The Day Before the Shortest Day of the Year

     Yesterday all the lawyers in my case had a conference.  There were five of them.  I was not present.
     "It's about time," I said, the day before.
     "Don't get your hopes up," Mark, my civil lawyer, warned me.  "It's very preliminary."
     "Preliminary to what?" I asked.
     "I don't know," he said.
     "What's the conference about?"
     "We'll see."
     It took place by phone.  Words, miles between them, the whoosh of air in the background, and lots of static.  No faces, no hand movements, no big clues.  Five people in different parts of the country, talking, but trying not to talk.
     Isn't 80% of communication nonverbal?  I figured my lawyers might get 20% across.  But that was too optimistic.
     I fended off waves of nausea all afternoon.
     I vacuumed the house, and visited the chickens.  I washed clothes and hung them on the clotheslines.  I filled the bird feeders, picked three oranges, and took a hike in the woods with the dogs.
     Then I played Bach's "Christmas Oratorio" and wrapped presents at the kitchen table.
     I was putting presents for my brother, Joe, in a big box when my lawyers called to report on the conference.
     Joe is my favorite brother because when I was little he took me fishing.  He knew the best places for trout--a secret spot where the Monocassee Creek ran under a set of old train tracks.  The fish convened there in the shadows. We'd sit together for hours in the pre-dawn, with our fishing lines hanging from the trestles.
     Once a train came around the corner and stunned me with its headlights.  My brother yanked me from the tracks in the nick of time.
     "You've gotta move when the train comes," he yelled as I lay crumpled in the grass.  I could hardly hear him over the roar of metal, but I saw his face and it was twisted with terror.
     "He saved my life," I told my mother that evening as she fried the fish.  She laughed, unbelieving.
     In his late teens Joe became strange, hiding out in his room, inscribing "Why Me?" on pieces of paper he'd tape to doors and mirrors.  He listened to Peter Frampton and The Who, especially the song about Tommy, the pinball wizard.
     When he got sent home from college for wandering the streets in an altered state, and was diagnosed with schizophrenia, I stayed up all night listening to what his devils had been telling him in their conversations together.  It took weeks for medicines to wrench him back to our world.
     "What happened?" I asked my lawyers after the conference call.
     "Not much," Mark said.
     "But we have good news," added Gil.
     "What is it?"
     "Corey Smith said nothing," he answered.  "Literally, nothing."
     "How is that good news?"
     "Well," said Mark.  "We laid down our two main requirements, which are that you can't agree to criminal charges and you can't have your Medicare number rescinded.  Those things would make it impossible for you to practice medicine again."
      "Are we bargaining about criminal charges?" I asked.
      "We're trying to have a conversation with the prosecutors," Mark said.  "And Corey could have said, 'No way.  I'm indicting her.'"
     "And he didn't," said Gil.  "Which is a good thing."
     "He's had three and a half years to indict me," I said.
     "These things take time," said Mark.
     "So he still could indict me?"
     "Of course."
     "But time is the defendant's best friend," said Gil, repeating an old saw.  "And you've had lots of time."
    "It's a good start," Mark said.  "But we have a long way to go."
     "A long way," Gil echoed.
      I told my son, Simon, about the turn of events.
     "Why me?" I asked.  The question belonged to my brother, in my mind, and made me feel close to him.
     "Why you?" Simon repeated.  "Who knows?  We all have problems."
     "Do you think I should refrain from writing about this in my blog?" I asked.
     "You've never been known for subtlety or diplomacy before, Mom," he said.  "Why stop now?"