Chapter 21: Christmas, 1993

December, 24, 1993, Chicago, Illinois

After breakfast, I asked Jessica to join me in my study.

“I know it’s Christmas Eve morning,” I said, “but we do need to discuss the elephant in the room.”

“Stephanie,” she said flatly.

I nodded, “Yes. I think you should talk to Doctor Mercer. I’ll get Stephanie to sign a release so that you can hear a professional opinion.”

“That’s not going to make me trust her,” Jessica protested.

“Jess, do you remember what I said about that months ago? You only have to trust me. You read my journals. You know how I felt about that the summer before we got married. That hasn’t changed. And you know how I feel about the whole sordid thing these days. About the damage I did to my sister.”

“She was the predator!”

“So? That doesn’t excuse my behavior in any way, shape, or form! That would be like blaming Al for our arranged marriage. I acted freely and of my own volition. I’m responsible for what I do and what I’ve done. Just as you are. It’s like our relationship problems - no matter what you’ve done, I’m still responsible for how I respond. Just as you are for how you respond.”

“But you’ve never given up on me,” she sighed.

“No, I haven’t. But I’m not you and you’re not me. We each respond to the trauma of our youth in different ways. Mine is to cling tightly to relationships. Yours is to push people away. Both of those, in the extreme, are a problem. Wouldn’t you say a string of 120 or so lovers is a bit much?”

Jessica nodded, smiling, “Yes, but what happened to that ‘just being who you are’?”

“Honestly? Michelle happened. What you were pushing me for - a single, long-term lover - led me to Michelle. She took a detour through the monastery, but she’s here now. Whether she’s permanent or not is up to her.”

“So my request wasn’t a hardship, then?”

“No, because I want you back in my life. If that’s the requirement, so be it.”

“I only asked you to stop until we sorted things out.”

“I know, but we’re starting with a blank slate. You, Kara, and I are going to figure out something we can all accept, define it clearly, and then live it out.”

“That simple?”

I smiled, “Jess, I’m not under any illusion that we’ll have anything even remotely resembling a sweet, romantic relationship. I don’t do those any better than you do, though I can do it for Kara when she needs it. Remember, she was surprised when I said I didn’t really like that stuff.”

“So what does that mean?”

“I have no idea. I want you here, in the house, with Kara, me, and the kids. Beyond that, we’ll figure it out.”

“Michelle is a better wife to you than I am,” she sighed.

“You need to stop comparing yourself to others. And that goes for work as well as in your personal life. In eighteen months you’ll be a fully trained, board-certified trauma surgeon who is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Who cares if somebody is better than you? Does it REALLY matter?”

“It doesn’t to you?”

“The only person I measure myself against is me. I’ve said for years that Beth Pater is smarter. Sam is better at systems engineering. Dave is a better manager. Will is going to be a better black belt, in my opinion. Those are simple truths I know. And I apply that truth. Let me ask you this - is Al a great trauma surgeon?”

“Absolutely!”

“He only takes one ER shift a week. Why?”

“Because he’s teaching and running the ER.”

“Both of which he’s damned good at, as well. In fact, I’d say his skills are better used in teaching than in the ER. He won’t admit that just yet, at least not out loud, but look at the job he accepted and the limits he applies to himself. They speak volumes. My point is, don’t worry about being the best compared to everyone else, worry about being YOUR best.

“Look, I’m in no position to judge Al’s skills, but he saved Bethany. I don’t care if he’s the best trauma surgeon in the universe! So whether it was God guiding Al’s hands, or Fate, or dumb luck, HIS best was exactly what Bethany needed! Did it matter to her if there was a better surgeon in Chicago or Cincinnati or Kuala Lumpur?”

“No, but...”

“No ‘buts’, Babe. Do your best and let everyone else worry about doing their best. That’s all we can ever do. Your life will be much easier if you give up the competition.”

“But you’re the most competitive person I know!”

I chuckled, “Only in things that don’t really matter! Playing games with the kids, sports, playing poker or pool with the guys, that kind of thing. None of that really matters in the scheme of things.”

“But at work?”

“It’s the same thing. We strive to be the best we can be. Let the others worry about trying to be better than we are. That doesn’t mean we ignore the competition any more than you would refrain from learning new surgical techniques. Beating the competition is pretty easy if the bar is low enough. I don’t want to get involved into a ‘race to the bottom’ where we continually reduce our costs by reducing value to the customer, staying ‘just good enough’ to win. Beating the competition doesn’t require cutthroat business practices. I left those to BLS, and look what happened to them! They cut their OWN throat!”

