Back at the house, he looked pale. She settled him on the couch and fussed around him for a minute with a blanket before heading to the guest room to grab her computer. When she returned, Jonah was on the phone.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I understand. I’ll let you know as soon as possible. I have to talk it over with my partner, but I’m optimistic.” Georgia directed a bug-eyed stare at him at the word partner, but he only grinned. “Okay, yes. Thank you. You too. I’ll be in touch.”
“Who was that?” she demanded as soon as he hung up. “And since when do you have a partner? Have things progressed with Edwin?”
“Edwin’s great,” said Jonah, his face taking on the besotted look he always wore when talking about his bodyguard-turned-boyfriend, “but I was referring to someone else.” He brandished his phone in her direction, like a laser pointer. “You. You are my partner.”
“In what?”
“Just listen for a minute before you freak, okay?” This was not an encouraging start to a conversation, but Georgia resolved to remain calm as she eased down beside him on the couch. “I’ve been offered a job.”
“At . . . at the clinic?”
“No.” He smiled gently. “Not at the clinic. It’s a bit farther away, actually.”
“How much farther?”
Jonah set the phone down. “California.”
“California?”
“Hold up. Just listen to me. There’s an adolescent medicine clinic there, not far outside San Diego, and they’re looking for someone who specializes in treating LGBTQ youth. They heard about me”—no doubt from the nonstop barrage of media attention he’d received since the clinic had been forced to issue a formal statement acknowledging his innocence—“and they feel I’d be uniquely qualified to treat these kids. They offered me the job.”
“Without even an interview?”
“I’ve done several interviews,” he said. “Video-conferencing.”
“Oh,” she said. She slid from the couch to the floor. “Oh. I thought—I thought the clinic here would offer you your job back.”
In a still-gentle voice, he said, “They did. I turned it down.”
“Oh,” she said again. She couldn’t manage more.
“Georgia, listen to me.” He leaned forward, bringing their foreheads so close she could make out his individual eyebrow hairs. “I miss my patients, but at least I know that now they have the option of returning to the clinic. But I can’t go back there.”
She nodded miserably.
“Look.” He picked up her hands. “This California job—it’s perfect. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”
She stirred, squaring her shoulders. “Of course. Of course it is. It does sound perfect, Jonah.”
“I don’t know much about California, but how bad can it be? I’d miss the humidity, of course.”
“And the heat.”
“Southern politicians.”
She rallied. “Mosquitos and chiggers and palmetto bugs. People saying y’all.”
“Oh, I’m totally still going to say y’all. It’s the most useful word in the English language. And I like the mega-plural form even more: all y’all.”
Only one appropriate response there: “Well, bless your heart.”
He still held her hands. “I’m going to miss Charleston so much. But California could be wonderful, you know.”
She grasped at a straw. “What about Edwin?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to see how it goes, but he offered to drive me out there. Help me move; all that stuff.”
“Edwin already knows about this?”
“Yes. Don’t be mad, George. I’ve been so afraid to tell you. I’ve started to bring it up a hundred times and chickened out.”
“I could never be mad at you for doing what you’re meant to do. You’ll be starting a new, glorious life and you deserve it.” Despite her best efforts, her voice broke a little at the word new and she quickly corralled it. “It’s the right thing.”
“Georgia. There’s something else, but I don’t want you to get pissed at me.”
What could possibly be worse than losing him? She opted for honesty. “You got me at a vulnerable moment here, Jones. I can’t think of anything that could make me mad at you.”
“I’d better seize the moment, then. Here’s the thing: I took some action.”
She felt a glitch in her heartbeat. “What did you do?”
Jonah let go of her hands and stood. “You’re acting like a damn fool. Your whole adult life, you’ve blundered through a string of lesser men, and finally you meet someone who could possibly be worthy of you, not to mention the fact that I’ve officially sanctioned him as acceptable, and you gave up on him the first time things got tough. What the hell? I know—I know—you don’t want to go through the rest of your life hooking up with a series of subpar Tinder guys.” At this last pronouncement, he leveled a meaningful stare.
Heat spread across her chest. “I don’t even use Tinder.”
“You do too, but whatever.” Jonah waved a dismissive arm. “So I took matters into my own hands and discussed this with Mark.”
“Jonah!” She jumped up. “What did you say?”
“We had a nice long talk, actually, the details of which are privileged due to male bonding. But here’s the upshot: he wants you to call him.”
“I . . .”
“Call him! George, he misses you. Yes, he was concerned at your Machiavellian machinations to bring down our enemies, but he admits he may have overreacted, especially since the plan basically relied on the clinic to hang themselves with their own . . . what was it?”
“Petard.”
“Petard! Georgia, all you did was suggest the petard. You didn’t even do that, really. We hid the petard and waited for a bunch of morons to steal it. And they did.” He started to pace. “Yes, you weren’t a pillar of honesty, but your remorse should count for something.” He paused. “And maybe, in the future, you shouldn’t feel the need to unburden yourself of all your theoretical misdeeds when you’re confessing to people. Just stick to what you actually did.”
