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“Same difference, if you ask me.” He shoveled in another forkful of noodles.

June moved hers around on her paper plate. He could tell by her face that she was disgusted. Gus, for his part, was disgusted with hearing about the high drama that unfolded every day in Odermaat Pharmacy. June had been back to work a year now, and every day at dinner he had to listen to how Elspeth Nogrin’s diverticulitis was flaring up, or how they put Arno Hemphill on the Valium for stress, or, worse yet, how the doctor was switching Jed Duncan’s blood pressure medication because the other one “affected his nature.” And now Jesus had come in and apparently bought some medical supplies.

“Well, what did Jesus buy?”

“I never said he was Jesus, August. I’m not that simple.”

“Answer the question.” He knew she could give the full list. She always remembered everything everyone bought.

“A package of Gillette disposable razors, some Extra Strength Tylenol, a medium bristle Reach toothbrush, Arm and Hammer Solid Wide Stick, some Ace bandages, and Curity Tape.”

“Jesus must’ve had one rough Saturday night.”

“I just thought it was interesting, August. That’s all.”

Interesting. Gus thought June had an interesting idea about what was interesting. Bloating, inflammation, edema. She discussed laxatives with their neighbors; recommended lanolin for the ills of nursing mothers; and reported that the Cutler’s oldest boy bought Ramses King condoms (“Those are the large-sized ones”).

June was personally in charge of stocking the sanitary aisle. “The products available today are technologically advanced. Mr. Odermaat is stuck back in the sanitary dark ages.” Gus himself wasn’t up on the technological advances in the area of sanitary protection. He supposed it was better and more useful than spending money on nuclear weapons, but he was sure tired of hearing about it.

He was tired of hearing about a lot of things, including Bag Balm and Valium, anything that swelled, and other men’s “natures.” June had a clear window on the health and reproductive practices of the entire community, and he was tired of looking through it.

He attempted to eat. “What’s in this stuff, anyway?”

“Hamburger, creamed corn, and spaghetti noodles.”

“That’s it? Where did you get that recipe?”

“They had it up at the auction last week. I asked Arnette for the recipe.”

“Could you pass the salt and pepper?”

“Well, sure I could. Here you go. Be my guest, August.”

Oh, hell, he’d hurt her feelings. Her face looked about as gray and unappetizing as that paper plate full of hotdish.

June sat there stewing as Gus applied the salt, then the pepper, then took a bite. It really irritated her how you could cook something for a man, and he would mess it all up with spices.

She took a bite, chewed, tried to look as if she were enjoying the experience. She gave up and added a little salt. Arnette Duncan was no cook. “You should’ve seen him, August. That Jesus boy, all long-haired and ragged. He looked just like the picture of Christ with the lambs in church. You know, the one over the pamphlet table in the vestibule?”

“I know which one you mean.”

Did he think she was trying to be sacrilegious or something? She had just about had it with Gus.

She was just trying to give him a break from hearing about the neighbors and all their health problems. He thought she’d gone off the deep end on certain subjects. She supposed she was stepping a little over the line when she told Gus that the Gundersons really went through the spermicidal products. But really, it was natural, the mysterious side of life, what people hid from each other. But no one had any mysteries when they went into a pharmacy. Everyone has a body, she wanted to say to Gus, even you, though a person would hardly know it anymore.

Since Todd died, really. And she couldn’t blame him. Losing their child had closed them both up like fists. She’d walked around their town in a daze, just trying to get through each day, and angry when people offered condolences. She’d been so sealed off that sympathy felt like the pickaxe of some archeologist trying to break into a tomb. She wanted to stay walled up in the private chamber of Todd’s death.

But someone had stopped her on the street one day. And it was, of all people, old Bob Penny. The Pennys had no children—she didn’t know why and certainly had never asked—but they’d had many long and unhappy years together. About a month after Todd’s funeral, Bob stopped her at the store with a hand on her shoulder. He just stood before her, his eyes shining with something pure and great and terrible, something for which he had no words because there were no words for it. For that moment, she was not alone.

She’d started to forgive the world that day.

After that she’d been able to talk with people again. She could tolerate their clumsy attempts to say the right thing. And she trained herself to listen not just to the story of someone’s niece’s husband having a bad wreck in Grand Forks, but to the pain for which there were no words.

