical brigades throughout the country’s poorest, most underserved regions, which he’d been doing for years in his free time. We ate lunch together on the second day of his three-day trip, and by the end of our conversation, he asked if he could hold my hand. He called me Briannita. He said when he looked in my eyes, he saw the moon. When he left to return to the capital, I cried for an entire afternoon.

The Doctor and I had only been dating for a few weeks, but he felt like home. Maybe it

seems strange to you that I would take a three-hour bus ride to spend a weekend going on house

calls with a man I barely knew in a place I’d never been, but to me it seemed like the most logical thing in the world.

 

We found the woman’s two children alone in the living room. The room was dark,

illuminated only by the glow of a television. The girls were watching cartoons. The little one was still in diapers.

“Dónde está mamá?” the Doctor asked. The older one quickly brought both hands to her mouth, then pointed to the closed bathroom door. I heard the familiar sound of a woman trying to

muffle her sobs, then watched the Doctor disappear into the bathroom. I sat on the loveseat. Both

of the girls sat on the floor a few feet away from the TV. The older one looked back at me

periodically and smiled. The little one laughed hysterically when a giant cat careened off the road into the abyss.

The Doctor wasn’t in the bathroom for long–the cartoon show had yet to cut to

commercials when he exited the bathroom. A woman followed behind him, her soft, dewy face

framed by wisps of stray hair that were damp with sweat. Watching her dab at her forehead with the back of one hand while supporting her lower back with the other made me want to weep. She

acknowledged me with a forced smile and a single nod.

“No te preocupes,” the Doctor said to her. “Estás bien. Estarás bien.” I felt my own

shoulders relax slightly when I heard him tell the woman she would be OK. He turned to smile and wink at me, then slid his brown fedora over his freshly shaved head. He leaned heavy on his cane and motioned for me to follow. I tried to shut the front door gently behind me, afraid the woman would sense my eagerness to distance myself from her desperation. Its familiarity frightened me.

We walked back towards Mari’s house in darkness. Mari was an old family friend of the

Doctor’s who’d agreed to host us for the weekend. I reached for his hand. He squeezed my hand

once and smiled. In my memory, he is always smiling. His teeth are brilliantly white, so white I can see his smile in the dark. I asked him if the woman was going to be OK even though I’d already heard him tell the woman “estarás bien.” Some part of me needed to hear him say it to me.

“Creo que sí,” he said. I think so, a pat phrase that revealed nothing and yet was sufficient to allay my anxiety. He said the woman was desperate and that it’s difficult for women in her situation to get the care they need in Honduras. “Pero ya no sangra, así que es una buena señal.” The fact that she’d stopped bleeding did seem like a good sign, although the fact that she was bleeding to begin with obviously wasn’t.

We walked hand-in-hand in silence the rest of the way accompanied by the occasional howl of a coyote and the rhythmic scrapping sound of the Doctor’s cane dragging along the dirt road. When I met the Doctor weeks earlier, he told me he had brain cancer. It was the only time we spoke of his diagnosis. I didn’t ask how long he’d been living with it nor how far it had progressed. The way he leaned heavy on the cane when he walked said enough. We never spoke of it again, as if not talking about it could somehow make it go away.

We were half a block from Mari’s house when the Doctor dropped my hand. His spine

straightened as he removed his flip phone from his belt clip and reached back to hand it off to

someone behind him, all without turning around. I hadn’t heard the man approach us from behind on a kiddie bike, hadn’t heard him grumble “dame tus cosas,” hadn’t heard the tires scrap to a halt on the dusty road as he prepared to rob us. The Doctor’s abrupt shift in demeanor from relaxed to alert along with his series of small, quick movements like a cat pivoting on its heels having caught a whiff of a mouse prompted me to turn around. I was surprised to find the barrel of a gun pointed at my face. The face behind the gun was covered in a black ski mask. It wasn’t clear when he commanded the Doctor to give up his things whether the man was referring to the Doctor’s physical possessions–his wallet, his cell phone, his sturdy wooden cane–or to me.

“Tranquilo, eh? Todo está bien,” the Doctor said with his hands up. “Vamos a descansar,

que tengas buenas noches.” Then, without hesitating, the Doctor reached for my hand and pulled

me forward the way a boat tows a dinghy with a spent engine. The voice behind the ski mask was vaguely familiar, but both of us were too shocked to connect the dots. The morning after, we’d learn from Mari that the man behind the ski mask was the same man who’d harassed me at a house party we attended the night before. Mari’s friend hosted the gathering; the Doctor and I agreed it would be fun to socialize together, although we spent most of the night separated, me on the dance floor while the Doctor rested on the sofa. The man approached me several times trying to ask me to dance. He did so by holding out his hand, not saying a word. The first time, I shook my head and said no, gracias, which sent him charging off toward the kitchen. I was perched on the armrest of the sofa when he reappeared, again with a hand extended, only this time he beckoned with the fingers of his extended hand as if I were his disobedient child. The Doctor didn’t seem to notice. Even if he had seen the man gesticulating at me, he probably wouldn’t have said anything; the Doctor was a gentle soul, not one for confrontation.

By this point, I’d been living in Central America for nearly a year and was familiar with the routine. Men were allowed to leer, to snort, to make disgusting kissing noises when I walked by. My body in public did not belong to me but rather to the collective male gaze. During Peace Corps training, I was told to remain calm whenever a man offered unwanted attention. To avoid eye contact, to stay small, to always be polite and meek. The smaller I made myself, the safer I would be.

I shook my head at the man and slid off the armrest to wedge myself next to the Doctor,

who was talking with someone. The Doctor put his hand on my knee without looking away from

the person, who was probably soliciting free medical advice. I watched the man’s jaw tightened and knew it wouldn’t be the last time I saw him. I don’t remember much about the man aside from his face. It was cratered with pimples. His acne was so severe it looked like a shingles rash. The severity softened the distension I felt in my gut each time he approached me, soliciting my compliance with an extended hand.

The next night, as the Doctor dragged me away from the gun pointed at my back, I

remembered that image of a hand extended, beckoning me to a place I didn’t want to go. I

remembered the way the man’s fingers fluttered in irritation, summoning me like a dog. Not a

strong, capable hunting dog, but a disobedient puppy in need of a stiff backhand. I remembered

how uncomfortable I was resisting the demands of a man who wanted something from me. I kept

my eyes trained on Mari’s back door as the Doctor dragged me forward, but I didn’t expect to reach it. I expected to hear the loud pop of a bullet discharging from its chamber. I imagined one of us dropping to the ground while the other stood frozen, watching clouds of dust float over the body of their dead lover. The plumes of dust were beautiful and funereal, an ancient veil of grief. I waited for the pop that never came, surprised when we reached the Mari’s back porch and the Doctor hurried me inside. We hustled to our room without saying goodnight to Mari. The Doctor turned the overhead light off and we undressed in the dark before crawling under the chilled sheets of Mari’s eldest daughter’s twin bed. He climbed on top of me and covered the sides of my neck with soft kisses. When he slid inside of me, I cried out in quiet relief.