Start of Recovery

            I went through a period of healing for both my mind and body. I can’t say for sure how long the period lasted—after all, I think I am still in it. Getting Dean’s disease out of me wasn’t easy. Like a recovering addict, I felt the symptoms of withdrawal. But instead of muscle aches, insomnia, or dilated pupils, mine manifested as short excursions. I eased myself off of year-long romps around the country, dropping down eventually to short day trips to sate my wanderlust. Occasionally, I would have my moments of weakness and, in a flurry of madness, run outside my apartment to my beaten-up jalopy and drive somewhere—away. When I would come to my senses after some indeterminate amount of time had passed, I would have to check a local newspaper (in whatever town I had ended up) to see just how bad my relapse had been. In one particularly bad relapse, I drove straight to Los Angeles—a fairly far drive from where I was living at the time. When I was again lucid, I sought out a doctor in the city. As one would do with restaurants, I asked locals for recommendations. And, as with restaurants, there was an opinionated divide about the best doctor in town. I noticed a trend in my recommenders and the different doctors they exalted. The white people of Los Angeles were all over the place with their preferred physicians. However, most African-Americans I asked had the same man in mind: Dr. Robert Joseph Pershing Foster. The choice was clear—would you pick a random diner with a singular half-hearted endorsement or a five-star restaurant with rave reviews?

            I found myself in Dr. Foster’s office on a hot summer afternoon the day after I had finished gathering my intel. The waiting room was pristine. A receptionist sat behind a thin sheet of glass, and there was a coffee table in the middle of the room with a pile of magazines. A vase of irises provided some of the only color in the otherwise white room. I was the only non-African American waiting for Dr. Foster that day. When Dr. Foster was finally ready, a nurse took me past two closed doors before depositing me at the end of the short hallway. A thin Africa-American man wearing a crisp doctor’s coat walked through the door. Embroidered in red just above his left breast pocket was Dr. Robert Foster. I found it interesting that he hadn’t chosen to include his two middle names that his recommenders had called him by. He extended his hand, and with a firm shake introduced himself. “Hi, I’m Dr. Robert Foster.” This was my first introduction to a new hero of the road.