“That’s not what the Bible says, you know.”
“The Good Lord will forgive you. And so will Mark.”
She threw up her hands, the trace of a smile creeping across her face. “Okay. Okay, okay, I’ll call him.”
“Good. I told him you’d call him tonight. And since his company is in California, you can tell him about the job.”
“Your job?”
“No, your job. Oh, did I forget that part?” His black eyes crinkled. “Here.” He reached to the end table next to the sofa and thrust his laptop at her.
She opened it. A low cream-colored building with a wavy red roof; behind it, a hazy slash of blue. The sea. A glistening ribbon of sun streaming across the water. A man and a woman holding hands, walking away from the building, beatific looks on their faces.
“What’s this?”
“It turns out there’s a urology practice in Southern California—in sunny La Jolla—that’s seeking a new doctor. It’s California, so the pay is crappy, but it sounds like an awesome practice. I don’t know, I just thought, I thought maybe . . .” He peered at her, suddenly assailed by doubt. “I thought maybe you would consider it.”
“Me? Move to California?”
“You didn’t think I’d do this without you?”
“Yes, I did,” she said and found that she was crying. Not a dainty cry; not a few decorous tears highlighting the delicate contours of her cheekbones; but a full-on heaving monsoon, the kind with ugly gulping. Jonah stood for a brief moment, a stricken look on his face, and then his arms were around her. She grasped his back, her hands catching on the jutting ridges of his scapulae as if they were handles. He was still so thin.
Jonah detached himself from Georgia as s
oon as the storm began to subside. With a magnanimous flourish, he pulled off his shirt, a sumptuously soft charcoal tee with the words
Jude &
JB &
Willem &
Malcolm
printed in block letters. Georgia raised her teary face to stare at him. He flexed his chest muscles, and she snorted. “Are you trying to . . . dazzle me . . . into feeling better?”
“This,” he explained, “is chivalry. You are in need of a hankie, and we don’t have any sort of tissues handy, so”—he handed the shirt to her with another flourish—“I am willing to sacrifice myself. Or at least sacrifice this garment.”
She took the shirt from him and wiped her face on it, at which his virtuous expression immediately devolved into a regretful wince. “Steady,” Georgia said. “It’s only a T-shirt.”
“It brings back memories,” he said. She gave him the eye and he had the grace to blush, since he’d bought the shirt for himself in an effort to establish his literary credentials with a hot, bookish server at Kudu Coffee he’d once fancied.
“So does this mean you’ll do it?” he asked. “You’ll apply for the job?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Mark could move to California full-time, you know, since his business is there. I asked him.”
“Of course you did.”
“Go ahead,” he said, motioning toward her phone, a few feet away. “No time like the present.”
It would take only one push of a button to summon Mark; she’d never erased him from her favorites list. She took the phone, hooking it between her chin and her shoulder, and stepped back onto the frigid balcony for privacy. Inside, Jonah parked himself at the window end of the couch and gave her a thumbs-up.
She turned toward the sea, huddled in her coat against the cold. The phone rang and rang. Finally a click and a pause and then his voice on a recorded message, instructing her to leave her contact information and he’d get back to her. She hung up without leaving a message and turned back toward the house.
In her hand, the phone vibrated. She shut her eyes—just for a moment—as a wild flare of hope filled her and then, without looking at the words on the screen, clicked the green button to answer.
“Hello, Mark,” she said.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Reader,
It was not my original intention to produce a book steeped in the currents of cultural upheaval. In the earliest versions, Georgia’s big dilemma revolved around her reluctance to tell her best friend she’d been diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor. After some discussion with early readers about whether or not Georgia would die (I voted yes), I was encouraged to find a different story line.
By that point, I could not set Georgia and Jonah aside. I loved them, especially Jonah. He’s a complete figment of my imagination, but in a weird twist, he reminds me of someone I met after I wrote the book, who has since become a beloved friend. I was still debating what fictional disaster should befall my two characters when a couple of things occurred to inspire the shift toward the topic of discrimination in healthcare.
First, my state passed a law forbidding communities from passing their own antidiscrimination laws, which piqued my curiosity. I wanted to know what these politicians think is legally and morally acceptable when it comes to refusing housing or a job or public services to another human being.
It turns out the laws are complicated. They also depend on where you live. At the time of this writing, it is still legal to discriminate in much of the country. Not against me, generally, because I’m protected by nondiscrimination clauses covering gender and race and religion. But if you are a gay man or a transgender woman, you are not always protected. Everyone pictures wedding cakes in these scenarios, but because our laws are such a patchwork of differing regulations, there are many places in America where not only can you be booted from a cake shop but you can also be fired from your job or evicted from your home or, in certain cases, refused medical care solely because you’re a person who doesn’t fit into someone else’s definition of an acceptable identity.
In some ways, I’m not the ideal person to write a book about discrimination, given that I’ve never had to face the kind of institutional bias Jonah has. And for that matter, neither has the straight protagonist of the novel, Georgia.
