escape from portland
short fiction - by Brian Clark
Baja California, January 2021
Why was the doctor in central Baja by himself in the middle of a global pandemic? In short, because he didn’t know when he’d get the opportunity again.
A little context. Up until 4 months ago, the doctor was working full-time in Portland, Oregon. That was after 16 years of post-college training in science and medicine (four years of med school, five years in grad school getting his PhD, one year of post-doctoral research, one year of general surgery internship, four years of diagnostic radiology residency, and one year of neuroradiology fellowship). The longest span of time off he had over that period was 4 weeks during his intern year—two of which were spent catching up on sleep and questioning his life decisions.
For the past several years, the doctor listened with envy to his friend’s stories of surfing winter point breaks in Baja. Turns out January or “Funuary,” as his friend called it, was just the right time to get an efficacious dose of surf, sunshine, and solitude in the Mexican desert. Or so he told him. The seasonal migration helped get one through the damp, grey winters of the Pacific Northwest. The bleak winter can seep into the psyche and weigh down even the cheeriest amongst us. Almost a year ago now, the doctor made up his mind that he was going to leave his full-time job. He worked through the spring of 2020 and the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. His last day of full-time radiology work was at the end of August.
Between the summer of 2020 and now some big things happened. The pandemic, at least in the United States, surged in wave after wave. By the time the doctor left for Baja it had killed over 300,000 Americans—over 3,000 deaths in the US per day—setting all time records. His good friend, with whom he’d been dreaming of going on this trip with for years, just welcomed a new baby boy into the world and moved to Canada to be with his partner and baby. Days before the doctor’s departure, he got the first of two doses of the new COVID vaccine, recently approved for emergency use by the FDA. Southern California and Baja were experiencing their worst-yet COVID outbreaks. Daily hospitalizations and deaths were at all time highs. His mother was recently discharged from the hospital after treatment for COVID pneumonia and was struggling through a slow recovery at home. This was definitely not the time to embark on a month long road trip to Baja. Clearly. But that’s exactly what he did.
It took the doctor three days to get to San Diego. He avoided everyone. He front-loaded his driving and made it just south of San Francisco on day one. He lucked out; a friend said it was cool for him to park his van overnight at his place in Pacifica. An XL northwest swell was filling in and the doctor heard the big sets crashing in the dark from inside his van. He settled into the bunk bed and drifted to sleep.
The next morning, the doctor took in the views from the hilltop residence under renovation. Views to the pacific over the high school football field and a few paces down the street, a view through the trees to the bay with the familiar state beach framed by a tall rocky cape. What a spot. The doctor’s friend wasn’t actually there. His friend was in San Francisco proper with his family.
“Be careful,” his friend texted him.
“the place is basically a construction site.”
Scenes from Home Alone II, lost in New York played in his head. The doctor settled on that movie in his hotel bed weeks ago during a locums gig in Astoria. Holiday nostalgia then. Serendipity now.
The doctor pressed south to LA. He made it there just after dark. He figured he would park in the Angeles National Forest for the night. It looked like it was up in the mountains above LA on google maps. He squinted his eyes to the oncoming headlights and merged onto highway two and wound his way up the canyon road. The doctor passed the national forest sign. There was a pull-out for a scenic viewpoint and it looked over all of LA. There were teenagers and twenty-somethings getting high. Two women sat on a tailgate. They looked out at the city lights and spoke to each other and drank wine. He noticed the paucity of lights under the horizon. It was the ocean. Downtown LA twinkled in front of him and the industrial lights of an oil refinery were off to his left. The view said nothing of the virus overwhelming the city.
The doctor sat in the driver’s seat of his van, LA and the night sky filling the windshield. That’s when the fast-and-the-furious-type, souped up car parked behind him started its engine. The car revved and revved. Loud successive gun-shot-loud backfiring or tailpipe obnoxiousness ricocheted off the canyon walls. This went on for five minutes straight. The tailgate wine drinkers mumbled to each other and flashed side-eyes at the obnoxious driver. This was no place to sleep for the night, he thought to himself or maybe said aloud quietly.
Just as he was about to start the van, a large flatbed tow truck pulled in and blocked his exit. Trapped, the doctor waited and took in the view for another 20 minutes or so. Two men loaded the tricked out street car onto the back of the truck and eventually drove off. The doctor pulled up to the exit of the vista lot. He snapped his head to each side and strained to see around the curves, weary of oncoming cars. He heard more loud street-racer cars whining in crescendos and decrescendos as they maneuvered through the sharp turns up into the canyon. This must be a thing. They must come here to do this all the time.
With no head lights in sight and a pause in the thunderous mufflers, he was off. Two bends up the road the doctor pulled over into a turnout. It was across the street from the ranger station. With the van between him and the road, he got out and urinated into the darkness. The stars were coming out and he could clearly make out Orion, even with the nearby glow of the city. He wondered if a mountain lion was silently watching him from beyond the bushes. The doctor was pretty tall prey. Unlikely, he concluded and climbed back into the van. He swiveled the front passenger seat around and locked the doors. He made his dinner sandwich and drank a beer. He pulled the partition curtain closed, wrote a little in his journal then put his ear plugs in and went to bed. Good night LA.
