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It was raining ice teardrops through the driver’s side window as I reached

for the parking ticket from the dispenser. The office had been closed for fear that the rain would freeze the ground and cause accidents, and I was beginning to understand why. I stepped out to a crush of fast building ice and rain smacked hard against my coat. The weather was starting to cool down for real this time. Temperatures dropped to below thirty and the wind moved my hair like branches as I loudly ran across the street to the sidewalk in my dress shoes and down to the Wadley Tower. Half way down the sound shifted to something far more familiar, salt globs bursting into powder under my feet. The wind picked up again and I felt my face chill like it used to, walking down Fullerton Avenue to my car, my cloths still moist from the heated venue and movement.

There was an elderly woman covering an elderlier woman with another blanket

while both shivered, not at all used to the chill that my face welcomed. I smiled as the wind picked up again, walking into the automatic revolving doors of the tower remembering removing gloves and scarf and hat. Doctors were telling each other of the treacherous conditions the rain and ice had made, and how one almost couldn’t slow down fast enough in the parking lot. Probably the same lot I parked in or something like it.

As I sat in the doctor’s office, waiting for her to enter with large toothed

smile, wisped, white hair and neck-balanced stethoscope I looked at my watch, wondering how the drive home would be. Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have put too much stock in the passerby-doctor’s words, but at that moment I was concerned with sliding on the highway and bumping the concrete medians. She asked me how my sugar levels had been and I tell her good, offering clarification to what I had told the nurse who had been in not more than two minutes prior.

I told her that I didn’t know what all the fuss with the ice was about. That I

grew up near Chicago and am used to getting around five feet of snow throughout the winter. She laughed meekly, shuffling through her mind to find the memory, “Yeah, I’m from Minnesota, so, uh, I’m pretty used to it as well.” She laughed, probably recalling a moment from her childhood, in the snow and cold of Minneapolis. I told her that I had just gotten back from the Minneapolis area, that I was there for the Thanksgiving holiday and that I really liked seeing all the snow pile up. Again she offered a smile and redirected the conversation back to my visit. I told her about going to the acupuncturist while there and how my neck had ached since going. She asked if she could take a look and she did, applying pressure to my upper back/lower neck and telling me there wasn’t any swelling; which was a good sign, apparently.

At the end of the visit she told me that she would like to get an average, that

I would have to go down to the lab for some blood work and that I should schedule an appointment in the next three to four months. The thin, toilet paper type table covering ruffled as I cleared my throat. I told her that this would probably be my last visit, that I would probably be accepting a job with a different company in the next month and would probably, hopefully be moving back to Chicago. “Oh, oh, okay.” I explained how much I appreciated everything that she’d done to help me along with all the normal ‘break-up’ sounding jargon we all use leaving someone who had helped us as much as she had. I asked her if she had any colleagues in the Chicago area who she would recommend and she did.

I moved off the table, thanking her again for everything. “Well, it seems like

you’re heart is there, so good luck.” I didn’t know how to respond, I just stood there smiling. She smiled back, and told me where to go to get my lab work done. The door closed behind her, quietly and I pulled the blue-cloth/paper gown off, laying it on the examination table. As I threw my bag over my shoulder her words hit me again. I had been chewing on them ever since she said them, and still hadn’t figured out how they made me feel. But I knew. And it is.