But with every minute I spend in his magnetic presence, it becomes clear that nothing about my association with this man will be simple.
“Carmen? Are you okay?” He seems genuinely concerned as he watches me across the table.
“I’m fine, and to answer your question, I’m sure we can find a way to make sure the right people hear about your outreach efforts without making it into a media circus.”
“That’s good,” he says, sounding relieved. “The last thing I’m looking for is any more media attention.”
“You promised you’d tell me the whole story of what happened in New York.”
“I know.” He puts down his fork, wipes his mouth and sips his margarita, taking a full minute to gather himself before he speaks. “You should know one thing before you hear anything else.”
“What’s that?”
“I thought I loved her, and I assumed she loved me, too. I thought I’d finally found ‘the one.’” His entire demeanor changes. “I’m sure you think you’ve got me pegged. Reasonably handsome dude, a doctor, must be a player, must have a different woman in his bed every night, and so on.”
“Those thoughts never crossed my mind.”
He smiles, but it’s a sad version of the earlier smiles that lit up his entire face. “Sure they didn’t. The truth is, I work like a fiend. Or I used to work like a fiend, back when I had a job and a research team and surgeries scheduled back to back. I’d work sixteen or eighteen hours straight without blinking an eye. I had no time to be a player, and besides, I’m just not wired that way.”
“How’re you wired?”
“I always imagined that once my training was finished, I’d find someone I liked well enough to spend forever with and get married and have some kids. I never had the desire or time to chase a different woman every night. That’s not to say that some of my doctor friends don’t do that, because they do. But it wasn’t my thing.”
He takes another sip of his drink and props his elbows on the table. “I met Ginger at a fundraiser for childhood cancer. A doctor I went to medical school with had invited me. He’s a pediatric oncologist now and was one of the sponsors. Since my research focuses on malignant pediatric brain tumors, he thought I might be interested in the event. I was by myself at the bar when she approached me. We started talking. She was funny and beautiful, and it’d been a long time since I’d taken even five minutes for myself. When she asked if I wanted to get a nightcap after the event, I was all in.”
The retelling of this story seems to pain him, and I feel for him, even if my goal is to help him without getting overly involved. That goal slips further out of reach with every minute I spend with him. I like him. I don’t want to like him, but I do.
“So we went to the bar in the hotel where the fundraiser was held, and we continued to talk and laugh. Pretty soon it was last call, and we were the only ones left in the bar. When she produced a room key and asked if I wanted to join her upstairs, I didn’t hesitate. I’d had more fun with her than I’d had with any woman in years. That was the start of it.”
“How long were you with her before you learned the truth?”
“Three months. And I own the fact that I should’ve asked more questions, but I was busier than hell at work and with her if I wasn’t working. It was the most fun I’d had since before med school. I fell completely in love with her, or so I thought.”
“She never mentioned her husband or children in that time?”
“Not once. With hindsight, I can see that she was intentionally vague about her life away from me. She told me she was on several boards, including the organization that had the fundraiser the night we met, and her volunteer work kept her super busy. I also realized, after the fact, that she was intentional about us not being seen together in public after that first night. She told me she wanted to hibernate with me, and that was more than fine with me. After spending ten or twelve hours in an OR, I was fine with a home-cooked meal and a night in bed with her.
“By the time she invited me to her home in the Hamptons for the weekend, it never would’ve occurred to me that she was married or had children.”
“The thing I don’t get is if she wanted out of the marriage, why didn’t she just ask for a divorce?”
“I didn’t understand that, either, but later I learned that it was about humiliating him with a younger man who, in her words, was everything the husband wasn’t—young, sexy, hot in bed, successful in a way the husband would never be. It had nothing at all to do with me and everything to do with paying her husband back for years of ignoring her as well as protecting her bank account. Or something like that. I may never know the full story of what went on between them. One thing I do know is she never intended for it to become public. That wasn’t part of her plan. The fact that her kids were deeply hurt is what bothers me the most.”
“Because of what happened in your own family.”
“Yeah. It’s the worst thing ever to have everyone in school find out that one of your parents has been having an affair. Kids have no ability to understand that shit, and it shouldn’t be something they have to deal with.”
The forceful way he says that tells me he’s never gotten over what his philandering father did.
“It’s really important to me that you know, that everyone knows, there’s no way I would’ve been part of something like this if I’d known the truth. And yes, in this day and age, anyone with a cell phone has the ability to find out anything they need to know about anyone else. But it never occurred to me that I needed to be suspicious of her. I thought I’d finally found someone I could spend my life with. Instead I found myself embroiled in a scandal that screwed up my entire life and threatened a career I’ve given everything to. Sometimes I still can’t believe it actually happened.”
“I’m really sorry she did that to you.”
He looks up at me, his expression madly vulnerable. “You believe me?”
“Of course I do.”
He exhales a deep breath. “I’m sure some of the people I worked with in New York couldn’t believe I had no idea who she was, but I really didn’t. I had nothing to do with the hospital’s board of directors. I worked so much that it was all I could do to find time to eat and sleep a few hours every day. What did I care who the chairman of the board of the hospital was? As long as he stayed out of my way and let me do my job, I had no reason to deal with him. My boss was the chief of surgery, not the chairman of the hospital board.”
“I’ll never understand why people do the things they do sometimes. After I lost Tony, a woman who was married to one of the other officers in his squad started a fundraising effort for me and then kept the money. I never asked her to do it, but people were so nice afterward. They wanted to help. I didn’t even know she’d started the fund. I got caught up in that mess at a time when I had zero defenses.”
“People suck.”
“Sometimes. Thankfully not all the time. There was so much more good than bad after Tony died, but the idea that someone would actually take advantage of his death for their own gain was so impossible to believe.”