Doppler Effect
Saigon, Vietnam, April 1975 - The chopper’s rotors whir on the American Embassy rooftop – desperate shouts ascend the stairs, rising above the human chaos in the courtyard below. The family forms a human chain to board. Five-year-old Charlene clutches the hand of her Vietnamese mother, with toddler, infant, and thick dossier of paperwork from their American father. Charlene squeezes into the chopper, crouches beneath her mother, cupping her hands against the window to see her homeland for the last time.
She arrives in Florida as I prepare to graduate from high school in Delaware. Some twenty-five years later, we become professional colleagues in a pediatric healthcare system. Cross-campus responsibilities with regular travel move us into each other’s orbit. Our relationship evolves from cool professionalism, to casual chats outside of work, to a close friendship I believe is an abiding one. We rejoice together, mourn our sorrows awash in each other’s tears, whisper our secrets for ten years.
A serious ethics incident erupts in Florida. It goes beyond the firing of a colleague we both know and trusted. Outside counsel arrives - Charlene and I, among others, are deposed in nerve wracking recorded sessions.
Ultimately, Charlene feels uncomfortable, misunderstood, as though her personal integrity has been impugned. She gives four weeks notice over the phone that August - preparing to relocate to Texas with her family in time to register the children for school.
Time and travel schedules do not permit in-person farewells. We say goodbye in a tearful phone call, hugs impossible, our arms 750 miles apart. Her absence leaves an imprint.
I imagine Charlene’s family boarding the plane, hand in hand. Perhaps her own five-year-old perches at the window, hands cupped, peering at the ground below.
Jet engines roar on the tarmac. Vibrations swell, hearts flutter, takeoff.
The next generation watches the only homeland they have known recede.
And she is gone.
*Original artwork - “Saigon ‘75” by Audrey Riddle, mixed media on birch cradle board.
*Author’s note: To protect her privacy, I have changed the name of the main character.