Bringing in Finn Read Online Free

teaching hospital, offering acupuncture sessions with a supervising instructor and team of students several afternoons a week. For my first consultation, I met with Elizabeth Jane, who, at thirty-five, was the youngest female supervising instructor. She was intelligent and comely, with round brown eyes behind black-framed glasses.
    I told her about not having had my period, and Elizabeth felt confident acupuncture would help my body resume a regular menstrual cycle and ovulation—reestablishing the balance of my reproductive system at a root level.
    I started seeing Elizabeth once a week. Each session, she guided her students to insert a series of needles into my hands, legs, feet, low abdomen, and ovaries. I looked forward to the treatments and COM’s utilitarian space; the smell of moxa, with notes of deep spice and earth, that permeated the treatment rooms and hallways. During the treatments, I liked looking at the posters of the meridian channels taped up on the painted yellow walls.
    At my second treatment, Elizabeth informed me that she was going to give me loose herbs to make into a tea.

    â€œI’ll send you home with instructions,” she told me. “The tea has to be made precisely. The process takes about two hours, but the loose herbs are much more potent than taking them in pill form.”
    Having worked with dried herbs at my clinic in London, I was thrilled by the idea of making my own tea. Elizabeth led me into the room where the herbs were stored. The room was cool, windowless and temperature-controlled, to maintain the herbs’ integrity and medicinal properties. I took a tour of the large glass jars, delighting in the variety of large and small leaves, the spore-bellied mushrooms, and silken strands of lemongrass. Elizabeth carefully picked herbs from at least six different jars and folded the contents into a piece of stiff white butcher paper. She wrote my name on the package with a Sharpie and handed it to me. I carried the packet home as if it contained precious gems.
    My affinity for the tea was matched proportionately by Bill’s intense dislike.
    â€œWhat’s the problem?” I asked, when he groaned as I began to prepare the tea for week three. “You don’t have to drink it.”
    â€œThe smell is disgusting, and it’s laborious. I cannot imagine what it must taste like.”
    The tea was acrid and, truthfully, hard to get down. I developed a strategy to avoid having to taste it: I poured it into my throat without letting it touch my tongue, then chased it with small sips of grapefruit or some other juice.
    â€œIt’s not so bad,” I said, not wanting to concede anything negative about the tea. I shoved the juice glass into the dishwasher and licked my lips, pretending the taste was delicious.
    â€œIt’s supposed to be very potent,” I said, continuing my defense.
    Bill pantomimed throwing up, until I laughed and dropped the strainer I’d been using to distill the herbs into the pot.

    â€œSeriously, though, this tea could help me have periods and then help us get pregnant,” I said.
    â€œWith what? Rosemary’s baby?”
    I shook my head at him but didn’t resent his complaints. Despite his protesting, I knew Bill supported my efforts. He sat with me in the kitchen, preparing food for dinner, while I got the tea ready. If he finished the cooking prep, we’d look through cookbooks for inspiration or he’d play a bootleg recording of a new band he’d discovered. Bill was a drummer in bands since high school. He was shaped by the Who, the Clash, and Rush the way I was by the Brontës, Tolstoy, and Sylvia Plath. His passion was what attracted me to him most strongly when we met; art bonded us in spirit long before we took formal vows of marriage.
    Once the tea was ready, I’d pour it into a glass jar and put it on the top shelf of the refrigerator. Bill said it would be better to keep it outside.