CHAPTER THREE

DECEMBER 18, 2005…LATER THAT EVENING

Since I came home over a month ago from Botswana and returned to my internship at the University of Miami Hospital I have not stopped thinking about my friend I met in Africa. The kiss we shared was so magical and breathtaking that all I have thought about for the last month is seeing her again.

I am lying on a single bed in an on call room at the hospital as I have every intention of trying to take a nap before my shift ends in about fifteen hours but instead of sleeping I am talking to my friend…my Arizona. Listening to her describe her long hot bath tonight after chopping down their family Christmas tree with her father makes my mind wander. My mind wanders back to Botswana when both Arizona and I shared a blanket and a kiss under the African moonlight.

When Arizona does not hear me respond quick enough to her question of if I am listening to her or not, I stutter and say "Yes…yes I am" and then she asks me what she just said and when I cannot answer her I hear her say "See I told you so". I laugh as I hear her ask me "Well if you are not listening to me…what are you thinking about"?

I say to her shyly "You really do not want to know" and she says confidently "What if I do…really want to know I mean". I stammer a little and say "I…I was…thinking about Africa". Then I hear her giggle again from over from the fifteen hundred or so miles away as she says to me jokingly "Not really where I thought you were going with this Calliope…but ok".

Then I begin to explain myself to her as I say "I was just thinking about how far we might have went if our friends hadn't interrupted us under that tree and after our first and only kiss that night in Africa. I guess what I am really asking you is Arizona how far you were willing to go if we had not been interrupted"? Then I hear an almost silent whisper of "Oh" come from my friend's mouth over the phone line as I have now wondered if I have went too far with our friendship.

I hear my friend ask me an almost inaudible question "Calliope, what are you wearing"? I swallow the lump in my throat that I did not even know was there as I say back to my friend "What…what Arizona". Then her beautiful angelic voice says to me "I know it has been four months since we last saw each other and I too have been thinking about that first kiss…our only kiss and what would have happened if we were not interrupted that evening. So, I know that you know that I am lying here in my bed completely naked under my robe…so I am asking you again Calliope, what are you wearing"?

This cannot be really happening…how does she know what I am thinking…this has to be a dream…this has to be a dream. Then I hear my friend's voice ask me again bringing me out of my mini rant to myself "Calliope, what are you wearing"?

"Oh I am…I am wearing my scrubs…Why"? Then Arizona says to me "Do you scrub bottoms have snaps or a drawstring"? I mutter through and answer my friend's question by saying "Draw…drawstrings". Arizona says with some purpose in her voice "Well alright then, Calliope. What do you say that you untie the drawstring to your scrub bottoms and I will untie my robe"?

I hesitantly say back to my friend "Are you sure about this Arizona. I have never done this before with anyone…man or woman…and I am hoping that you never have too". With a giggle coming through the phone line, a giggle that I am accustomed too by now, I hear my friend say "I too have never done this before Calliope…especially with a man because I do not care for the penis…but as the old saying goes…there's a first time for everything".

There are rules to this unspoken truth as I explain to my friend before we start. Rules that include a safe word…a safe word that both Calliope and I have to agree on…our safe word is baseball. It is a word that we both know a little something about and is not at all sexual in nature. So before we begin this little escapade…or what my friend likes to call what we are about to do…our first sexcapade…we have to agree on this safe word. Once this safe word is said, screamed, moaned or yelled…we have to stop…there is no exception to this rule. So with that in mind…my friend and I embark on something new and exciting in this venture together…that will hopefully bring the two of us closer and stronger.

Arizona is the first to say to me "Are you ready Calliope"? I take a deep breath as I am positive that she can hear my heartbeat through the phone as I stutter "Yes…Yes". Then my friend says "Alright how do you want to begin"? I say the first thing that comes to mind "Let's do whatever feels good".

A moment of silence is taken by both of us when I hear Arizona's soothing voice come over the phone line with a sexier tone than before as she says to me "Have you untied your scrubs yet Calliope"? I reach down and do what I am asked to do as I say to Arizona "Yes, I have done as you have asked…now how about you? Have you opened your robe to expose that gorgeous tight rock hard body of yours that I am remembering in my head right now"?

With a soft moan coming from my friend I can only assume that she has opened her robe tossing the excess fabric off of both sides of her body. Then I hear Arizona whisper "I am thinking about you tracing your fingertips from my face down across my neck as both of your hands encircle my breasts and you palm both of them at the same time while you lips and tongue concentrate on my lips and the inside of my mouth as you travel down my neck".

