Bear the Great – Chapter Ten.
“Voxdoc” was an ENT who realized early on he didn’t want to spend his entire career putting tubes in the ears of squalling kids with chronic Otitis Media. In medicine, the dictum “Knowing More and More About Less and Less” was not just the prevailing wisdom, it was a blueprint for continued professional development. Also, sub-specialization was a good way to make more money. A whole lot more. So, after his surgical residency at Southern Illinois he sought out one of the few laryngology specialists he could find who did nothing but vocal chord surgery and apprenticed himself for a year. It was the smartest professional move he’d ever made.
Not that there weren’t casualties along the way. His ex-wife and twin daughters, for instance: They didn’t speak to him anymore. And truth to tell, he was fine with that. The divorce had been ugly. And he’d always thought his girls lacked ambition. They now both worked as account reps for Zillow in Seattle. Jesus. What a waste.
The thing that tripped him up in the dissolution of his 25-year marriage had been the slightest mistake. Always a technophile, he had an app on his phone that tethered his personal GPS data to a daily diary entry. Traveling the world now as one of the foremost experts in vocal chord surgery for transgender patients, he was much sought-after as a speaker at medical conferences from Norway to Nairobi. He was away from his practice almost as much as he was home.
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He’d first met his mistress when they’d done youth choir together at the Episcopal Cathedral where she was choir director and he was a musically-inclined volunteer. Turns out, she liked to travel too. The problem for him, at least once his ex-wife’s lawyers compared his mistress’ airline itineraries with his phone GPS data, was the uncanny correspondence in dates and times of travel. By this point the shenanigans had been on-going for almost a decade. And the legal proceedings turned into a bloodbath.
Though costly, in some ways it was a relief. He had to quit-claim the spectacular house he and his ex co-owned on top of a mountain and move into a tiny loft downtown. But now at least he could get a little work-life balance. He’d always been outdoorsy. So, by chance, was his mistress. They each bought the latest in titanium-alloy mountain-bikes and took up bike-packing. When they finally tied the knot, it was with only a half-dozen-or-so of the hardiest of their close friends in attendance. The blessed event took place in a meadow full of wildflowers off a mountain trail that took two days on foot to reach from civilization. It was the ultimate destination wedding for the REI crowd. The happy couple was thrilled. Voxdoc’s ex was decidedly less so. “Make the bastard pay” became her life’s abiding passion.
The less-obvious silver lining of it all was that now when he was speaking at a conference in the Baltics or the Balkans, they could sit together on the plane. As an added bonus, they never had to rent a car. They each had these nifty hard-sided carrying cases for their bikes and equipment that allowed them to get around easily in whatever city or country was their current destination. He had to say, he never once missed his old house. Not even a little.
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For a while he hated the transgender population that became his bread and butter. So needy. So vocal. And so demanding. But eventually he made his peace, swallowed his irritation, and pocketed fat fees. If life wasn’t going to be an uninterrupted bed of roses, then at least it was going to be lucrative.
Today, instead of sitting in an airport VIP lounge, he was closer to home, seeing outpatients at his clinic. First up? A trans Park Ranger who’d already had reconstructive genital surgery and was now in the middle of hormone treatments. Aelin/Aaron wanted a deeper voice to go along with the five-o’clock shadow. Well, voice change was Voxdoc’s specialty after all. And as transgender patients went, this one was far less aggravation than most. At 6’3″ they certainly looked the part. Might not be into bike-packing, but trail life was a point of commonality he could exploit to gain trust and put the patient at ease. Tricks of the trade.
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“How goes the battle?” He found that confronting the inevitable rough patches was preferable to glossing things over with these folks.
“Ugh. Paperwork’s the bane of a Ranger’s existence. Last week we had a suspicious death. So I had to be in the office all hours with local law enforcement, answering questions and filling out forms. Christ, the Douglas County Sheriff is clueless. People think being a Park Ranger is all kum-ba-ya and birdwatching, but it’s not. My life is no picnic, let me tell you. And that’s not even counting all the heirarchical BS of the Park Service. But hey, enough about me. Where are you jetting off to next week, doc?”
He was impressed. Most of his patients couldn’t see even one step beyond their own petty personal grievances. But Aelin/Aaron had remembered his travel schedule. And in the midst of a murder investigation, no less. The needle of his transgender disdain-o-meter ticked down by a tiny notch. Maybe these trans folks weren’t so bad after all.
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For Aaron/Aelin’s part, disdain for Voxdoc stayed at about the same chronic level it had always been, at least since details of his very public divorce came out in the press. The little twerp. Fidelity mattered! But hey, not everybody did this kind of specialized surgery. The day when (s)he could tell their superiors at CPW to go stick it – in a deeper voice – was just around the corner. That was something at least. For Aelin/Aaron, that day couldn’t come soon enough.