Chapter 7
Russell
“Are you saying there’s nothing you can do? This is obviously a ridiculous clause.”
“Ridiculous or not,” Mr. Grande says, leaning back in his chair and picking up a small wooden hourglass from his desk, “those were your father’s wishes. And he was completely cognizant while laying them out, Russell. I imagine he just wanted you to settle down.”
Mr. Grande—the family lawyer I’ve known since I was a kid—gives me a look that says, and what would be so bad about that?
“I need the money, Grande,” I say, leveling with him. “It’s not for me. It’s for the clinic. That has to mean something—he wouldn’t want it to close.”
“I’m sorry, Russell, my hands are tied. The will is very clear about what the clauses are for you to receive the funds.”
“What will happen if I don’t?”
“If you don’t…ever get married?” Mr. Grande asks the question like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.
Maybe it is. For me, at forty-eight, it’s already strange to others that I haven’t been married—or even married and divorced.
Plenty of people my age are on their fourth or fifth spouses at this point.
To our lawyer, it probably seems like the most ridiculous thing in the world to turn down this amount of money when the answer could be so simple.
“Right,” I confirm, finding myself unable to meet his eye.
It’s not like I’m particularly ecstatic to tell Grande here all the reasons why I didn’t settle down and make my own cute little family.
Why I haven’t found a little wife for my arm and made my own medical-prodigy babies to strap with the weight of a future in medicine.
“Well, at some point, when you pass—which is hopefully in a very distant future—I’d assume the money would be absorbed back into your father’s trust, which would disperse it to BHC.”
“So, great,” I put my hands on the table, lean toward him. “Let’s assume I’m not ever going to get married. Pronounce me dead right now and send the money back to the hospital.”
Mr. Grande is already shaking his head, turning the hourglass over and over. Leave it to the lawyer to use such a poignant symbol as his fidget.
“That’s just not how it works. I mean, I could review the terms, but as the family attorney I’m not sure I could, in good faith, look for a loophole to your father’s wishes. The terms of his will are pretty straightforward.”
“Great.” I let out a breath and scrub my hand through my hair. “Perfect. So, the only way for me to get access to the inheritance is to get married?”
“More specifically,” Mr. Grande pulls a thick stack of documents up from his desk.
My father’s will. He must have pulled it from his files when he realized I was coming.
“The beneficiary—that’s you, Russell—must be legally married in accordance with the statutory requirements of the jurisdiction in which the marriage is recognized.
..including but not limited to…ah, here: both parties must possess sufficient mental capacity to understand the nature of marriage, there must be voluntary and mutual consent free from undue influence or coercion, and…
well, I’ll save you more jargon—you’ll have to present me with the documents and proof of marriage.
And, according to the will, I’ll need to interview you. ”
I try not to let my frustration show, “Like a priest or something?”
“I’m not familiar with exactly how that works, but I’m not assessing the quality of your partnership for approval, just ensuring it's…well, not a get rich quick scheme.”
Mr. Grande smiles at this last part, like it’s all a great joke.
“Alright. Yeah. Thanks for meeting with me,” I mutter, as I stand and start to shrug on my coat.
“Off to join some dating apps?” Mr. Grande asks, too cheekily for the guy who just told me I’d have to get hitched to receive the inheritance that shouldn’t have so many fucking strings attached.
As if a whole life of jumping through hoops wasn’t enough for me to earn it. Leave it to my father to continue yanking me around from beyond the grave.
“Ha,” I offer, dryly, because maybe laughing at his jokes will keep him on my side. And I’m going to need it for whatever I try next. “Yeah, something like that.”
When I leave Grande’s office, I detour to walk through Millennium Park, even though the sun has just started to set and the wind cuts right through my jacket.
It’s not like New York is some sort of tropical paradise, but they call Chicago the windy city for a reason, and somehow I’ve managed to forget just how cold it can be here.
I take a left on Randolph, mind working as I walk, turning over everything Grande said in his office. The way he’d joked about it, asking if I was going out to look for a wife, it made me wonder just how real it would have to be.
There must be voluntary and mutual consent free from undue influence or coercion.
What does that mean? What is undue influence? Coercion?
Isn’t every marriage, in the end, simply a contractual agreement that benefits both parties? How would Grande even know if I just found someone, convinced them to marry me for—what? Security? Money?
And after that, we could end the thing like everyone else does.
Most marriages end in divorce, too. I think about Orie, the other cardio surgeon I worked with back in New York.
His last marriage didn’t even make it past a year.
I think about Alena, whose calls to me about Matt, her husband, have gone from jokingly troubled to undoubtedly serious in the past year.
There are plenty of people in Hollywood getting divorce as often as they get face lifts.
All I’d have to do was find a single woman looking to get married. Someone who wouldn’t get attached, and to whom I could offer something in return.
Without thinking, my feet steer me toward the Christmas village, or Christkindlmarket.
Dad brought Alena and I here each year, and we’d get twenty dollars to pick something out for the other sibling by the end of the night.
I make a note to ask Alena if she’s planning to come, to try the same thing with the twins.
It might be a good idea for her to get out and do something to lift her mood.
