I used to work with this Oregon State police Lt. who had this lip thing. Whenever there was a lot of stress going on -- major murders, bad accidents, bad staff -- his lip would swell.

It's an odd manifestation of stress, having your upper lip swell that away. Turns out he had a peanut allergy. Me? I'm pretty sure my upper lip swelling is due to stress. It started the first time during Veterans Day in DC. At first I thought it was a cold sore but then it hurt too badly and puffed  up as if I'd had collagen injections. It's the pouty lip in reverse. More of a duck lip look. Not a good look on me. Likely not a good look on anyone.

They referred Tim from the ER last Wednesday to a local doctor, who, according to a web search, specializes in maternity care. Turns out that doctor works at the migrant clinic in town. We didn't know that until we showed up for the appointment yesterday.

Oregon is one of the few states in the nation to lead the charge on health care for all. When John Kitzhaber was governor, he pushed for the Oregon Health Plan, a means of providing coverage to the uninsured, particularly children. The migrant clinic is supported in a large part by funding from the Oregon Health Plan. We have insurance so I don't know why they'd waste good tax dollars that away.  

Hermiston, an agri-based economy, is 40 percent Hispanic. It's a community Tim has felt right at home in, since he spent so many of his formative years in a primarily native Hispanic culture in South America. He can speak and read Spanish. Sometimes, the name -- Zacharias -- gets mistaken for a South American name.

Maybe the ER doctor thought Tim was Hispanic. He does have dark hair and dark eyes. 

"Don't you think Poe and I look alike?" he said last night, holding his face next to the beagle that poses as a boy.

"Yeah," I said. "The noses are very similar."

"No," he said. "Our eyes. They're both brown."

"Yeah. But Poe's eyes are wider and don't have as many wrinkles around them."

I'd already called the VP at Good Shepherd Community Hospital and given him the run down on Tim's visit to the ER last week, and implored him to find out why in the name of collards and green beans would the ER Dr. have sent Tim home before any family arrived, before ordering a follow-up MRI. I'd mentioned that it seemed to be a formula for liability had, God forbid, something gone wrong over the long weekend.

He apologized but I could hear it in his tone -- oh, that Zacharias woman again, such a pain in the butt. He remembers me from my reporting days when the hospital had faced accreditation issues and I'd held their feet to the fire over that.  

We waited for an hour.

Tim had a basketball jamboree at 5 p.m. He was set to drive the players in the van  down to Stanfield. At 3:30 he said, "I can only do this for another 20 minutes and then I've got to go."

There were half-a-dozen people in the waiting room. Three of them were babies. 

Finally, they called us back. They took the usual measurements. His blood pressure was great. His pulse elevated slightly.

The doctor knocked. Opened the door and strode in. She wasn't very tall and not very old.

"Hi," she said, offering her hand to Tim. "I'm Dr. Serrano. So you have a brain tumor."

Then she sat down.

She is lucky I didn't tackle her. It took all the restraint I had not to slap her upside her head.

"Oh My God!" I said. I didn't mean it in vain and I don't think God thought I meant it that way. "What is the matter with you?"

Tim turned, held up his hand to shush me.

I am not a woman prone to being shushed.

"She barges in here and that's how she tells us you have a brain tumor? Blurts it out like that? What is wrong with you?" I said turning to the woman again. "That's your best bedside manner? Incredible."

"Oh," the doctor said, backing up. "You didn't know?"

"No," Tim said.

"The ER doctor didn't tell you? I thought he'd told you."

"How do you know there's a brain tumor?" I asked.

"The CT scan," she said, reading from the report.

"So the ER doctor knew that Tim had a brain tumor and yet he released him last Wednesday without any family around and without a follow up appointment for a MRI?" I asked.

"He should never have released him," she said.

                                    -------------

You always wonder how those moments happen. Those life-altering moments. My sis and I used to laugh at all the television musicals.

"Can you imagine if throughout life any time something major happened somebody struck up the band?" I asked her once when we were just girls. "You're leaving for college and your mother starts singing 'Don't go!'"

She laughed so loud.

I keep hearing that song by the Nashville singer I met in Monroeville, Alabama last summer, the one with the lyrics that say something about being prepared for the wrecking ball.

If life were a musical, that's the song that would've played at the moment Dr. Serrano walked in and announced, like she was telling us we were going to be the parents of triplets -- So you have a brain tumor.

There was even a distinct little lilt to her voice. An "oh, goody" sound.

Tim and I went to see a movie on Sunday. Australia with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. It's worth the ticket price just to see Hugh Jackman without a shirt on. Hey. I'm just saying. It's a terrific movie but the best line in the whole thing is a line from the orphaned boy in the movie.

"I will sing you to me," he tells Kidman, a woman he calls Missues Boss.

Maybe life really is a musical. Only the background music that is playng throughout all the moments, big and small, is God singing us to him.

I can hear him even through the clamor and silence of a restless morning.