Lesson 1 – Finally Settling In – 1989

It’s Saturday evening, the TV is on, and the nearly empty Thai containers lay strewn across the coffee table. There are fewer moving boxes than before, but a dozen or so remain, waiting to be unpacked. That particular task will have to be completed tomorrow. Mandy, exhausted, rubs her aching back, thinking of all the lifting, and moving she did today.

Marcus, remote in hand, finally settles on a channel. “Star Trek rerun okay with you?”

“Mmmm,” she mumbles, too tired and sore to speak actual words.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he says. Then adds, “Roll over and I’ll rub your back.” She turns over and scooches closer in a you-don’t-have-to-tell-me-twice kind of way.

After two episodes of Star Trek, and a perfect, just what she needed, massage, she decides to head to bed. Although the mattress is on the floor, it’s made up with clean sheets, and a comforter. She is now thankful that she took the time to make the bed earlier, since all she could handle now is climbing under the covers.

Before her foot could even hit the second stair up to the bedroom, her phone lit up with LOW BATTERY. She cringed as if she’d been scolded, and realized her charger was still packed away in some unknown box. “Marcus,” she called, “do you know where your charger is, and if so, can I borrow it?”

“Yes,” he yells from somewhere in the house where he’s making sure all the doors are secured. “It’s with my wallet on the box next to the bed.”

She ascends the stairs to the bedroom, and quickly locates the box, and the wallet, but no charger. She searches on the floor, and finds the charger. As she grabs it, she spots a small card, an appointment card. “Hmmm?” she murmurs as she picks it up. Then, “What the…?” It says Marcus Tiberias, Wednesday 9:30 am. Followed by, Dr. Michael Sanders Head of Department of Oncology.