“You don’t care that you aren’t the best?”

“That’s just it. We are. Not because we measure ourselves by others, but because we strive to achieve OUR best, and constantly improve. BLS wasn’t exactly a high bar when it came to measuring how good we were! Or think of it this way - if every surgeon in the world was a six on a one-to-ten scale, and you were a seven, you’d be ‘the best’. But you wouldn’t be YOUR best if you could be a ‘nine’ and you quit trying hard once you got to ‘seven’. The problem with ‘Doctor Jessica’ isn’t wanting to be ‘Doctor Jessica’; it’s in seeking to be better than ‘Doctor Albert’ or ‘Doctor Gina’ or ‘Doctor Alicia’ or ‘Doctor Sofia’ or ‘Doctor Alejandra’. Or if you want to go with fictional doctors, ‘Doctor Kildare’ or ‘Doctor Welby’ or ‘Doctor Brackett’ or ‘Doctor Gannon’! If one of them were better, would it in any way diminish your skills?”

“No.”

“Remember that idiot dermatologist on your reinstatement board? How hard would it be to be better than HIM?”

Jessica laughed, “Not very.”

“So comparing yourself to him is silly then, isn’t it? Who is your harshest critic?”

“Besides you?”

“Yes,” I chuckled.

“Me.”

“And who is my harshest critic? I mean besides Elyse and Jesse!”

Jessica laughed again, “You.”

“And yet, neither of us listens to our harshest critic in a proper way. I ignore my own criticisms far too often and your criticism of yourself is using the wrong measuring stick! But you know what? That’s not entirely your fault.”

“What do you mean?”

“The entire medical system is predicated on cut-throat competition. Getting top grades as an undergrad. Doing well on the MCAT. Getting accepted into medical school. Matching with your desired specialty. Getting an Attending position. It’s completely fucked up from the start. I don’t give a damn if you got straight A’s in college. Or that you went to a prestigious medical school. Or worked for a prestigious hospital. All I care about is whether or not you’re able to solve whatever problem I present to you!

“Do those things give you an advantage? Yes, to varying degrees. But maybe, just maybe, the best doctor in the world isn’t a doctor because they only had a B average in college. Or the best oncologist in the world is a GP because they didn’t match their desired specialty. This isn’t something I’ve explored with Al yet, but I’m convinced the problem with medical training starts before admission to med school. And once you decided to be ‘Doctor Jessica’ you had to work the system.

“I had a huge advantage. I had two men who trusted my skills, and four friends who had confidence in me. That let me make something the way I wanted to make it. Yes, I get pushback from every direction, but NIKA is not like other companies because I don’t want it to BE like other companies. Al has the same feeling about the hospital, but he couldn’t very well go start his own! And state licensing rules don’t allow for actually trying radical fixes!”

Jessica smirked, “I knew there would be an anti-government rant in there somewhere!”

“It’s Rant #9,” I chuckled. “‘State licensing usually does more to impede progress and innovation than it does to protect us’. If I had similar rules applied, I’d never have been able to run NIKA the way I wanted to. If I could only hire government-approved, licensed computer science graduates, I could never have hired Penny. Or Zeke. Or a host of other folks. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a different way. Al thinks so, though he’s not as radical as I am! But we’re getting off the point. You can be ‘Doctor Jessica’ without being a cold, uncaring, unfeeling bitch.”

“I don’t know,” she sighed.

“Jess, let down the fucking armor, please. You’ve arrived! You don’t NEED to compete. You want to be a trauma surgeon, right?”

“Of course I do!”

“Then be one. Being ‘Chief Attending’ would just take you out of the trauma rooms and operating rooms. You can spend ALL of your time saving patients and teaching future doctors. You don’t HAVE to compete! In fact, at this point, competing actually gets in the way of what you want!”

“I never thought about it like that.”

“No, you didn’t, because you were so damned focused on being better than everyone else that you missed the entire point.”

“Which is?”

“To be the best person you can be, whatever that means. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks. It took me a long time to learn that lesson.”

“But you worry about what Kara thinks. And Elyse. And your kids. And your dad.”

