Thyroids, a Love Story, Barry Rachin [graded readers txt] 📗

wear their emotions on their sleeves.”
Austin had never met anyone quite like Sage, and, in part, that was her appeal. She was self-assured but without any of the cocky, false bravado of the preppy types he knew from college, whose fathers underwrote their personal finances soup to nuts. These pampered yuppies were shipped off the best schools with their Louis Vuitton handbags, iPods, kindles and American Express Platinum Cards, where it was assumed that they would find suitable partners and marry well.
Before Sage could crack the door, Austin slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. Leaning up against her, he pinned her against the car with his body and kissed the girl deeply on the mouth. The scruffy teens across the street began hooting and jeering at the top of their lungs.
"Would you like to go out some time?" Austin pressed.
"Yeah, that would be swell, but what do hypochondriacs do on a romantic soiree?"
"We're not hypochondriacs." He kissed her on the neck softly and felt her curl to the side as his lips tickled the smooth skin. "We're hypothryroidiacs."
"There's no such thing. You just made that up." Sage broke free and got into her car. She lingered a while longer before firing up the engine and driving away.


One, two, three, four, five…

Later that night before going to bed, Austin sat in a straight-backed chair and counted his breaths. He sat with his feet planted firmly on the floor and, breathing through his nose, followed the thin column of air as it came and went. At a certain fixed point - usually about twenty minutes into the exercise - he would stop counting and just sit in meditative silence feeling his body, trying to gauge where he stood visa vie his loused-up thyroid.
The kiss in the parking lot notwithstanding, today totally sucked. His brain fog had worsened and energy level plummeted so low the boy felt absolutely geriatric. Lately, Austin found himself nodding off in the middle of the afternoon like some addle-brained, nursing home patient. And he was constantly cold. The issue with cold was fairly commonplace. People with thyroid conditions heaped their beds with extra blankets and dressed in layers even when it wasn't particularly chilly. They weren't neurotic or attention seekers. Being hypersensitive to the slightest change in temperature, they were always cold - cold and physically exhausted. Austin could sleep twelve hours straight and wake up feeling like he chugalugged a quart of scotch the night before! If anything, he was losing ground. And the new medicine, the silver bullet that was supposed to rectify everything, was a total bust!


At the previous meeting of the writers' group, Abi told a funny story. He traveled back to his homeland to visit relatives. As the Beechcraft King Air twin-prop landed in Baku, the plane badly overshot the runway by several hundred feet, running off the asphalt into an open field of barley. The Caspian Sea was visible out the grimy passenger window a short distance to the east. "Was not so good the brakes," the Armenian immigrant noted with a goofy smile that belied his anxiety over the ordeal. As Abi explained it, the region was desperately poverty stricken, the government feudal and corrupt. When a domestic plane had mechanical problems or needed routine maintenance, spare parts were often purchased on the black market. They were third rate, the substandard metal either too soft or brittle. It's just the way things were. The provincial country was one of six independent Turkish states with Russia to the north and Iran due south.
Abi desperately wanted to get it all down on paper, to chronicle his bizarre experiences. "I go home for Christmas, not for to swim in Caspian Sea," he chuckled and rubbed good-naturedly at his hairy chin. Abi was just Abi - a grease monkey heartbroken over the immutable loss of his spiritual homeland. So he joked in fractured English and, as best he could, jotted down his life story. Nok. Nok.Nok.


Prickly ash bark, sarsaparilla, oat seed, shizandra berry, ashwaganda and maca root....

Before leaving the community college parking lot, Sage fished about in the glove compartment of her Toyota. “Here try this.” She handed him a smallish, opaque bottle.
“What is it?”
“An adrenal support herbal formula. I got a spare bottle at home. Just follow the directions.”
Later that night, Austin dribbled ten drops of the rust-colored herbal solution into a tumbler of water and tossed down the bitter solution. Sage was seeing a naturopath. Maybe he would make an appointment with the holistic practitioner to discuss a non-pharmaceutical alternative. An hour after taking the herbal remedy, he already felt a hundred percent better, although he realized, full well, that the euphoric sense of well being was probably just wishful thinking. Still later that night as he lay under the covers, Austin felt warm, too warm. He removed one of the blankets - just one as a precautionary measure. The heebie-jeebies weren't completely gone, but manageable. And his brain fog had lifted ever-so-slightly.


What if? What if? What if? Beatrice Monahan, the ungracious troll who managed the community college writing program, had a favorite exercise. Students chose a theme and then asked a series of recurring questions, each of which sent the work-in-progress spiraling off in an, unanticipated direction.
What if Austin fell in love with the chubby, dark-skinned girl with the satchel jaw and thyroid condition who waitressed over at Ryan's Diner? And what if she returned his slavish devotion? Sage Ostrowski was no fashion plate - not the sort of girl most red-blooded guys gave a second look. But still the girl possessed nice breasts - not overly large but 'substantial' - and that was definitely an asset when you climbed into bed slightly horny and wanting to snuggle in the middle of February with a foot of snow carpeting the New England landscape.
Sage was surly and kind, sullen, churlish, defiant, loyal and a dirty street fighter. Austin was passive-aggressive, hard-working, low-keyed and dull. He had no sense of adventure, no wanderlust, no desire to set the world ablaze. In his third year at Bryant College he was leaning toward a degree in accounting. In a few short years, he would be earning decent money and searching about for a significant other. What if? What if? What if?
What if he stopped by the diner this weekend and brought Sage a small gift - nothing ostentatious - by way of appreciation. Perhaps a bouquet of cut flowers or dozen roses. No, that was out of the question, since it would certainly set gossipy tongues to wagging and give the employees at Ryan's the false impressions.
But, on second thought,...

Imprint

Publication Date: 09-29-2010

All Rights Reserved