A Love Story with a Little Heartbreak

by Thomas John Dunker

CHAPTER FORTY

  Connie called LuAnne two days after her appointment, as requested, and was suddenly ecstatic upon hearing the news that Dr. Dunker wanted her to work in the office as soon as possible. The pay was about the same as Gimbels, so Connie didn’t hesitate to tell LuAnne that she’d give Gimbels two weeks notice and be ready to start the first week in May.

  On Monday, May 2, 1949, Connie walked into Dr. Dunker’s office at eight that morning, ready to work as the office’s official Administrative Assistant. She greeted Delia and LuAnne, who were expecting her, as soon as she walked in. They told her that Dr. Dunker never showed up on Mondays and Tuesdays because those were his days for surgery or making the rounds at St. Joe’s, which was on the near west side of town, so he wouldn’t even be around.

  Delia had allocated some space in the supply room for Connie, just enough for a small desk and some shelf space for files, which was created by shifting some bandage boxes and other medical supplies to another shelf. The space suited Connie just fine, and she was particularly pleased to discover that her chair, although made of hardwood, was actually quite comfortable. It was sure better than having to stand on her feet all day. The day got off to a good start for all three of them.

  At three o’clock that afternoon, Dr. Dunker walked into the office, without warning.

  “Hi,” he said solemnly, in his busy man voice, startling LuAnne, as he entered through the front door. He just showed up, contrary to his habit of spending Mondays at the hospital. Delia and LuAnne looked at each other, sharing their surprise, both knowing that he hadn’t been in the office on a Monday for years.

  “Dr. Dunker!” replied a startled Delia. “Is anything wrong? You’re supposed to be at St. Joe’s.”

  “No,” he said as he walked past her through the door into the hallway that connected his office with the patient rooms and the supply room. “Nothing’s wrong, and St. Joe’s doesn’t need me this afternoon. I just wanted to get something out of my desk that I left behind last Friday.” He went into his office and made a show of rummaging around in the contents of one of the drawers, when LuAnne stopped at his open door. “Dr. Dunker, are you sure everything’s all right?”

  “Oh, everything’s fine,” he said, as he looked up from behind his desk. “I just needed something from my desk for a meeting at the Yacht Club tonight.” He liked to sail—she knew that—and the opening day at The Milwaukee Yacht Club was coming up. She thought his reply was plausible, but her feminine intuition told her there might be more going on.

  “Oh, okay,” she calmly replied. And before she could turn away, he asked her, “How’s the new person working out?”

  “Connie?”

  “Yeah, Connie. How’s she working out?”

  With the exchange of those words, in a flash, LuAnne got it: he was there to see Connie. “Ha,” she thought to herself, “he couldn’t wait till Wednesday…. I wonder if Delia figured it out too.” She nonchalantly replied, “It’s only her first day, but I think things are going well. I think she’s at her desk in the supply room at the moment. We set her up there this morning. Maybe you should say hi to her,” and with the most neutral tone she could muster, she added, “I’m sure she’d like that.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, and with the most neutral tone he could muster, he said, “I think I’ll do that.” He waited for LuAnne to leave and go do whatever she was doing before he closed his desk drawer and straightened his necktie and then headed for the supply room.

  The door was open. Connie was moving some folders around and saw him as he approached. She knew that he was in the office. It was a relatively small place, and his male voice easily carried down the hallway. He walked a couple of feet into her office, stopping just inside the open door.

  “Hello, Miss Koehler,” he said somewhat solemnly and yet with a little playfulness in his eyes, making a point of using the correct pronunciation of her last name with a very slight intonation of exaggeration.

  “Hi, Dr. Dunker!” she cheerily replied.

  “I’m glad you decided to take the job,” he said.

  “Thank you for the chance. I won’t disappoint you. Delia and LuAnne have already been a big help in getting me started. They said there’s a lot to do.”

  “I’m sure there is.”

  “Oh, and please call me Connie.”

  “Okay, Connie, I will.” He didn’t return the favor of asking her to call him anything other than Dr. Dunker. He didn’t feel it was appropriate, and suddenly he realized he’d have to be careful not to do anything that wasn’t appropriate. He felt self-conscious again and a little charged upon seeing her, and in a moment of silence, realized she was waiting for him to say something. He cleared his throat, made a move to back out of the doorway, and then added, “Well, like I said, I’m glad you’re here.” With that, he turned and walked into the reception area and called out “Bye!” to Delia and LuAnne, who were standing side by side in Delia’s office, making a show of going through a patient’s file, but from the look on their faces, the thought occurred to him that they might be discussing something else.

