"The Ghosts of Crestview Manor" by Julianna Rowe

The Ghosts of Crestview Manor   Property of Julianna Rowe                                                                    The Life Story of Katerina 

Chapter Six: Dr. Pig.......

I must backtrack a few years for my following error in judgment to be understood.  Some would say it was an excuse.  No. How can people excuse themselves for something they did or did not know they were doing? It takes time to evolve; sadly, some need to learn through life's hard knocks. Do I wish I had been able to rise above my raising?  Sure. But the cells needed were not there, so the Universe had to use Plan C.

My father bought me a horse when I was fifteen years old.   Her name was Sally.  She was a lazy stocky pinto, but lazy was suitable for someone who had never ridden horses.   That is until one day, while riding, walking down the old farm lane toward the barn, she spooked and bolted. My skinny friend and I were riding double bareback.  She flew off the rear and landed like a feather.  Not me; as usual in life, I hung on as I slid sideways down and around her neck while continuing to hang onto her face halter. So, she kicked me to get me off her face!   I fell a mere two feet, but somehow those two feet fractured my left arm, swelling like angry storm waters in a raging river.

The local Dr. Pig, we will call him, tended to the healing of my arm while having dishonorable advances toward me.  Back to my Grandfather's relative in Colorado, right? My God, I was only sixteen years old. Back then, sixteen to a man was perfect.  Note the songs; She Was Only Sixteen by Sam Cooke; Your Sixteen Your Beautiful and Your Mine by Johnny Burnett; Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen by Neil Sedaka; Tramps and Thieves by Cher; Stray Cat Blues by the Stones and many more.  Basically, songs promoted the sexual permissiveness of young women.

Then during my physical therapy sessions, he began making more advances. Massaging my arm up to and under my arm, obviously close to my breasts.  I was so frightened, not to mention frozen I never returned to his office for years.  As well as, I never completed the healing therapy for my arm he oversaw. Back then, Physical Therapy was at your local GP's office.

He never gave up!  I re-connected with him years later as a physician during the abusive phase of my marriage to Ronnie Lee.  Dr. Pig had an excellent bedside manner, especially if he thought he could get you in it, and he eventually did.  He used the horrible situation I was in to use me.  I felt somewhat important seeing the infamous local surgeon, even if it was behind closed doors. A far "cry" from where I had been and was. Where else was I to get uplifted kudos? My family? My husband? His family? NOT! So, the Pig and I had a quiet affair for some time.  He told me all his troubles and vice versa. How sad I look back to see my lack of ability to see reality. At least I didn't have to deal with a Procto!!

I have always used the analogy of a man riding a motorcycle to a man’s need for a woman.  He rides with his legs spread, high handlebars giving him a sense of power, the gas tank, you, between his legs, revving his engine as he shifts his gears to the final ultimate ride!  He has found a home for hairy, my dears!!   And so, it was Dr. Pig who did also, I am embarrassed to say.

As time passed, I was hospitalized twice by him.  Once for pneumonia and later in life for the embarrassing hemorrhoidectomy. I must laugh at that one, considering I feel he made an “ass” of me in my ignorant neediness.

Until the time my father was hospitalized with a life-threatening condition.  I felt it was my KARMA and feared my father would die because of my sin. But no, Dr. Pig saved his life in little town USA hospital with all its/our secrets.

I knew he had more problems than I did somewhere inside my mind.  But in retrospect, I realize he had started his sick mental takedown of me years previously when I was sixteen.  One of those conquest things, in particular men.  Again, I did what was expected of me…..although my payoff believed I was bettering myself when in reality, I was digging another hole I’d have to deal with at some point in time, probably still do somewhere on the CD of life inside my head that no one sees or dreams or feels but me.  He was a band-aide for an open wound in my life.  As a professional, he could and should have tried to set me on an uphill course rather than push me further down the destructive rabbit hole I had already set in motion or was born into?? Heck, I wasn’t just falling; I was on a collision course.  I guess I was ready-made for him.  I was looking for an external answer to an internal problem.  I never stopped trying to make that method work for many years.

Dr. Pig moved from his little town shrine and remains an excellent unhappy surgeon who never figured life out.  From what I heard via the grapevine of Facebook, he was a cruel husband to his new wife.  At least I missed that bullet!

I continued with Ronnie Lee for a time, and to my knowledge, no one ever knew about the doctor and the young girl who didn’t realize her potential.  In my later years, when I visit the old small town, the old folks look at me and smile somewhat understandingly. Maturity shows us our genuine connection with one another even when it seems too late to use it in ways more beneficial to our lives.  It is possibly a step towards the level we will live in our next life. I can only hope and believe.

Ronnie Lee was having an affair after affair.  I had caught him many times, but I didn’t leave.  I was on a mission to fix his lousy reflection of himself. I think I wanted to be for others what no one had been for me, but that usually is ineffective and merely stole what little energy I had to start with.

One of his affairs was with the woman who lived behind us. One day I was doing dishes looking out the window, and saw them throwing crab apples at each other and giggling like children. It couldn't get more obvious than that. He would play with her little boy and take him in the truck he drove for a living, leaving his son Robbie behind.  Robbie was rejected many times by his father in his tender years and shot at with a gun in his teen years. Yes, by his father.

