25
The following morning, Dr. Steven Carter struggled to turn the locks of his Fifth Avenue dermatology practice while managing to hold on to his briefcase, morning coffee, and the bundle of flowers he’d picked up at the corner deli. As was often the case, he was the first to arrive at the office. He had always been a morning person.
Not that anyone would know by looking at him, but he liked to start the day with a trip to the gym. A few months ago, he had even started working out with a personal trainer to try to maximize the effects of his exercises. According to the trainer, he had increased his muscle mass by 8 percent, but no one seemed to notice, especially the woman whose affection he’d been trying to win over for more than a decade.
Steven knew he wasn’t a looker. He was a realist, after all. In college, his writing teachers told him his prose was “stilted.” His philosophy professor said he was “unimaginative.” After two years of Spanish, he couldn’t even manage to order dinner at a Mexican restaurant without earning sympathetic chuckles from the waitstaff. The only classes where he didn’t feel like a loser were the sciences. By his junior year, he realized he already had all his medical school prerequisites down, so he figured, Why not be a doctor?
And because he was a realist, he knew that his grades were probably only good enough to go to a foreign medical school. Five years in the Caribbean sounded pretty nice after growing up in Iowa. But much to his surprise, he had gotten accepted to SUNY Stony Brook. It wasn’t the Caribbean, but it was on an island—Long Island—and it would mean better job prospects once he was finished.
But medical school was much harder than those undergraduate science classes. If it hadn’t been for Kendra, he might not have finished. She always made it look so easy and had a way of explaining things more clearly than even the professors could. And she was so beautiful, especially back then.
He remembered the first time she kissed him. It was the night before the final exam in Neuroscience. He was nearly shaking, convinced that he was going to fail.
“Steven, why are you like this?” she had asked.
“Like what?”
“Like . . . you. What did someone do to you to make you so incapable of seeing your own worth?” And then she had kissed him. It wasn’t passionate, but it was soft and it lingered. Steven was stunned, but Kendra just looked at him with a smile in her eyes. “You deserve to expect more from the world,” she said. Then she went right back to studying.
The next morning, he managed to get a B on the exam, and he knew to this day it was because he walked into the classroom thinking of himself as someone who was good enough to be kissed by Kendra.
He started thinking of her as his girlfriend after that, but between classes and studying, there really wasn’t much time for the traditional “dating” activities. In retrospect, it seemed that maybe she just showed him affection now and then to break up the monotony.
In any event, it became pretty darn clear that they weren’t anything approaching a real couple once she met Martin Bell their last year of medical school. Martin was everything Steven wasn’t. He was a brilliant doctor from a well-known New York City family. He was tall, slender, and handsome. As it turned out, enough to sweep Kendra off her feet.
She started to miss their nightly study sessions to go into the city to see Martin. By the end of the year, the only times she’d call him would be to ask for help running errands to plan for the wedding.
And of course Steven had done it. He would do anything for her.
Steven might not be tall and thin, on television, or a brilliant doctor. In fact, he barely got into medical school, and barely passed once he was there. Nevertheless, it had worked out fine. Only ten years out, he already owned a thriving medical practice. He had chosen to become a dermatologist. He wanted to make patients not only look better, but feel better about themselves.
He flipped on the sound system that piped into the reception area and treatment rooms. The radio station on the streaming service he used was called “lounge chill.” He filled the aromatherapy burners with eucalyptus oil. He was proud of the number of five-star reviews he had online for making his offices feel more like a luxury spa than a doctor’s office.
He dropped his briefcase on his office chair and his coffee on his desk, and then carried the flowers he had purchased to the small desk that sat just outside his office—the one with Kendra’s computer terminal on it. He placed the flowers next to the keyboard and then jotted a message on the pad of Post-it notes beside it: K, Hope your meeting last night went well and that you are OK. —S
Steven was a realist. Kendra may have married Martin, but Steven never stopped loving her. He knew how grateful Kendra was. He had given her a job when no one else would. Now he got to spend five days each week with her. And she had begun to invite him to Bobby and Mindy’s sports games and school recitals. Does she realize I would do anything for her? he wondered.
It’s all coming together, he thought to himself with a feeling of deep satisfaction.