My breathing becomes more ragged as I listen to my friend and she continues to say "With your body hovering over mine as I feel our boobs graze each others and bringing all four of our nipples to nice hard buds. Then you move your mouth over my left breast first taking my nipple into your mouth swirling it with your flat tongue as you suck the life back into it while the palm of your left hand massages my right breast. Then once you have me moaning to your touch with me running my fingers through your hair you quickly kiss me hard then you move onto my left breast with the same enthusiasm and hunger that you enjoyed from my right one". My hand moves inside my scrub pants and into my panties as I listen to my friend while she describes what I am doing to her as I feel the moisture building between my own legs.

Arizona is gaining momentum with her storytelling to me as she says "Then with your hands still on both of my breasts as you are kneading and caressing them simultaneously your mouth travels down my body with you halting your progression at my navel. You glide your tongue painstakingly slow in and out of my navel while you suck in the skin around my belly button".

I enter two fingers inside me because I can no longer take the anticipation that is building inside my body with the thought of making mad passionate love to my friend. My fingers slide in easily as my thumb brushes my own clit and I hear myself moan into the phone while listening to my friend say "I lift my hips a little to encourage your movement further down my body and you react quickly knowing that I need you there. Your hands move from my breasts to the tops of my thighs caressing them and spreading them open wider for you to begin exploring and enjoying the beauty this is me".

I whisper "Arizona" at the thought of being this intimate with her as she whispers "Calliope" back to me. My fingers are being thrusted in and out of my body with my hips jerking about on this bunk bed as I feel my release coming. Arizona suddenly says very loudly "Calliope I am so close" and I decide to push her and me over the edge at the same time as I say to her "I gently stroke my tongue through your wet folds as I focus on sucking your clit in my mouth. I place three fingers inside you building up a rhythm of moving my fingers in and out of your pussy while my hips provide the extra friction as you scream my name in my ear".

I take a deep breath and continue talking to my friend as I say "Then I suddenly feel your fingers diving deep inside me as you are pumping them in and out of my pussy with such fury that we both find each others G spot at exactly the same time and scream each others name as we both come together. Then we both take away our fingers out from one another we place them over our lips as our greedy mouths suck all of our juices off our fingers".

That is when both Arizona and I scream each others name back into the phone with our breathing becoming raspier. Then it happens…both our fingers and hands become soaked with our own juices…as we release our built up tension. The air between the phone lines that we are sharing at this moment is filled with a deafening silence except for the regulation of our breathing.

"Wow" I say as I slide my fingers out of me and fall softly back on to the bed when I hear Arizona say from the other side of my phone "Yea…wow is right". While I try to gasp for some more air from the darkness of this empty room I say to my friend "How are you Arizona…are you alright"?

Waiting for only a moment or two before my friend says "Wow Calliope indeed…that was fan…frickin…tastic. Are you sure you never done that before because the way you finished both of us off…was wow…unbelievable". I laugh a little and say "No mi'lady, I have never have done that before". Then I hesitate for a split second but then I think "what the heck" when I say to Arizona "Y'know, once we see each other again…are we going to be able to look at each other in the eye…after what we have just done tonight"?

While I wait for her to answer I feel that my friend hears the uncertainty in my voice but then I hear her say something I never expected. "I knew that when we started this little adventure that it would be different between us. But I never thought that I could feel anything other than friendship for you until tonight. In eleven days, I will see your smiling face when I exit the plane in Miami and everything we feel for each other will be shown in our eyes. At this time in our lives I do not want to say "I love you" just because of what we have just shared…but someday I will tell you…when the time is right for the two of us…I will tell you that I love you".

Silence fills the air between Calliope and me as I think I have said too much. Then out of the blue I hear my friend crying over the phone and I say with trepidation in my voice "Cal…Calliope, please talk to me? Tell me what you are feeling? I'm sorry if I said something wrong but I have always wanted to honest with you. Please Calliope, please". I beg for her to say something…anything…and then I hear her crying slow down and her breathing begin to regulate as she whispers my name "Arizona".

I lay back further in my bed wrapping myself back up in my robe and I smile knowing that she is alright and is ready to talk. I hear her take a deep breath and say "Arizona, I am so glad you feel the way you do about this relationship we are both venturing into because I too would like to say I love you to you someday. I enjoy everything about you and cannot wait for us to see each other in eleven days. I am sorry that I cried earlier but I was just so moved by what you said and now you think I am a crier".

I laugh out loud as I cover my mouth with my hand but it is too late because Calliope hears my laugh and says "Arizona". I discontinue with my laughing instantly when I hear the sadness in my friend's voice as I quickly say "Calliope, I do not think that you are a crier…you are passionate and you let that passion over flow onto your feelings and that is just one of the many things I like about you".

Calliope and I talk for the next hour or so with our conversations filled with light and playful banter. We talk about our lives since we arrived back home from Africa and about our friends and relatives. Calliope tells me what to expect with her family when I come to Miami as I lie here in my bed and listen to how much my own family dynamic differs from my friend's home life.