That’s what she listened for when people came into the pharmacy: the real complaint, the one that hid behind the weather, the news, or what was going on at the Elks Lodge that weekend. Because in that pain, she could hear what people needed and gently guide them to it. It was her only genius.

There was pain in Gus, of course, but she took that on faith. He never talked about Todd or anything important. And he’d become so darn picky about everything since she went back to work. Sometimes she thought about that while she was stocking, dusting, counting. It irritated her how picky he was.

This afternoon, she’d been working in the back, doing what was called “facing” — in this case, deodorants, thinking about how hard it was to face shelves when the deodorants weren’t in boxes. She was working on one of her problem areas, the little space devoted to the products that had no antiperspirant function. The bottles were so darn dissimilar. It irritated her.

“Ma’am?” Though he spoke low, she about jumped out of her skin. He looked at her and held out a hand. Like a blessing. His eyes, they were pools of suffering like none she’d ever seen before. The way her heart jumped.

But she wasn’t going to tell Gus about any of that. Not after he made fun of her. She wasn’t going to tell him about the boy standing there with his shirt off, barely able to lift his arms away from his sides, smelling like a farm hand and wincing while she bound up his black-and-blue ribcage.

Todd was born blue, the cord wrapped twice around his neck. Doctor Shoemaker had carefully unwound it, then rubbed gently on the baby’s chest. The doctor, the nurse, and June; they’d all been utterly silent while waiting for the miracle. When Todd took his first breath, the pink bloomed from his chest through his fat little limbs, spreading the flush of life out to his fingertips. “There he goes,” the doc said, a smiling satisfaction in his voice. “He’s a keeper.”

She’d thought of that moment in the drugstore when the young man had carefully drawn his first breath after being wound up in all that elastic. But she wouldn’t tell Gus about that either, she wasn’t going to tell him about the boy’s gratitude over something as basic as being able to take a breath.

The young man had been worried because his doctor had warned him that if he immobilized his ribs he would be liable to “court” pneumonia. She imagined the young man going to visit pneumonia on a porch, holding roses and candy, meeting pneumonia’s parents. It made her laugh out loud.

“What’s tickling your funny bone?”

June didn’t answer, just sat over there chuckling away like he wasn’t even in the room. Made him feel invisible. He was done with the hotdish, mercifully, and was grateful when June threw away their plates. It had been a chore, choking that meal down. That was the other part of it, the way they ate. Bad enough he had to listen to the community aches and pains over dinner, but they ate such sorry suppers anymore.

It used to be he’d come home after a day at the Cenex to a house smelling of roast beef or fried chicken. Meatloaf with brown gravy. Chicken and dumplings. True, everything June cooked needed a little salt and pepper, but that was easy enough to fix. There was always some kind of fussy cake, too—pineapple upside down with maraschino cherries, or coconut with toasted coconut pressed into the icing.

Now, she spent Sundays after church making a couple of these big hotdishes. When they got home from work, she stuck two big glops of the stuff in the microwave on paper plates, then set them on the table with a saucer of Wonder Bread. Gus hated the microwave. Part of the food on your plate was too cold, part of it was too hot, and the other part had passed the point of hot and just started to harden, fossilizing there on the Chinet. For dessert, they had coffee and three Oreos each. He hated the way the Oreos stuck in his teeth, making him look like some hillbilly on Hee Haw.

Most nights, after supper, they watched television. They only got the two networks, ABC and CBS. June was put out because a TV movie of the week she thought sounded interesting was on the network they didn’t get. “I wish we had cable. Everything good is on NBC.” Gus objected to the whole idea of cable television. Foolishness, paying to watch television.

“I’ll tell you one thing, June. I’ll never pay good money to watch television. I’ll die first.”

She gave him a look. “You’ve made that abundantly clear, August.”

She sounded hurt. Maybe it upset her that he mentioned dying. Not too smart, he told himself, looking over at the graduation photo of their son on top of the buffet. Todd looked back. June loved that picture, and she loved the pictures of Todd and girls all dressed up at dances. Gus wished he had a picture of his son when they were fishing or camping or any of the other things they’d done together, man to man, including fixing up the car he died in.

Todd had been an hour from home when it happened. His car flew off the road and landed against the concrete side of an irrigation ditch, the old Le Mans collapsing like a concertina. “At that speed, he died instantly,” the trooper said, as if that would comfort.