Plus, I like spending time with my sister. She’s the one person who really understands what it was like to grow up with our father, and she’s been my closest friend forever.
I can’t quite remember what it was like when I was a kid, if you’d have to pay an entry fee to get in, but this year it’s open to the public, so anyone can wander among the little booths, the floating scent of roasting nuts and wafting sweetness of hot chocolate.
There are no smells now, though, as most of the booths are shuddered, and some of them are playing music from Bluetooth speakers as they get things ready.
In fact, one of the booths is blasting Monster Mash at full volume, which isn’t exactly the Christmas ambiance they go for around here.
Two women move in the dim glow of the orange light.
One of them fumbles with a few packages, and the other laughs, catching them and setting them out on the counter.
At first, I don’t recognize her. She’s wearing a striped, green sweater and some sort of bowler hat, bending over to retrieve small, pastel boxes from a tote within the festive booth around her. Even dressed as a knock-off Freddy Krueger, her ass is distracting.
The sweater clings to her curves, showing me exactly the dip in which a man might want to rest his hand.
It’s Juliette Harper. Who needs surgery for her son.
Even now, there’s something about her that strikes me as deeply familiar.
She has the kind of personality, the kind of face that makes you feel at home.
I watch as she straightens up, nearly drops one of the boxes, then laughs with the other woman in the booth, who has glowing brown skin and long, pin-straight hair.
She’s in a black lace dress that crawls up and down her arms with spiderwebs.
Earlier, at the hospital, I’d had the urge to offer the surgery pro bono, though I knew administration wouldn’t like that. Too messy, plus, it’s not like I can speak for the nurses, anesthesiologists, techs, and other doctors involved in the operation.
I could have offered to outright pay for it, but Juliette didn’t exactly seem like the kind of woman who would accept an offer like that. If she was, she probably could have started a Go Fund Me with a picture of Gus in that dinosaur costume and had the whole thing paid for in a week.
Feet still more in charge than my head, I find myself standing in front of the booth like I’m ready to buy one of these tiny glass bottles.
“We’re not open,” the other woman deadpans, her eyes flicking to me before flicking away again.
“That’s alright,” I raise my hand before she dismisses me fully and jerk my head in Juliette’s direction. “I was actually hoping to talk to Juliette.”
The woman pauses, giving me a look, then sighs and turns, “Jules?”
Juliette turns around, her eyes widening when she sees me. Her hair—which is dark brown in this light—is wild around her face, and my hands twitch to push it back behind her ears, out of the way.
“Dr. Burch?” she asks, like she’s not really sure it’s me. I resist the urge to smile at that.
“Can we talk for a second?”
She blinks, “Of course. Sienna, you good without me for a sec?”
“Sure,” the other woman—Sienna—says, her flat voice only just tinged with amusement. “I might actually be better without you here to break all the product.”
Juliette blushes and ducks out through a door in the back, hugging her arms around herself as she comes around the side of the booth to talk to me.
I open with, “How is Gus doing?”
Her eyebrows pinch down slightly, and she says, “Good. We hadn’t fully run out of the script, so the medication wasn’t interrupted.”
“That’s good. Listen, I made a call to the insurance company today. They’re going to get back to me tomorrow.”
Juliette makes a face like, yeah, doubt that. “Okay.”
“…I just wanted to check—is there anyone who could help with the cost? I really think it’s in Gus’s best interest to have it as soon as possible. Do you have a co-parent, or grandparents that might be able to help out?”
Juliette swallows, looks away and picks a piece of lint from her sweater, “No. Just me.”
My chest tightens at the thought of that—raising a boy with a heart condition without even the support system of grandparents around to help. But it’s also enlightening. There’s no dad in the picture for Gus.
I think of my own childhood, growing up without a mother. Single parents do their best, but there’s always something missing when you have just one person to go to, one parent upon whose shoulders all the weight of the family rests. At least Gus is an only child.
“Jules!” Sienna calls from the booth, poking her head out the back. “I need your help with this display.”
Juliette says good-bye and ducks back into the booth, and I watch her go.
It could work.
But there’s also plenty of reasons not to do it—including how it will look to my peers. The other surgeons and doctors at the hospital, those on the board. It’s not exactly illegal to date a patient, or the parent of one, but it’s not like they’re going to be all that impressed with it.
Doing something like this could damage my career. Especially considering the fact that I must have at least a decade on her. And something like this would require us to be around one another quite a lot.
Would I be able to spend time around her without wanting, or giving into a physical relationship?
No. She would be completely off limits to me. The only thing worse than my recent bout of being alone would be having her dangled in front of me, even without her ever being a real option.
When another gust of wind cuts through the Christmas village, I stick my hands in my pockets and start the walk to my condo. It’s not like I want to be wandering around on Halloween night, anyway.
Even though I know it would never work, the idea persists in my mind, weaseling in further, especially when I can’t think of a single other person who might get enough out of the whole thing to agree to marry me.
I go through my evening routine—reviewing journals and studies, reheating the tandoori chicken in the fridge, setting my sunrise clock to low, red light.
And throughout it all, I can’t get the image of Juliette Harper out of my head.