With the clock on the wall outside my bedroom door chiming softly three times I realize that it is three in the morning. When Calliope finishes her end of our conversation I delicately and regretfully say now to my very close friend "Calliope, it's after three in the morning and you have yet to take a nap. I do not want to end this call but you need to get some sleep. You can call me when your shift ends or later in the evening. But right now you need your sleep".

I hear a soft "Hmmm" that is when I know that my friend is falling asleep while I am talking to her so I do the one thing that I know that will help her take her nap. I sing one of my favorite songs to her by the Dixie Chicks and when I finish the first set of lines "I said I wanna to touch the earth…I wanna to break it in my hands…I wanna grow something wild and unruly" then I hear my friend say "Goodnight Arizona" as I continue to sing "I wanna sleep on the hard ground…in the comfort of your arms…on a pillow of bluebonnets…in a blanket made of stars". By the time I complete that last line of my special lullaby to my dear friend I hear her snoring ever so soundly. That is when I whisper "Good night my friend and sweet dreams" and end our call.

Over the next six days Calliope and I talk every night and we even share the phone sex talk two more times. We talk about our families getting ready for the Christmas holiday even though my voice sounds a little sad knowing that my brother won't be home for Christmas again this year. But I tell my friend that my parents and I are making the best of this bad situation and are not dwelling on what we cannot change.

When Calliope and I end our call this morning I think to myself that we all knew when Tim signed up for the Marines that not seeing him during the holidays was going to be a big adjustment. With my mama telling me on this morning, on this Christmas Eve morning, "We all miss Timothy to pieces but at least we have each other". My mama bends down to kiss my forehead as she tells me that breakfast will be ready in about fifteen minutes.

I hold her over me for a moment longer and kiss her cheek as I tell her I love her and then she smiles that full fledged dimpled smile back at me that I wear also and says "Oh baby girl, I love you too". When my mama leaves my room I dash out of bed to use the bathroom and brush my teeth. Practically flying down the stairs to have breakfast with my parents and do some last minute Christmas shopping, I notice my dad placing a piece of wood into the fire in the fireplace just as my mama calls us both to the table. I hear the doorbell ring and I shout to the two of them "I'll get it".

I walk across the living room to answer the front door but halfway there I notice a dark Ford Crown Victoria car, with the seal of the United States Marine Corp on its front door, in our driveway and a woman dressed in a Marine's uniform slowly walking up the walk to our front door. I glance out the window that is at the top of our front door when I see another person already standing at the door because all I see is the distinguished white cap with the United States Marine Corp emblem on the front. Due to the placement of the window at the top of the door you cannot see the face of the person standing there and my first thought is that it is Tim.

But then I remember how my father talked about his father and how, on December 10, 1941, two United States Marine Corp officers parked their government issued car in my grandparents driveway and knocked on their front door. Both men came inside my father's boyhood home to tell his mother that his father was killed at the bombing of the U.S.S. Arizona at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941 by the Japanese but before my grandfather drowned he saved the lives of nineteen men. I stand frozen in my spot halfway to the front door and cannot move a muscle thinking about that story.

My father sees me just standing there as he too notices the white Marine Corp cap through the front door window. I hear him softly say "Barbara" then I hear my mother's footsteps across the kitchen's hardwood floor coming closer to me and my father and she whispers out loud "No…no…not Timothy". Then I watch my father walk past me squeezing my shoulder with his big ham of a hand on his way and then I feel my mother's arms swarming me up and I hold onto her as tight as I can.

My father opens the door and now my mother and I begin to cry in each others arms. After a brief conversation with the two people on our front porch, my father invites the man and the woman into our home but then my mother and I become aware of a third person, another man, enter our home at the same time. This man has a bandaged arm as his shoulder and arm are encased in a plaster cast. Then before we can even look up at this man's face my mother and I hear the sweet sounding voice that we have missed over the last two years as we both hear my brother say "Mama…Arizona". My father smile says it all as my mother and I run into my brother Tim's other open arm and smother him in a good old fashioned Robbins bear hug.

Tim's two friends, Joanne and Seth, bring him home from the airport because the three of them were just released from the hospital in DusseldorfGermany three days earlier. They were in the Dusseldorf hospital for the last two weeks after suffering from the aftermath of an IED, improvised explosion device, explosion along the roadside outside of BaghdadIraq.

My mother and I look strangely at each other as we listen to my brother explain the situation he and his friends had encountered. Our mother stands to face our father as she says tearfully "Daniel" and my father moves slowly towards my mother and I. My father, this grand stature of a man, stands within two feet of my mama and me and begins to tell the two of us about my brother's ordeal that he has known about all along.

After listening to all the reasons why my father did not tell my mother and I what was going on with my brother in that God forsaken country, my father reaches for both my mama's and my hand as we both pull away from his attempt to console the two of us. With my mother beginning to walk away from my father but not before saying "You knew about this…about all of this…and you did not think to even tell me about what was going on…how could you Daniel…after all I went through…all we went through…when you were a POW in Vietnam. How could you possibly do this to me again"?

