Chapter 2
TWO
LORENZO
Lorenzo Michelangelo Santini—M.D., Ph.D.
, Chief of Special Surgeries at Mass General Brigham, Distinguished Professor at Harvard University Medical School, Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, winner of the Jacobson Innovation Award in Surgical Techniques, Member of the National Academy of Medicine, all-around God with a scalpel, known to terrified residents at four hospitals as Dr. Satan—was irked.
He’d just received an email informing him that the hotel where he was supposed to stay after delivering a lecture at the Mayo Clinic had water damage, and he would have to find other accommodations.
His interview with The New England Journal of Medicine had to be rescheduled (or canceled, since the reporter clearly had no respect for his time).
A book he had ordered should have arrived and had not.
He did not have time for these menial tasks. He was a world-renowned surgeon, for the love of God, and there were people for doing these kinds of lesser, time-sucking tasks. He just hadn’t been able to find one.
In April, his sister, Sofia, had suggested he hire a personal assistant to help him manage his two homes (Chatham and Boston), someone who could schedule necessary workers like mechanics and landscapers, make his travel arrangements (that idiot from the Chicago conference had booked him in economy plus, not first class).
This personal assistant would also pick up his dry cleaning, stock his fridge…
all those tedious tasks people like Lorenzo shouldn’t have to do.
He wasn’t being condescending. He was being honest. Was he really supposed to go to Whole Foods to buy kale when he could be, oh, saving a life?
Teaching future doctors? Writing a paper that would change the way a procedure would be done, therefore raising patient survival rates?
An assistant made sense. He’d always had people to do things for him, of course—a travel agent, a cleaning service, the landscaper.
But competence was hard to come by, and Lorenzo hated incompetence.
Was it really so hard to tell the difference between fresh and dried basil?
Skim milk and two percent? Did the travel agent really have to send seven confirmation emails, all of which Lorenzo had to read to be sure there was nothing relevant in them?
He didn’t want to wait on hold to get an appointment for his car to be serviced.
Didn’t want to have to call the florist himself to order flowers for his mother’s birthday.
It was enough that he even remembered his mother’s birthday.
Most years, he even called. He loved his mother, but you didn’t get that time back, and it added up.
Sofia had recommended her friend Tillie.
Foolishly, Lorenzo had hired her based on his sister’s word alone.
Tillie had lasted four hours. She had been “organizing” his kitchen (which was already perfectly organized) when he asked her to bring him an espresso.
She had to be shown how to use the espresso maker.
Then, twenty minutes after he’d demonstrated, she brought him a cappuccino instead.
Lorenzo calmly told her that he did not drink cappuccino and she would have to try harder, listen better and be more intelligent than, say, a houseplant.
Inexplicably, this made her burst into tears and quit.
He then called an employment agency on Cape Cod, where he tried to spend weekends and where his home needed more attention than his condo on Beacon Street.
He was told he’d be placed on a waiting list, since demand for that kind of service was high.
Lorenzo refused to be on any waiting list. A colleague at Mass General had recommended someone, and Lorenzo had contacted her and asked to set up an interview. She texted:
Are you the one they call Dr. Satan?
When he answered in the affirmative, he never heard from her again.
After that, he contacted a high-end domestic employment agency—again, time that could’ve been spent on far more important things. They sent over three candidates. He didn’t like any of them but hired one, then fired him a week later when he found the man sitting in his living room, reading.
“He was reading? My God, the nerve,” Isabella, his younger sister, said when he reported this.
“Exactly. And sitting on the couch,” Lorenzo said. Dante choked on a laugh, though Lorenzo wasn’t sure why.
“You want Carson,” Izzy said.
His younger sister was a nurse, though she could’ve been a doctor.
Definitely smart enough. She’d gotten an A- in Organic Chemistry.
He knew doctors who’d had to take that class four times before passing.
Couldn’t they see they simply didn’t have the right stuff?
Wasn’t it obvious they were not meant to put their hands inside a human body?
Many was the time when Lorenzo had informed a resident they were not cut out for medicine, not smart enough, not tough enough, not gifted enough.
Someone had to say those things. Did the world want a C+ student from a fourth-rate college cutting into their child or spouse?
