Page 60 of Floodgates

“You’re thirty-six?” I asked, amazed.

She laughed. I could tell she didn’t want to, but she couldn’t help it. “Yeah. How old did you think I was? Forty?”

“No,” I told her honestly, “I thought maybe twenty-eight, thirty.”

“Oh, really?” I had caught her off guard. “Thank you.”

There was silence then, and she finally fixed her gaze on me, not in a mean way, just straight in the eye, really looking at me. “I’m really sorry. It wasn’t my intent to seduce your boyfriend.”

“So why did you?”

“I have never met anyone like him.”

“In what way?”

She thought a moment. “Gorgeous, smart, funny, dedicated, gentle…. I don’t know what you want me to say. I went to the conference to recruit him for the Dedham Foundation, and I totally blew it.”

“That’s where he went into private practice.”

“Yes.”

The plot thickened. “So you both work at Dedham.”

“I don’t work there yet. I work as a cardiovascular surgeon now. I’m a resident, obviously, but I also do advisory work for the Dedham Foundation. After the baby’s born, I plan to join the staff there full-time. They used to just be a pharmaceutical company, and then they expanded to development and research, and finally to what they are today, which is a privately funded facility for rare diseases. It’s an incredibly prestigious company that subsists only on private donations from elite benefactors.”

“But then why solicit Breckin? He was an ER doctor; he liked being in the trenches and helping out regular people,” I explained flatly. “He doesn’t do snooty fundraisers and fancy-shmancy hundred-dollar-plate dinners. He’s a Democrat, for crissakes.”

She smiled then and chuckled. It was a soothing sound. “Here’s the thing,” she began. “They need some ‘in the trenches’ people, as you call him. They need the perspective of the working doctor.”

“I see. So how did his name come up?”

“By accident, actually,” she said, and then she took a deep breath. “Fenton Deveraux, who sits on the board of directors at Dedham, had to take his daughter to County about a year ago. They were in an automobile accident close to Fisherman’s Wharf, and due to the weather, they couldn’t helicopter Marissa to Los Angeles to her regular doctor. Breckin was on duty, and he identified a pretty rare blood disease that she has right off the bat. Mr. Deveraux was all prepared to give Breckin her full medical history, and so when he didn’t have to, he was simply stunned.”

I nodded.

“Since then Mr. Deveraux has been really interested in the caliber of the hotshot young doctors we have in our public hospitals. He’s impressed and has made a point of saying again and again how Dedham could benefit from an influx of new talent. He wants to specifically scout and hire the best, and for him that began with Breckin.”

“Makes sense,” I admitted. “So you went to the conference to plead Dedham’s case.”

“I did.”

“But?”

She took a breath. “But… when we started talking, I was suddenly sixteen all over again. I’m not proud of what I did, but I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t just see him there and decide to go over and seduce him. I went to him to talk about Dedham. I remember introducing myself, and I had all the literature with me and facts and figures for him.”

“But?” I asked again.

“But then we started talking, and I started to notice things.”

“What things?”

She scrutinized me. “You really want to hear all this?”

“I do,” I said, and then I took another sip of my coffee.

“Well, like how warm his eyes were, and how funny he was, and how charming. How I could just sit there and talk to him and how easy and natural it was.”

I nodded.