member, will soon refer a fascinating medical case to him setting up a chain reaction that will educate the young doctor, the nurse and the new patient in ways none of them ever dreamt possible.
When he first saw her in the Covenant hospital cafeteria, she was sitting alone holding some papers in her left hand and eating a salad with her right hand. She immersed herself in whatever it was she was reading. He was able to see her in profile and thought that she looked familiar. As he progressed down the line, he glanced again in her direction and was able to see her face from a frontal projection, and then knew who she was. He recognized her from his past residency days at Illinois General Hospital. She was a medical nurse there and although he had had very little contact with her he did not fail to remember that she was very attractive. He was married at that time, so the thought remained buried in his mind never to see the light of consciousness. However, things were different now, so he paid his bill and walked to her table and asked if he could join her. She looked up at him and her expression told him that she too recognized him. “Sure,” she said with a smile, “What a surprise, but I have to be back on the floor for a meeting in two minutes.”
“Well okay,” he said. “Eve, isn’t it?”
“Eve Worthey. Good memory, Burt.”
He laughed. “Okay, take care of your meeting, but let’s talk about old times at dinner tonight. How about seven at Silvestri’s?”
“I’ll meet you there,” she said with a nod.
His eyebrows lifted as her warm smile made him feel an emotion he had not felt for almost a year. There was something to look forward to this evening. After he and his wife divorced, he had wanted to socialize, but there was so much to do: work, study for boards, get established in his new practice, join a new medical staff. Women would have to wait. However, those days were over now, and Eve sure looked pretty sitting there immersed in whatever it was she was studying.
They met in the waiting area of the restaurant. She was already there when he arrived. More than prompt, he thought. I like that. He was anxious to continue the introductory phase of their new relationship.
After they sat, he said, “I want to hear all about you. What are you doing here at Covenant?”
“I got a supervisory nursing role on the third floor. I couldn’t pass it up. But you tell me about yourself first,” she said.
He nodded and sipped his Martini. “Okay, I’ll get right into the nitty-gritty, what there is of it. What do you want to hear first: professional or personal?”
“Let’s save personal for the last,” she responded with a smile that took away Burt’s concentration.
“Well?” she offered.
“Uhh, yes, forgive me. That smile dazzled me for a minute. You are a very attractive woman, you know.”
“Thank you for the nice compliment,” she said careful not to smile.
“Well deserved,” he said. “Anyhow, after I completed my internal medicine residency, I went into practice here at Covenant. It’s the only hospital I use. That makes things a lot easier as opposed to many of the doctors who run to three or four hospitals.”
“Yes, circuit workers we used to call them,” said Eve.
Burt nodded. “That’s a quick rundown of the professional side of it. On the personal side, I’m thirty-years-old and divorced one year from a wife of three years. If you spoke to my ex, she would tell you I ignored her. Never home she would say. It was tough for her not to be the center of attention at all times. We talked about how busy I was before we got married, but I think she never believed it. Anyhow, she wanted out and she got her wish.”
“I’ve heard it before,” she reassured him with a smile. “Are you over that trauma now? You look kind of sad.”
“Yeah, I’m over it. When someone wants out as bad as she did, there’s no use fighting it. I must have been the only medical resident who lived in an 800,000-dollar house, a gift from her father for her to live in while she worked in Chicago before she met me. A starter home, he called it. Eight hundred grand to him was like loose change to me. His net worth was over three billion. He made it as one of the early hedge fund pioneers. Anyhow, everything that guy touches turns to gold. When his daughter moved back to New York he sold the house for a million dollars and I moved to a nice little condominium overlooking a crystal-clear man-made lake.”
“Was it a nasty divorce?”
“Not at all, it was easy. We had nothing to fight about. I didn’t even hire a lawyer. My wife said, let’s each take what we brought to the marriage, split our joint assets fifty-fifty and go our own ways. I thought it was her old man talking, but her financial savvy was good enough for it to be just her. I can’t argue with fairness, I said, and I moved out. By that time, the residency was history and I went into a partnership with a very busy, older internist who promised to retire after one year of orienting me to the ways of private practice. The guy’s got more money than he knows what to do with.”
“What’s his name?”
“John Wagner. Do you know him?”
“Do I ever. I worked with him many times at Illinois General. We used to call him Porschy, because that’s all he ever drove were Porsches; I think a new one every year. We figured he had family wealth. No internist can make that kind of money.”
Burt laughed and said, “Ain’t that the truth, and while he was on the Illinois General staff he was also on the staff of Covenant, but when he made the decision to retire, he left Illinois General to concentrate on Covenant. That’s when he took me in practice with him. Would you like another drink?”
“No thanks. One’s my absolute limit. Anyhow there’s the waiter coming with our food.”
Well that is refreshing, he thought. Most of the women he dated years back were clueless compared to this gal and would never turn down a drink even after they got to the babbling idiot stage. Nothing turned him off more than that. His turn-on came from women with impressive intellects. He had met Eve when he would attend grand round medical conferences at Illinois General. Their relationship had been only a professional one when she took care of some of his patients. She was a medical nurse and was married then, but there was no ring on her finger now and that suggested she was unmarried, or perhaps was practicing good hospital infection control and no longer wears a wedding ring.
“Tell me about you now,” he said.
She nodded her head and smiled a smile again that brought back the emotion he felt when he first saw her in the cafeteria.
“Our lives are sort of running on a parallel course. I’m divorced too. My ex was involved in extracurricular activities, if you know what I mean.”
“I think I know what you mean.”
“You’re right, so I moved out and had a lawyer give him the news that I’m history. I had an easy divorce too. I promised I wouldn’t make any waves if we just called it quits. He saw the wisdom of that.”
That was concise and to the point, he thought. “Have you dated again?”
“You’re the first.”
Burt smiled, sat upright, puffed out his chest, and said, “It’s not often that a man is
