Bathtub Reveries
For Sarah, a bath was an excuse to daydream. The work day was filled with so many immediate and pressing concerns that any thought that took more than a minute from start to finish was impossible, or at the very least, irresponsible. She didn't mind the steady stream of ill-tempered patients—she was a doctor, a healer, and would not be deterred by any unpleasantness of her vocation, be it an oozing sore or a pissy flu-driven attitude. What she did mind were the headaches that came with the administrative part of her job. As Clinic Supervisor, Sarah was responsible for covering shifts during holidays, checking that the medical supplier wasn't overcharging, and nagging the staff to be diligent about filling out the oh so tedious but oh so necessary paperwork. This low-level but constant irritation made Sarah's bath crucial to her mental health. It was the one place she found she could completely let her cramped and regimented mind stretch itself out until it was loose and relaxed. So, while her morning ablutions were no more than a quick rinse in the shower, her early evening bath was an indulgent affair including lavender oil, a candle, a rather tall glass of old vine Zinfandel, and no less than a six inch high blanket of silky pearlescent bubbles.
For the last two weeks, Sarah's bath-time musings had been less frivolous and fanciful than usual: her every thought had concerned the details of her upcoming wedding. Two days, that was all, before the big event. Sarah had supposed she would get increasingly nervous as her wedding grew near, but that never happened. Perhaps this was because she was not a young bride; and, as a very competent, highly organized woman in her thirties, she found that planning and arranging a wedding to be really quite easy. And besides, for Sarah, the wedding itself paled in comparison to the adventure that awaited her and her new husband. Two days after the ceremony, Sarah and Paul (they had met at a medical conference on HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa) were flying to Sudan to begin a two year stint working side by side treating war refugees for Médecins Sans Frontières. It all was happening just as she had planned. For Sarah had one supreme requirement of the man she would marry: he would share more than just love and affection, more than just a home and the assorted minutia of domesticity. He would share with Sarah a total passion for and devotion to the vocation of medicine. Her job was just too important—she needed her spouse by her side, on board, in step, in sync, not sitting at home wondering what was so damned important that she never had time for him. Paul would be there, and it was going to be just wonderful.
As Sarah's mind bobbed between concepts of love, work, and marriage, it slowly drifted away from the clear, serene, and contented waters of her bright future to the murkier, more turbulent, and more discordant seas of her recent past. It wasn't so long ago that a certain John Watson had caught her eye. Like her fiancé, John was a doctor, a man dedicated to helping all people, but particularly the less fortunate. She had been instantly taken by his self-deprecating but witty chat, his inviting smile and disarming charm; and surprisingly quickly she found herself thinking, somewhere in the back of her head, that he just may be the doctor she would marry. John had asked her out, and they began dating. It had been a wonderful beginning, but the surprising and (if she were honest) unsettling way things had developed was a subject Sarah's mind had turned over in many, many a bath. So, with two nights left as a single woman, her wedding plans tied up in a neat little bow, Sarah decided to indulge herself in a truly decadent reverie. She let her thoughts drift to John, free-floating memories of her ex-colleague and ex-lover swirling in the bubbles, images of the doctor/soldier who had briefly been hers before he was caught in another's powerful current and then, steadily, inexorably, drifted away.