“Who is Carson?” he asked Isabella without missing a beat. His mind could hold on to dozens of facts at once and moved much faster than most people’s. This was not bragging. It was simply a fact.
“A butler,” Izzy said. “He never lets a detail slip, reveres the family he works for, and takes care of any and all problems without bothering his employer.”
“Is he free?” Lorenzo asked.
“He’s retired,” Izzy said, and she and their mother laughed.
“Would Bates do?” asked their father.
“Dad, of course not. He’s always in prison,” Izzy said.
“You’re not being helpful,” Lorenzo said.
Obviously, they were joking about something, though what, he didn’t know.
Popular culture, something he had no time for.
He glanced to the head of the table, where his grandmother used to sit when she was alive, and felt a pang. She had understood him, at least.
“Anita, can I have some more eggplant?” asked Henry, Sofia’s husband. The entire family was gathered for Sunday dinner, which, though held weekly, Lorenzo only attended every other month or so.
It was September now, all the students back in school.
A busy time of year for him. He’d endured the traffic from Boston to attend this dinner.
The house has been his gift to his parents when his dad retired, and it was large and beautiful, on the bay side of Falmouth, with a dining room that could seat twelve, a chef’s kitchen—both parents loved cooking—and plenty of bedrooms for grandchildren, though they only had two at the moment.
Sophia and Henry had just had Lucy, who was sleeping upstairs, and William, age almost three.
The child stared at Lorenzo, eyes wide. Lorenzo raised an eyebrow, and William burst into tears.
Henry scooped him up, then passed him to Lorenzo’s mom, who made soothing sounds and kissed the boy’s hair.
Lorenzo sighed. He probably should’ve spent this afternoon working. He always felt a little awkward with his family; he never got their inside jokes (who were Carson and Bates?) and often found it hard to talk with his siblings, who always seemed eager to poke fun at him.
“I might know someone,” said Lark, his brother’s wife. “How about my sister?”
“I didn’t think your sister worked,” Lorenzo said. Lark’s twin was one of those vapid people who seemed to exist only to post on social media.
“My other sister.”
“Did the bookstore go bankrupt, then?” Lorenzo asked. Not surprising. Independent bookstores were notoriously susceptible to failure.
“No,” Lark said, her tone holding a note of irritation. “My other sister.”
Ah. The rude one. “Have I met her?” he asked, though of course he had.
“Believe it or not, she was at our wedding, Lorenzo,” Dante said. “Winnie. The youngest sister.”
“And you met at Joy’s house, before we, uh, broke up,” Lark said.
Yes. They’d had a brief and terse exchange then.
He remembered the flash of irritation he’d felt.
In the lead-up to Sofia and Henry’s wedding, Lorenzo had asked Lark to be his companion.
It had been a convenient arrangement, nothing more, meant to reassure his grandmother, then ninety-nine years old and failing, that he wouldn’t end up alone.
Not that there was anything wrong with that.
Ninety-six percent of the time, solitude was quite appealing.
At any rate, while he and Lark were pretending to date, she had struck up a friendship with Dante, and after Sofia’s wedding, they started dating and got married.
It had all been absolutely fine with him.
“Is this sister looking for work?” Lorenzo asked.
“She’s between jobs at the moment.” Lark said, exchanging a look with Dante. “She’s organized and straightforward,” she added. “I think you’d get along.”
“She’d be a good fit, brother,” Dante said. “She’d stay out of your way and get things done.”
“I might need her on site in Chatham and Boston,” he said. “And I’d have to be able to fire her without you bursting into hysterics, Lark. No offense, but you do cry disturbingly often.”
“Tears of joy since she met me,” Dante said, and everyone else laughed.
“No offense taken,” Lark said, “and I understand. Never hire someone you can’t fire.”
“Exactly.” He gave his sister-in-law a nod of appreciation. “All right. Give me her contact information. And thank you,” he added. He wasn’t a boor, after all.
“Good job remembering your manners,” Dante said, and Izzy snorted, and Sofia looked at her plate, smiling. Lorenzo didn’t know what was funny.
“Have some more chicken, Lorenzo,” his mother said. “You love my spezzatino.”
It was true, he did, and he had a ten-mile run scheduled for later to make up for all this starch. The protein would be useful. “Thanks, Mom,” he said.
“You’re a good son,” she told him. “And brother.”