“But only in the context of whether or not I’m being the best person I can be, measured by my own standards. You’ve heard Kara, and the rest, remind me of what Anala said - ‘to thine own self be true’. That’s what you’re missing, Babe.”

“Did you just tell me you’re going to start chasing girls again?” she asked with a sly smile.

“I do believe they chase me!” I chuckled. “It’s a question of whether or not I allow them to catch me. And that’s a discussion for the future.”

“You know, it doesn’t seem to make sense to keep paying a counselor when you do the same thing for free!”

I smiled, but shook my head, “You need to deal with your grief. Keep seeing your counselor, please. And we’ll start seeing Doctor Green again in January. The value he provides is as a, well, referee or umpire. It helps to have a neutral observer.”

“I have a delicate question.”

“Christmas celebrations?”

She nodded slowly, “Yes.”

“I’d like to keep everything with the kids consistent with how we’ve done things. But I think the situation with our trio is more complicated.”

“I don’t think I should be there when you and Kara make love. It feels wrong.”

“Did you talk to her about it?”

“No.”

“You should.”

“And tomorrow morning?”

“I can’t tell you if it’s a good idea or a bad idea,” I said. “I’ve wracked my brain, damaged as it is, to no avail. The entire situation reminds me of you asking me to bring you home and take you to bed in April of ‘85.”

“You remember that?”

“I’ve been reading excerpts from my journals, but yes. And it’s eerily similar - if we do that, it’s making a commitment. One I’m not sure you’re ready to make.”

“But you are?”

“I made it about eight-and-a-half years ago, Babe. Nothing has changed.”

Jessica smiled, “You’re as single-minded about our marriage as I am with regard to my medical career.”

“Both are huge commitments. The question you need to ask yourself, and resolve before tomorrow morning, is, are you making a commitment to stay and work things out, no matter what?”

“May I ask about Michelle?”

“She and I don’t have a Christmas tradition, obviously, and I really haven’t given any thought to establishing one. Elyse and I are trying to sort out how we’ll handle family Christmas now that she’s basically with Eduardo. I think we’ll end up in a situation like I am with Jennifer and Josie - they celebrate with Jesse, then bring him over for the family Christmas. Bethany is going to join us with Tom and Nicholas, at Jesse’s request. I’d like my sister to be there with Ed.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” she sighed.

“She’s part of the family. I’m sorry that it makes you uncomfortable, but after everything we’ve gone through to get her to a place where she’s recovered from the trauma I inflicted, I’m not going to cast her aside. Please, please trust me to keep things appropriate.”

“I suppose I don’t have a choice. May I set a limit?”

“It depends on what it is,” I said.

“She’s only in the sauna when the ‘weekend’ rules are in force.”

I nodded, “That’s already the case. Ed and I had a long talk about how to handle things like that.”

“And you won’t be alone with her?”

“We haven’t been since that trip we made to Milford. It’s a work in progress, and will be for the rest of our lives. Yes, we had a private moment when she burned the towel, but we weren’t alone, as in, unsupervised. We’ll have more moments like that when she comes to work for NIKA. If you trust me, there won’t be any issues.”

“It’s difficult.”

“I know. But that is where this all has to start. With Kara and I trusting you to be open and honest with us. And you trusting that Kara truly loves you.”

“Don’t I have to trust you on that, too?”

I shook my head, “I love you because I decided to, and it has nothing to do with you reciprocating. Kara is different. You’re going to have to not only trust that she loves you, but love her back. Ultimately, I think that’s going to be your hardest task.”

“What about loving you?”

“Kara and I have different needs,” I replied gently. “An arranged marriage is OK for me. Just as it was for you. My only issue, and this is something I will take up with Al, is that I didn’t know what was going on.”

“But aren’t you responsible for your own actions?”

“Yes, of course. But when someone withholds key information that might have made you act differently, that person needs to be held accountable.”

“So you wouldn’t have married me?”

“That’s a ‘What if?’ question. At a minimum, it certainly would have changed my expectations. But that’s all in the past. I have my eyes wide open now. As do you. As does Kara.”

Jessica smiled, “So all these years later, you’re still OK with being a trophy husband?”

I chuckled, “It’s no longer quite that simple. I’m married to the mother to two of my children, who is a successful doctor, and incredibly sexy. What’s to not like? I don’t think it really matters WHY we got married, Babe. What matters is we stay married, and that the three of us are happy.”