Gus stared at his son’s face, Todd’s smile all in the mouth, not in the eyes. Pictures. A shabby substitute for a son.

He was asleep in his recliner when June gave him a nudge. He followed her like a duckling to the bedroom, watched her undress, and thought about when they were young. June would disappear into the bathroom. He thought it mysterious, how she went in one way—a young, proper wife who served at funerals and sat on the United Methodist church council—and came out barefaced and soft in a nightie the color of a Band-Aid. She’d slide in next to him, quiet, holding her breath until he let his hand sneak over to her side of the bed.

Now, she just took it all off right in front of him, garments snapping and flying all over the place. He saw it all: the panty girdle that left indentations across her soft little belly, the knee-high nylons that left puckery bands around her shapely calves, the industrial-size brassiere that left red grooves in her narrow shoulders. He looked away and got into bed.

She settled next to him in a scratchy cotton shift. She’d left the window open, hoping for a breeze. She lay there sighing. He wished he hadn’t fallen asleep in the chair, because now he couldn’t sleep. And June kept sighing.

“Do you love me, Gus?”

My God, that was one hell of a nervy question. That she would even ask it.

He knew she was a good wife. He knew there were worse.

Look at old Bob Penny across the road. His wife, Betty, never worked, even though they never had kids. She just got meaner, sitting in her house or bombing around in her two-tone station wagon, honking at the top of the driveway until Bob came and opened the garage door for her because she was too damn lazy to get out and go do it herself.

All Bob ever did was work in the yard or in his garage. That would be a hell of a deal after working for the railroad for twenty-five years: spending your retirement hiding every day from your wife.

He thought about the last Elks formal dance, seeing Jed and Arnette Duncan. Arnette came in all tarted up in a dress that was way too short and low cut. She drank too much, flirted like a tramp, and shook everything a little too hard. She topped off the evening by throwing up in the parking lot, Jed holding her head.

Lord, to have a wife like that.

June didn’t drink. Not at the dance, not ever. If he closed his eyes, he could see it all perfectly, June at the Elks dance. She wore a pale pink dress with a little floaty thing at the shoulders, and silver shoes. She felt like a feather in his arms. He wondered if he’d ever told her that.

“June? Do you remember the Elks dance?” He waited. She didn’t say anything. “You were the prettiest thing there.” Still nothing.

He must have taken too long to answer. She’d fallen asleep.

Oh well.

She listened while he started to snore. Ninety-four in the shade, and he slept with his socks on. Wasn’t that just like a man? You ask him if he loves you, and he tells you that you looked pretty last fall at the Elks Dance.

She had shopped for weeks for that dress, a pink gown with a chiffon overscarf. She went to the EmPermium for a new do, a manicure, and even a pedicure because her pewter pumps had open toes. She felt pretty until they got to the dance. All Gus could do was stare at Arnette Duncan in her minidress. Arnette had an hourglass figure, four kids, and six grandkids, but she never got dumpy in the middle. She danced like a teenager, too. She didn’t need a man to lead her around the floor. Gus had looked her over all night long.

Oh, she needed to stop exaggerating. Gus hadn’t been that bad. He had been sweet, actually. He had danced with her all night, held her close, sung in her ear. “You are my lucky star…” The only time he let her go was to ask Betty Penny to dance, and Betty wobbled around on those bad knees, giddy at dancing with handsome Gus Bender.

Betty was the unhealthiest person in town: arthritis, hypertension, diabetes, and female troubles. All this illness made Betty a medical expert, at least as far as Betty was concerned. She pried into the health of neighbors, trying to weasel information about their prescriptions, quoting Prevention Magazine, rolling down her car window and yelling at people in their driveways because their hair was going gray and they needed vitamin B12. People fled from her. Especially kids. There was something too eager in her face when she saw little ones. She even embarrassed that little Harland girl, telling her she had a thyroid condition. Anyone with eyes could see the girl was growing up, that’s all.

Kids grow up. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of; June had always said that to Todd. But she really didn’t know what kind of man he would have been, did she? He’d been her little sunbeam all through his childhood, blonde hair and freckles and a sweet voice raised up in youth choir every Sunday. But when he grew up a great silence had descended on them; he kept secret his comings and goings, who he was with, and what he was doing. He’d gathered his adulthood around him like a barrier and shut her out. She didn’t even know what Todd had been doing that night, where he’d been, why he was so far from home. It was a mystery.