  He walked out of the office, making a mental note that he’d have to maintain his professional demeanor in the office at all times, even though that might not be so easy. When he stepped onto the elevator to leave the building, with no one else on board, he said softly to himself, “There’s something about her that I like. Yep, there’s something about Connie that I like a lot.” He started to whistle. He often whistled absent-mindedly, especially when things were going his way.

  In the following weeks, despite the separation of space created in the supply room, the addition of Connie to the staff made for closer quarters for everyone. She was continually moving back and forth between the supply room and Delia’s office, where most of the records were stored. She took over the organization of the patient files and billing, both of which were responsibilities Delia was happy to shuck. Her movement in and out of the receptionist’s office meant passing LuAnne and, on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, passing Dr. Dunker in the hallway a dozen times a day.

  With the new member on the staff, everyone’s workload became more manageable and everyone became visibly happier. The biggest impact that Connie’s presence had was on Dr. Dunker. He had become a different person with her in the office, and Delia and LuAnne had no doubt that the change in him was because of Connie. It might have been her upbeat attitude and constant cheer. She was clearly enjoying her responsibilities, and she was a quick study, which made her easy to work with. But the speculation continued—it certainly seemed that the doctor was infatuated with Connie.

  Three weeks later, when Delia and LuAnne had stepped out for lunch and the office was without patients, the doctor and Connie were working at their desks. He rose from his desk, walked to his office window, and looked out over the downtown area and the industrial valley, as he had countless times. It was a perfect summer day, although summer hadn’t officially started in his mind. Memorial Day weekend was the opening day at the Yacht Club, an exciting day for everyone at the club, and it was coming up this weekend. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, and the temperature had freakishly risen into the upper seventies, a rarity for that time of year when the average temperatures were in the mid-sixties.

  He spun on his heel, walked out of his office, turned down the hallway, and within a matter of seconds, was at the door to the supply room looking at Connie seated at her desk. He knew what he wanted to do and didn’t want to waste time doing it, fearful that Delia or LuAnne would walk in any minute and interrupt a delicate moment in what he thought was a bold move.

  Connie looked up, surprised to suddenly see him standing in her doorway. “Hi, Dr. Dunker, what can I do for you?”

  He was not a man to mince words. “Will you let me take you out to dinner on Friday?” He had thought about this invitation all week and decided that Friday was the right night, a better night for a first date that weekend. Saturday night was the big opening
day dinner at the Yacht Club. If they had fun on Friday, he’d ask her to be his guest at the club on Saturday. Saturday, he decided, was too big of an event for a first date. He much preferred to have some quiet one-on-one time with her so that they could get to know each other better. Friday might give him that. Of course, he was aware that she might already have plans for Saturday night, but it was a risk he was willing to take.

  Connie had been through too much in life to waste time being coy. “Okay,” she replied without hesitating. “What time do you want to pick me up?”

  “How ‘bout seven?” he suggested.

  “Okay.”

  “Catholic Women’s Residence on Farwell?” he asked. He had done his homework.

  “Yes, that’s where I’m staying.” She paused. He glanced over his shoulder, wondering if he had heard someone enter the reception area. “The Residence has a curfew, you know?” she added, once she had his attention again.

  “No. What do you mean?”

  “All women living there are required to be home by ten every night. You can’t be a minute late.”

  “Okay,” he said, “I can live with that. How ‘bout if I pick you up at six instead? Give us one more hour together, okay?”

  “Yes,” she smiled, “that works for me.” She didn’t tell him it was her first date in over two years. She was sure he didn’t know much about her personal life, although he knew, of course, that she had injured her eye in a car accident, but nothing else about that. Maybe Dr. Keitel had told him some things. She didn’t know anything about his personal life, really, although she knew that his wife had died in February and left him with two little kids. That his wife had died so recently was something that had crossed her mind, and maybe it would have bothered someone else that the loss was relatively recent. But Connie knew how tenuous life was and how fast things could change, and she had learned to focus more on the present than dwell on the past or, for that matter, dream about the future. If he was asking her out, then she thought he must be okay with the fairly recent passing of his wife.

  Dr. Dunker and Connie both heard the main door open and guessed that Delia and LuAnne had just entered the reception area from the hallway. They were sure of it when lighthearted laughter suddenly penetrated every room in the suite, confirming Delia and LuAnne’s return to work, thus, forcing the truncation of the intimate conversation.

  Dr. Dunker furtively said, “See you Friday at six,” and returned to his office. He went to the window to look out at the city and marvel over the wonderment of life and how the weather could change so quickly, gray one day and then gloriously sunny the next. Connie already knew that life worked that way, and in the bigger picture, she knew it worked both ways.

  ∞