Ronnie Lee was not a good person mentally or physically, but then I also had my emotional curses going on.  Ronnie Lee had a bleeding ulcer, so he said.  One time while drunk and after he had hit me several times, he was on his knees crying for sympathy. He said he had thrown up blood…. so I called 9 1 1.   I knew he was simply trying to get out of how abusive he had been that day.  Our family doctor, not Dr. Pig.... knew how he treated me and figured he was lying about the blood because he needed redemption for hitting me the day before.

Doc said, “Let’s see how sick he really is?”

He ordered tubes for every orifice of Ronnie's body.  I was thrilled.  I thought it might make a difference, but, of course, it did not.   From somewhere in my mind, I had made another wrong decision.  Not to leave him but to get pregnant once more and then leave.  This was my new mission.  What was I thinking?  I will tell you.  I felt that my firstborn Robbie needed a brother or sister.  I believed Robbie shouldn’t be alone in this world; if anything happened to me, he would have blood family.  So, I enticed Ronnie Lee.... and got pregnant.  He said the child wasn’t his, but it was.  Ronnie was also a pathological liar; therefore, he believed everything he said.  He was also diagnosed as a sociopath.  I was planning to leave as his behavior was becoming more destructive, and I was terrified of him.  I recall one day, he asked me to sit in the driver’s seat of our car while he did something to repair the engine.  Hood up and me behind the wheel in the driveway.  I wanted to kill him.  That was the only time I ever wanted to seriously kill anyone.  All I had to do was step on the gas and run over him, but I did not.  I left him and returned to the frying pan farm with my parents.  They were not my favorite people, but “it “was all I had.

Since Robbie's birth, my mother became even more controlling, telling me everything I did wrong for or with him.  No, I didn’t; I loved that little boy with all my heart.  He was the cutest and sweetest boy in the world to me.  My mother would complain I dressed him wrong and would physically take him away from me.  I couldn’t do anything right, according to her.  She was cruel, and I was living with her and expecting another child there.

One day Ronnie Lee called the farm and wanted to talk to me. I said, fine…..so Mother and Dad reluctantly dropped me off at our friend's home, where Ronnie Lee was waiting.  My Dad was uncomfortable with this situation, but I told him I would be fine.  They drove away, and I went inside.  Another man owned the house, but when I came in, he left the room for the kitchen to give us privacy, or so I thought.  That is when Ronnie Lee began to beat me up even though I was seven months pregnant.  He kicked me in the stomach and threw me all around the room.  I remember being more terrified than I had ever been. I realized he would kill me, so he didn't have to pay for another "kid."

I loved that baby inside me.  The man that owned the home would not help me even though I cried out for help.  He hid and watched the beating of the pregnant woman. I prayed as hard as I had ever prayed for my parents to return.  And they did!! I have no idea why they did, but they did.  I suspect it was my father’s intuition.  My Father and I have spiritual sensing, and it paid off.  When Ronnie Lee saw my parents return and pull up in front of the house, he ran out the back door like a scared rabbit.  Dad told me he just had a feeling, and I thank God for that GUIDE or ANGEL messenger who got through the veil to my dad.

I divorced the bastard in 1972.  I was in my early twenties living back at the funny farm with one four-year-old and expecting another.  It was life nightmare number twenty-two, plus I developed severe anxiety, making breathing difficult. The stress was unbelievable.  Mother had taken over entirely with Robbie, and her perfectionism and narcissism were horrible.  Dad just mumbled and went about his business outside.

My ninth-month pregnant, I decided to ride my bike into town, thinking I would go into labor and get it over with.   It was sweltering, and I was about halfway to town when I realized I had made a dangerous mistake that could hurt my baby and me.    Thank God again because along came my dad in his old blue truck because he was worried about me.  He put my bike in the back and me in the front, and we went home, no words spoken.

My parents hosted a party a day or two after the bicycle incident.  The gathering was about advertising the program and products of a multi-level marketing company mother had signed up with.  Something like Shaklee, I think. 

My luck, I went into labor around seven p.m.   I was in the upstairs bedroom, deciding to wait until the contractions were good and strong. I wondered if I would sit at that hospital all night again like the last time. Enema's, poking, prodding, and aloneness!  By the time anyone came up and noticed, I was really in labor, meaning seven centimeters dilated.   Mother drove me to the local hospital, dropped me off, and returned to her party.

A nurse named Mrs. Schumann spent the entire night with me.   She was the mother of a lovely boy I graduated with named Jimmy Don.   I will never forget her.  No one ever did anything nice for me like she did.  I mean Auntie brought me nice used clothes…. I can’t think of anything else, even though I am sure there were more decent memories.

I was in the delivery room with Dr. Reiner, who had just informed me the baby’s head was crowning, when I decided to QUIT and mentally fell apart. I told Dr. Reiner I couldn’t do it…. I had an awful life, no way to care for my poor baby.  Old Doc Reiner left the crowning baby, walked up and stood near my head, bent over, and asked me if I wanted to give my baby away.

I said, “No.”

He said, “Then let’s do this; you can do this!” 

He continued cheering me on like I was his favorite football team.   And so I did.   Richard (Richie) was born that night with me and the Doc and his nurses.   I loved Richie so much.   He was six pounds thirteen ounces with black hair and blue eyes.  He was a gentle baby and a gentleman.