They spooned their bodies tightly together for several hours afterward; both of them slept well that night.
The next day a moving company arrived at the house and took away three loads of her parents’ possessions. The first was to the local Goodwill store, a second to an auction house with several valuable items, and a third to a storage unit. There were many things that Roxanne simply couldn’t part with, dating back to her childhood; she would arrange to have it all shipped north at a later date. They filled dozens of garbage bags with things that were spoiled or worthless — Archie ran it all to a local recycle yard and for a small fee, they were rid of it.
Just after lunch, a local realtor rang the bell and Roxanne invited her in to evaluate the home. Two gardeners were weeding the flower beds around the yard and cutting the lawn. A guy from a pool service was cleaning the pool and bringing its chemistry back to the correct levels. The realtor spent two hours carefully inspecting and measuring the home and taking photos. She suggested an asking price that surprised Roxanne — much higher than she’d anticipated. She signed the listing paperwork and after the realtor left, they returned to cleaning and polishing the empty house, that now smelled of Pine-Sol, Febreze, and Windex. They returned to the Four Seasons late that afternoon.
The next morning at first light, they drove to Saint Andrew State Park and in shorts and bare feet, walked the beach to Sandy Point, jutting out into Saint Andrew Bay. Archie carried a box he’d retrieved from the back seat of the Tacoma. It was so early, there were no other people around yet and they watched the sunrise together.
With Archie holding one plastic bag and Roxanne the second, they sprinkled half of her parent’s ashes along the tide-line. This park had been an important part of her folks’ lives for the past decade — she was sure they would approve of this. They spent the rest of their day, lazily exploring the area, driving west to Pensacola on a sight-seeing drive. They had take-out and a cold beer on the beach at Henderson Beach State Park, watching the sunset. Early the next morning, Archie and Roxanne left Panama City and drove back to their home in Hickoryvale.
That was half of her parents’ ashes scattered — Roxanne had other plans for the remainder, but it would be over a year before she would see them through.
The realtor had assured Roxanne there was strong demand for bungalows like this, and true to her word, it sold three days later after a spirited bidding war, for well over the asking price. A package of papers was couriered to Roxanne who signed them in front of a local notary public, then couriered them all back. The sale was out of escrow in a month and as the sole heir, the funds were transferred to her account. Finally, Roxanne felt like this terrible part of her life was over.
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Since moving into Archie’s house from the hospital and deciding she was going to live here with him rather than returning home to Canada, Roxanne had been mulling over two projects she wanted to undertake.
First, she wanted to become a General Practitioner again. It would be insane, spending all that money and investing nine years of her life in university and medical school, then letting her skills atrophy. With much advice from Charlie White, she contacted the State Medical Board, asking what steps must be taken to become licensed to practice medicine in the state of Georgia. Because of the pandemic, the state was desperate for doctors, nurses, and all manner of health care professionals. Her request was ‘kicked up’ the chain of command. She received a call a week later from a high-ranking bureaucrat, who set up a meeting and interviewed her for a half-day, joined by two board doctors. After receiving copies of her resume and scholastic credentials, they asked permission to run a security check on her background and to interview former co-workers and managers in Canada, which she willingly gave. A month later after writing an exam — possibly a record for licensing a foreign MD — her application was approved and Roxanne was once again seeing patients.
The second project; she wanted to take over Archie’s aviary. It was obvious his time was more valuably spent in his shop. She’d read several books now and found an online forum with thousands of members, and reams of information on any and every aspect of beekeeping. Archie was delighted when she broached the subject. Most of her spare time when not seeing patients was now dedicated to her bees. She spent hours out in the aviary in her bee suit with a smoker, surrounded by stacked wooden hives, and hundreds of thousands of bees.
A few months ago, one of the town’s three remaining doctors had simply moved away, leaving his little one-man clinic empty. After obtaining permission to take it over, Archie and Charlie White went to work on it. Charlie supplied mostly information about what supplies and equipment would be required for a working clinic — Archie supplied the skills to do the work. In just over a week, it was ready to reopen.
Roxanne hired a clinic manager, Maggie Stockland, a registered nurse from the hospital, ready to retire from her profession — she was exhausted, having worked twelve to sixteen hour days, seven days per week, for the past several months. She was perfect for the new job. She immediately understood the filing and billing system and was qualified to help Roxanne treat patients with minor injuries, give injections, change dressings, and the like.
After two weeks, Roxanne and Maggie were turning away new patients. She had decided they would work eight-hour days and five day weeks — there was no point in once again burning Maggie and herself out. But deep down, Roxanne didn’t really like this clinic and yearned for one like she’d had back in her Canadian hometown of Brockleville, attached to the house — the one her father built thirty years ago.
The former owners of Archie’s property had constructed a large detached triple-car garage, forty feet away from the main house, now full of old broken-down farm machinery and equipment, none of which they would ever need. Archie and Roxanne spent a couple of hours one morning, carefully inspecting it.
“I can’t understand what they had in mind when they build it,” said Archie. “Why is it this far away from the house?”
“They must have decided they needed storage more than they needed a garage,” she said.
“Well, fortunately they built it with ten-foot headroom, so we can suspend the ceiling and hide the ventilation system up in that space. Either hot or cold air can come out of vents in the ceiling. And an exhaust system can suck the stale or contaminated air out and blow it through a stack up through the roof.”
Roxanne made a detailed sketch for their draftsman of what she envisioned. There would be plenty of room for everything she needed including a reception area, a small office, a waiting room for up to six people, two examination rooms, a washroom, and a small lab. They would use the kitchen of the main house as a break room for Roxanne and Maggie Stockland.