If ever there were two more different female products of the South, it was me and her.  Raised up straight and narrow in the Church of Christ with a deacon for a Daddy she was a bit umm..nearsighted, if you know what i mean.  We had similar family backgrounds with the farms and all but when religion entered the picture. Then it was her scared to death and me just wondering what it was all about.  Never saw her smile much 'cuz she was too busy working and watching for God to strike her dead in her size 8 tracks for not being perfect. 

We were both married, young..and concentrating on learning our trade.  Who would have ever thought that 30 years later we'd be in the same freakin' place with different faces telling us what to do.  And how quickly.  We have similar workstyles consisting of doing things precisely and treating people well.  The rest is not imporotant because in the end, it's sheep and goats time and we're definitely sheep.  You can tithe on that one, sista.   

The former boss was one of those guys who let all the women take care of shit for him and enjoyed every minute of it.  His wife was a homemaker with two girls on her skirttails.  Kevin never got home much before suppertime because he was too busy visiting everybody at the hospital and smokin' while the girls busted their butts boiling test tubes and calibrating stuff to make him look good.  When the bidding war started between two for-profit groups for US, he sent me to a meeting instead of going himself.  All coak and dagger like.  The fight began shortly thereafter, with the country commissioners being offered big bucks from the two players.  In the end, the facility was sold at 10M over net worth to the highest bidder.  The majority of the folks in town favored the other group but money is money and there ' go.  Sold!  The next few years were a blur of adapting to big city ways on very little money out in the boonies.  Ya'll should've seen the t-shirts and sloagans flying to get us to buy into the team.  And of course, we did. 

Still using pen and paper, we slowly got integrated into the keyboard world of modern medicine.  The test tubes got trashed as automated testing became the norm.  She got a divorce and my husband helped her move.  He was that kinda' guy, you know?  The turning point came when Kevn got called on the carpet and somebody had to be in charge of the whole deal.  About five minutes of thinkin' about being at his beck and call for any length of time gave the chills.  I mean..gah.  I had a kid and all and I wasn't yet to the point of wanting to be the sacrificial lamb at work.  Don't like pain...nope.

Lynn took over the reins and did a great job after a few teary shaky starts at leadership.  She was scared, and rightfully so.  People in management are always prone to being easily deleted when crunch time comes.  But I tell ya'll what...they'd be flat out sorry if she left the place we call home now.  Girlfriend can run the numbers and tell you what it's all about in a heartbeat.  When her Daddy got hit by a log truck out by the house on Highway 51S,I thought she'd never get over it.   Since her new husband was a cop, he knew what was up and called us to get her ready.  He picked her up on the sidewalk and hauled ass to Gates while we rounded up Xanax from the first doc we saw.  Me and the Little General went to the drug store and raced south too.  We found Lynn up at the top of the hill in a daze.  The highway was still in the process of cleanup from the log spill.  Late January, mid afternoon.  Foggy and wet.  Funny how one minute we were sittin' around taking a break and the next second..BOOM.  Somebody's life is changed forever.  Lynn picked up his bloody flannel shirt and slept with it for months. 

She loosened up after that, slowly but surely.  We'd talk about God sometimes, how he's good and stuff.  My ex had grown up with that same set of beliefs..that if  you ain't perfect don't you dare set foot in a church building.  I g'otta tell ya that was so foreign to me!  I learned about John 3:16 in vacation bible school and held onto that loving feeling forever after.  Beats the hell out of droughts and plagues.  Our old Cuban pathologist was on the way out.  He had replaced the FIRST old Cuban pathologist.  There were lots of interims but he needed somebody reliable so here came Sonia.  I immediately liked her, saw her at church and at work.  Her husband was a radiologist and we were in the same sunday school class.  They came all the way over here to flat ass West TN from Egypt to work. 

Sonia made an impression on the girls of MHS-DG-DV.  We weren't used to having the power to make our own decisions at work.  Most of them were made by men, usually doctors.  Here she was a real doctor and on our side!  She and Holeil were the parents of two young boys, Said and Nabhan.  One night when she was traveling home from WalMart with Said after buying school supplies.  They were laughing and talkin' about the new school year.  Sonia looked down to grab something out of the floor and the Avalon swerved hard right. She gripped the wheel to get the car back on the highway and saw a tree coming into the windshield. 

Said gripped his cellphone as he crawled through twisted black metal to safe ground.  He knew his dad's number by heart, but it was always there on speed dial.  "Daddy!" he whispered.  "What is it son?"  "It's bad...mom is all bloody and the car is upside down on her head." "Where?"  Said told him it was about almost home to the right.  There's a big tree, he said.  "It's dark and I'm scared."  Cops were everywhere and flashing lights.  Sonia was already in heaven, if you know what I mean.  Her funeral was the most surreal beautiful ceremony I've ever been a witness to.  My bald headed diabetic Methodist preacher waved smoke over her body right next her personal Shaman and never missed a move.  Amazing grace, is all I can figure. There's a playground with crepe myrtles over on the northwest side of the church in honor of her life.  I smile every dang time I see it. 

Our hospital had a chaplain back then.  Our first one was a retired military guy who knew about as much about chatting as my old uptight Uncle Wilmer.  He lasted about a year as the presence of "the church" in our business and went onto another appointment.  That's what Methodists do.  No ifs ands or buts.  You get the call....cut and run.  That's when Joe came around.

I first noticed him moving in about eight thousand books into a tiny  little office down the hall from the lab.  Cute...about 38 and already grey at the temples.  He lived in a hotel for several months until his wife and kids could manage to pack up the house in Arkansas and come on over the bridge.  James was six and Bec only four at the time.  Joe's parents lived way down in Texas and Martha's family was about middleways in Arkansas.  They were on the road constantly what with church and family pilgramages.  M taught kindergarten in the most amazing way...urging kids to use their imagination and artistic sides to make themselves happy.  Jay played football and soccer and Bec danced her little heart out on the altar.

I first noticed Eddie right after Sonia died.  Evidently he was the salesman for the group, moving in for the business opportunity.  His wife stayed at home and raised Lori.  Every chance he got, there he went with his guns'n'ammo ready to shoot birds, trained dogs waiting to retrieve.   After I really got to know him, the suit just didn't seem to fit his image, ya know?    To this day I've never seen him in a pair of jeans, I swear.