But before my mama and I could walk out of the room my brother says quickly "Mama… Arizona please, do not walk away. This is not dad's fault…it is mine. I asked him not to tell you or Arizona about the explosion. I did not want you both to worry about me. I was not even sure of my injuries when I talked with dad two weeks ago. Then when Teddy and Owen gave the three of us our clean bills of health two days ago I did not want dad to tell either of you about that too because I wanted to come home and surprise you myself. I love you both so much and I could not let this Christmas season go by with news of my injuries and the two of you possibly thinking the worst. Please understand I was only trying to think of the best way to get through this without you both worrying about me".

I stare at my brother with tears streaming down my face and I see what this situation…this war has done to him. He is not the same man who left the three of us two years ago. So I put my opinions and differences aside for now as I lead my mama back to the table and place her in her seat at the end of the table. Then I tell my father and my brother and our guests to have a seat as I serve them all breakfast.

My mother is being uncharacteristically quiet while my father and my brother and our guests and I engage in different conversations as we all eat our breakfast. I am sitting next to my brother's friend Joanne as we talk about why she joined the Marines and why I am becoming a pediatric surgeon. I come to find out that Joanne is from a town just outside of Baltimore by less than an hour. She is from the city of AnnapolisMaryland. And as she tells me her story, she comes from a family with a long line of naval officers and that's why she joined to Marines…she wanted to be different and not become the person her family expected her to be.

Joanne, Seth and Tim help me clear off the table of the breakfast dishes while my father and mother leave our presence to have a talk in the study. The four of us try not to listen as we hear my mother shouting at my father and that is when I suggest to Tim that we all four take a walk. Tim and I travel with our two guests outside in the cold Boston winter because we want to show Joanne and Seth the greatest baseball park in these United States and Canada. My parent's home is a fifteen minute walk from FenwayPark…home of the Boston Red Sox.

Both Tim and I take turns telling Joanne and Seth about the rich history of FenwayPark while walking around the massive ballpark. Then I notice that both of our guests are feeling the wrath of another ole Massachusetts nor'easter winter storm brewing when I make the suggestion to my brother that we all head back home. Walking back up our driveway and stopping at the government issued Crown Vic, Tim and I say our goodbyes to Joanne and Seth because they need to head back to Boston's Logan International airport to catch their connecting flights to their homes.

Joanne's traveling to Baltimore and Seth is headed to DallasTexas as they both want to surprise their families before Christmas arrives. Hugging both Seth and Joanne and thanking them for escorting my brother home safely, Joanne slips me her card with her Baltimore home and cell phone numbers on the back as she kisses my cheek and tells me that it was great to finally meet me and to call her when I arrive back in Baltimore next year. I hug her again and whisper in her ear that I will do just that as soon as I land.

Tim and I watch his friends leave as he holds me tight and says "Hey you, how about taking me to do some Christmas shopping"? My brother and I walk back into our family home and see that our parents have finished their conversation. Tim and I inform both of our parents that I am taking him shopping as we hear our mama say "That's fine dear but could you both pick up these items for dinner so I do not have to go out in the snow". Tim walks over to our mama and gives her a big bear hug as I watch her cry in his arms.

With our father nowhere to be found, I walk over and take the grocery list out of my mama's hand and tell her "Yea mama, we got this and if you can think of anything else you need call our cell phones". Then I wrap my mama up in my arms and whisper in her ear "You gonna be alright while we're gone"? Wiping her tears away on a tissue that I hand her as she smiles that gorgeous dimpled smile back at me and softly says "I will be fine baby girl…now off with you both and drive safely and hurry back". My brother and I each place one last kiss on our mama's cheek as I hear Tim say "Just call us if you need anything mama" as we both leave her sight.

During the shopping spree for the next several hours, my sister and I talk about our lives and where we are both headed in our careers. I tell Arizona that once my shoulder heals and I get a clean bill of health from the VA office and my release from the United States Marine Corp that I am planning on traveling to Seattle. I want to take my friend Owen up on his offer and work at SeattleGraceHospital. My plans are that I will be staying in Boston for about another five weeks and then fly to Seattle.

Owen said I could start work by February 1, 2006 so I will live in our home in Seattle. My sister just shakes her head when I tell her that she can join me on this journey too. But she has other plans of her own as she lets me know that she will finish her residency at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Then she when she has completed her residency she will seek other employment elsewhere, maybe in Seattle, but that won't be happening for about another three years. Right now her focus is on working with Dr. Norman McHale and the African Children's Program that has been created by the Carter Madison Foundation. Because for the next three years she and Dr. McHale will be traveling back and forth from the Baltimore to Malawi to help set up more hospitals and help the children of Malawi.