My Favorite Midlife Crisis Read Online Free Page A

telling me Dad’s newest symptom, leg cramps, might be a side effect of his Alzheimer’s medication. “Let’s cut him down from ten milligrams to five and watch him.”
    Dan was my age, a Yale grad, up on the latest advances, but at heart a physician of the old school, caring and hands-on. Literally. In the office, he’d hold my father’s bony hand or wind an arm around his fragile shoulders while talking with him in his gentle, soothing baritone.
    “If we get more agitation going down to five mgs, then we’ll have to tweak,” Dan continued. I sighed. My father was pulling Sylvie’s hair, the first sign of dementia-related aggression, and we were reducing his meds. No wonder I felt we were teetering on a tightrope.
    “I also want to start him on something new, ArCog. The studies look promising. Just keep an eye out for muscle weakness.”
    A tightrope without a net.
    Message 3. Just what I needed, the nasal drone of Summer Greenfield Ellicott, Kat’s married daughter, making a surprise, unwelcome appearance in my kitchen.
    “Gwyneth, I’m looking for my mother,” Summer drawled in that grating whine she’d found at two and perfected over the next twenty-five years. “Tim has come down with a stomach bug and I need her to stop at the Rite Aid and pick up a prescription.” She inhaled an exasperated breath. “If she’d only get a cell phone. Anyway, if you connect with her, have her call me.” Click. God forbid a please or thank you.
    Poor Kat. I didn’t blame her for pleading a technology phobia and refusing to carry a cell phone. She’d be at the beck and call of Summer and her husband, Tim the Dim, 24/7.
    Message 4. My son Drew just to catch up.
    Message 5. My friend Fleur asking when I saw the plastic surgeon would I please find out if he liposuctioned double chins.
    Message 6. My service. Which was unusual since one of our junior associates, Bethany McGowan, was covering that weekend. I returned the call to my patient Freesia Odum, dispensed soothing advice, and squeezed her in for an emergency appointment. Since the Free Clinic’s closing, Ms. Odum took two buses to get to my office. She had no health insurance. I saw her gratis to the increasing irritation of my partners in the practice and the outright hostility of the hired help, the younger docs. Especially Bethany, who had a sharp tongue and no respect for her seniors. Especially me.
    I wondered if Neil Potak had told her I was the one who tried to blackball her at the new-hire conference.
    I should have stuck to my guns.
    ***
    On Thursday, I kept my appointment with Hank Fischman. I hadn’t seen Hank since we’d done a pediatrics rotation together at Hopkins. He’d been handsome then and he still looked good. Better maybe, with the Antigua vacation tan and the silver sideburns. His skin was smooth, which could have been an advertisement for his partner’s skills or just proof of the natural male aging advantage.
    Hank examined my face under the ultraviolet light. He tugged the skin under my chin. Took a digital portrait. Then he escorted me out of the exam room to his office and motioned me to a chair across from him.
    “So, how long have you been divorced?”
    I raised my eyebrows, then quickly lowered them before my surprise dug three new crevices in my forehead. “Actually divorced? Final papers? Seven months. I didn’t know you kept up.”
    “I don’t. Call it educated guesswork. You do it all the time with your patients, I’m sure.” He steepled his fingers, a major doctor gesture. “It’s my experience that women who have recently been divorced or widowed and who are ready to get back into the social swim come to me for a lift. It’s more than surgical, of course. It’s emotional. They think they’re in competition with thirty-year-olds and they want a fighting chance.”
    “Can you blame us?” I quickly corrected myself. “Them?”
    “No, of course not. What they don’t realize is it doesn’t work that way. Men who