Far from home. She wondered about that longhaired boy who’d stepped so quietly into Odermaat Pharmacy that afternoon. Where did he come from? His eyes were dark brown, like the eyes of people in Galilee. His hair was the longest she’d ever seen on a man. She had looked down at the pill bottle in his hand. “These make me sleepy.”

When he spoke, she saw that his jaw was wired shut. She took the bottle, read the label. “I can see why. You shouldn’t drive when you take these.”

He looked hopeful. “Could you give me something else?”

“Well, did your doctor give you a prescription for anything?”

“No.”

“What’s this medicine for? The jaw?”

“No. That doesn’t hurt so much. It’s for this.” He’d put his hands on the hem of his worn and dirty shirt. Hesitating.

How could she explain? Those compassionate eyes, weighing her with the attention of a final judgment. The wonder she felt, waiting for the fabric to lift. Because she felt that when he lifted that shirt all the mysteries plaguing her would be solved: why everything had happened, what her son had been doing an hour away from home in a car going a hundred miles an hour.

She waited, heart brimming with faith.

He lifted his shirt and bared the torso of a mortal man, white skin covered with yellowing bruises. “They’re broken.”

Her heart had broken with disappointment.

Gus woke with a start, heart hammering like an engine with a thrown rod; he’d been dreaming of Todd. He lay there and listened to June’s breathing. Even, steady. Just like her.

She lay curled on her side. There was a breeze, and a moon, and he watched both have their way with her sleeping face, her curling hair.

She was eight years younger than he was. With his retirement only two years away, he’d already delegated so many management tasks that he had almost nothing to do.  He sat in the office drinking coffee.

June would want to keep working, stocking shelves and talking Ex-Lax and Doan’s Pills with the community. Old man Odermaat wanted to make her manager. June was ready to run the whole show. She wouldn’t want to jump in an RV and take off to see the country. No, she’d work every day. He’d sit home and get bad knees like old Betty.

But she would take care of him, he knew that. She was a sweet one.

Thirty-three years ago, he had gone into the Des Moines Rexall with a headache that wouldn’t quit. He was thirty years old, working hard, and he kept having headaches, bad ones. There she was, fresh as a flower. “May I help, sir?”

She was two years out of high school. One look cured his headaches forever.

Did he love her? How could she ask that? Hell, they’d been married thirty-two years. They’d woken up every morning, eaten every meal, slept every night together—except when she was in the hospital having the son that later they buried together, holding hands as they said good-bye to the quiet young stranger who lived in their house, ate their food, and never told them a thing about who he was.

And she asked him if he loved her.

He whispered. “June? I do. I do love you, June.”

Her voice was quiet, near to tears. “I love you too, August.”

She held her breath while he let his hand sneak over to her side of the bed.
 

If You'd Only Listen

A Medical Memoir of Gaslighting, Grit & Grace

by Rosie Sorenson

    Rosie Sorenson’s award-winning book shines a piercing light on medical error and the power of advocacy. If You’d Only Listen plunges readers into the chaos and confusion that can accompany a critical medical journey. Rosie’s “midwestern tomboy grit” is tested at every turn as she confronts misdiagnoses, communication failures, and a system that often seemed more adversarial than supportive. Through a combination of fierce advocacy, meticulous note-taking, and an unyielding refusal to be ignored, Rosie became her husband Steve’s lifeline—catching errors, asking the hard questions, and refusing to accept vague answers or dismissals. If You’d Only Listen is not just a memoir—it’s a survival guide for anyone who may one day find themselves fighting for a loved one’s life. The Addendum provides a deep dive into the realities of medical error, the influence of private equity in healthcare, and the pervasive issue of racial bias. Rosie offers practical recommendations for families: how to be an effective advocate, which questions to ask, and how to keep a loved one safe in the hospital. Rosie’s courage, resilience, and unwavering love remind us that, even in the darkest hours, ordinary people can make an extraordinary difference. “I don’t know how the author survived all these harrowing events and kept her sanity and sense of humor. She’s one tough cookie,” Robert A. Nozik, M.D., Professor Emeritus, University of California, San Francisco. Available from Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Book Passage, and your local independent bookstore.

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