Limbo

If you haven’t followed Our Story, you might want to start at the beginning.

My father was on his way to the ER with Sailor. Apparently all the laughing and a reaction to the tape used on the incision had caused “stuff” to start seeping out from the bandages.

Since I’m not one to back down from a threat, I made my father take Sailor to the ER while I tended to our daughter and tried to get some sleep.

Sailor was fixed up at the ER and sent home. He spent the next month recuperating from his surgery.

The surgery put Sailor in a strange situation. All his nursing school classmates graduated that May, but because he had to withdraw from the spring semester he didn’t have enough clinical hours to graduate and was missing a few credit hours. The problem was the classes he needed were only available in the Spring and the Navy wasn’t going to pay for Sailor to spend another year in school.

We spent several weeks in limbo trying to work something out where Sailor could still graduate with his nursing degree in a time frame that was acceptable to the Navy. This was extremely stressful because we were now strapped with three years of student loans and looking at the possibility that Sailor might have to return to his old job in the Navy without a degree.

Finally, the University came up with a special program that would allow Sailor to finish his degree in November. It was something that hadn’t been done before but everyone wanted him to graduate rather than drop out.

He began independent study work and also picked up a part time job as a tech in the burn unit at the local hospital. Not only would it give him medical experience it was extra money every month to pay the bills.

While it was great experience working at the burn unit, every day at the hospital made Sailor more and more certain he did not want to be a nurse. He felt like the entire thing was a huge mistake and he wanted to give it all up and go back to his old job.

We spent hours talking and arguing about his situation. While it was a possibility to quit and go back to his old job it would most likely end his career in the Navy and then he’d be without a degree or a job. I told him once he graduated it would get better. Being a nursing student was not the same as being a nurse and I was sure he would find a place in nursing he would enjoy.

We were excited to find out a few months after Sailor’s surgery that we were expecting another baby. Since we had such a terrible time with baby boy Sailor was pretty much convinced he didn’t want any more children. I really wanted three and it took over a year to convince Sailor that not all babies were as sick as our little boy.

A few days after we told everyone we were expecting we lost the baby.

I couldn’t help but think it was because we bombed the house for bugs a few days earlier. I’ll never know for sure, but we’ve never bombed our house for bugs since.

Our cute little house on the tree lined street was wonderful, except it was always crawling with bugs.

First there were the carpenter ants.

During a bad storm a tree fell on our roof. The roof was repaired but not before the wood got wet and made a great home for the carpenter ants. We started seeing them here and there and told our landlord. He said he would send someone out to take care of it.

They didn’t come soon enough. One evening we were eating dinner with friends, spaghetti with clam sauce (I’ll never forget), and a carpenter ant dropped on the table. We all dismissed it as a random bug and then another fell, and then another. They started falling out of the light in our ceiling like raindrops.

We all started screaming and I was frantically trying to protect the clam sauce our friends had prepared. By the time they stopped falling there were several hundred ants on our table and dining area. We did what any other poor college students who had splurged on an expensive meal would do. We spread a sheet down on the living room floor and ate our dinner there.

We also had bees. The giant oak tree in the front yard had a massive nest and on certain days it was like a game to get into the house without letting a bee in with you. Once evening Sailor had gone to get a sub for me. He walked into the house and headed towards the kitchen to get a plate for the sub. After a few seconds I heard a scream and then a crash. I ran into the kitchen to find Sailor standing with his shirt off and my sub all over the floor.

Apparently a bee had flown up Sailor’s shirt and stung him. He threw the sub in the air while frantically trying to get his shirt off. I could not believe he had dropped my sub because of a bee sting! I mean don’t get between me and my Subway! He went back to Subway and explained what happend. They felt so bad for him they gave him a replacement sub for free!

The roaches were the worst. You have’t experienced roaches until you live in Florida. For some reason they liked our fireplace, and a few times a year they would launch an attack. Once the fearless exterminator was at our house when an ash covered roach dashed out from our fireplace. He smashed it with his bare hands. I was grossed out and impressed all at the same time.

We loved our little house but sure was buggy!

We kept busy that summer throwing birthday parties for our kids and getting them ready for the school year. Our little girl would be starting kindergarten, I couldn’t believe it! She was always a social and outgoing girl so we knew she was just going to love her class.

The first day of school we dropped her off in a room full of kids we didn’t know. It didn’t feel quite right, but I didn’t think there were any other options. Christian school was too expensive and the only homeschoolers I knew were weird.

Just as we started our school year routine we found out we were expecting again. We were excited but didn’t want to tell anyone because of what happened before. We decided we would wait until I was farther along before we spilled the beans.

Sailor finished his classes in November and was commissioned. We had a big ceremony and his parents threw a large party afterwards. It kind of felt like the wedding we never had. Except Sailor was the center of attention, not me. 🙂

The movers came to pack up our house three days before Christmas that year. I couldn’t believe we would be leaving our little house on the tree lined street. For some reason I thought we would always live there, we had put down roots and it was hard to think about leaving our friends and family.

We wouldn’t be leaving quite yet though, Sailor was going to school in Rhode Island for six weeks and I would stay with my parents while he was gone. Moving back in with my parents felt strange, but I didn’t want to stay by myself for six weeks so it worked.

Sailor and I talked frequently while he was in training, mostly we talked about how cold Rhode Island was in January. It was so cold the door handles of his little red Volkswagon snapped off when his roommate tried to get into the car. I couldn’t imagine such cold weather, but I didn’t have to. In early February I took a trip up to Rhode Island to see Sailor. When I wasn’t freezing to death it was fun.

While the kids were in school I spent my time researching our next duty station, Portsmouth, Virginia. We were only given three choices and Portsmouth seemed the most affordable out of the three.

My number one priority was finding a house near a good school. Before my kids were school-aged I didn’t realize that your entire life revolved around school districts. I grew frustrated as I started to realize that all the houses in the good school districts were out of our price range.

The plan was for Sailor to finish school in Rhode Island and then go to Virginia to find us a place to live. The day he graduated he called to let me know he was on the road. I told him to call me when he arrived in Virginia. He was getting a late start, the weather was bad, and his car was old, plus Sailor had a horrible sense of direction. I was worried he might not make it to Virginia until the middle of the night.

I heard from Sailor several hours later. I was worried because he should have been very close to Portsmouth but he told me he was at a gas station in a city nowhere near his route. We only talked for a few minutes and he said he had to get back on the road. I was sure Sailor was totally lost.

I went to bed very worried.

I woke up the next morning with no word from Sailor. I was sure he would be calling any minute. But he never called. It had been almost sixteen hours since he left Rhode Island and it was only a ten hour drive to Virginia. I told myself that he probably checked into the hotel late into the evening and was still asleep.

The day went on and still no word from Sailor. I was growing more and more concerned. I called the people we knew in Virginia to see if they had heard from him and they hadn’t.

It had been almost twenty-four hours since he left Rhode Island and except for our brief phone call, no one had seen or heard from Sailor. Where was he?