However, as a physician (and as a person of faith), medical care is my lane. I took an oath to treat all patients. I’d like to believe that events such as the one depicted in my novel are entirely fictional, but it’s not difficult to imagine a widespread scenario in which institutions are allowed to dictate whom physicians can and cannot treat, based on the personal beliefs of the powerful people who run these institutions.
As of this month—October 2019—the Affordable Care Act is supposed to prohibit most medical discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. However, the Department of Health and Human Services has already stopped enforcing protections for transgender people. They’re also actively seeking to overturn these protections in the courts.
I don’t want some corporate overlord telling me I cannot treat a particular group of patients because of who they are. I believe wholeheartedly that most Americans, no matter their political leanings or religious background, would not want that either.
By the time some of you read this book, however, the Supreme Court of the United States may have issued a ruling in a case related to employment discrimination against the LGBTQ community . . . and maybe we will have a better idea which way the country is headed regarding medical equality as well.
That brings me to the second event that sparked the idea for this novel. I know someone, a colleague, who was instructed to stop providing care for the transgender patients in their practice. They refused.
And they were fired.
I don’t wish to end on a sad note. The Antidote for Everything is about equality, yes, but it’s also an ode to friendship. I could never have written it without the inspiration provided by my own friends, who tolerate me despite hailing from many different backgrounds, ideologies, and experiences. Special gratitude goes out to my doctor friends, both for their unceasing determination to battle illness and injury on behalf of their patients and for the shining beneficence of their spirits. And, it must be said, also for their epic mastery of stupid humor, which seems to have infected the characters in this book. My apologies.
Or, as Georgia and Jonah would say: mea culpa.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As I wrote this book, I relentlessly hassled friends, colleagues, and experts for assistance; they are in no way responsible for any flaws. Errors, misguided attempts at humor, and anything else you disliked is on me.
On the other hand, anything you loved was probably inspired by one of these guys:
The brilliant, caring, and witty female urologists who were kind enough to allow me a peek into their unique world: Helen L. Bernie, D.O.; Michelle T. Chang, M.D.; Kellen B. Choi, D.O.; Elizabeth K. Ferry, M.D.; Emma Jacobs, M.D.; Rena D. Malik, M.D.; Katherine Rinard, M.D.; Aldiana Soljic, M.D.; and Kristina D. Suson, M.D. I want to become a urologist after spending time with y’all. You ladies rock.
Ditto for the toxicologists and critical care specialists (Rachel Haroz, M.D.; Kelly Johnson-Arbor, M.D.; Yana Levin, M.D.; Laura Ryan, M.D.) who helped me with the meet-cute-on-the-plane scenario as well as the acetaminophen overdose. I took some creative license here and there to make the plot work (i.e., Mark’s rapid recovery). Don’t hold it against them.
In real life, I am beyond grateful to all the anesthesiologists who show up, every day, to save the day. I owe an apology to you (and all the HR dudes) out there; I needed villains with certain powers, and Beezon and Wright fit the bill. Their dastardly deeds in no way reflect on the rest of you.
A word about a character: The rehabilitation doctor Darby Gibbes in the novel was originally an important narrator who got a
xed during the editing process. If this disappoints you, don’t fret: you may see her again in a future story. My heartfelt thanks to all the PM&R docs who helped me understand this vital, compassionate specialty, especially Bradeigh Godfrey, D.O., and Cheri Wiggins, M.D.
Charleston doctor peeps: Kate Herwig Harris, M.D.; Nicole Franklin, M.D.; and the rest of our fun FB group. Thanks for sharing a glimpse of your charming city with me. (Road trip soon!) And to the marvelous city of Charleston, please note I set the clinic in this novel outside your borders; the medical settings in the story are entirely fictional.
The spectacular city of Amsterdam: I’m sorry my characters got up to such shenanigans on their journey. (I’ll do better the next time I visit!) Thank you especially to my bookish Dutch friends for the camaraderie over the last few years.
I am grateful for the guidance of the incredible ministers at First Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, especially the Reverend Pendleton Peery and the Reverend Katherine Kerr. Thank you for your bountiful grace every time I pester you with theological queries.
All my groups: Women’s Fiction Writers Association, Physician Moms Book Club, Women Physician Writers, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Fund, Ink Tank, Authors18 . . . your support has been invaluable. Thank you also to the kind people at Movement Advancement Project and Equality NC for helping me navigate the byzantine morass of our nation’s antidiscrimination laws.
Many, many thanks to the lovely doctors in the worldwide Physician Moms Group who provided exuberant advice on everything from naming characters to urethral issues.
All the Instagram book nerds: love you guys. Special shout-out to @whatmeganreads, @kourtneysbookshelf, @prose_and_palate, @travel.with_a_book, sweet Kristy Barrett at A Novel Bee (Facebook), Ashley Spivey, and the inimitable Anne Bogel, aka Modern Mrs. Darcy . . . your dedication to literature inspires me.
The Antidote for Everything Page 36