She smiles. “You’re a natural negotiator—just like your dad was.”
My heart swells with pride and joy.
And like always, I’d trade anything just to have known him.
Lazarus
CHAPTER FIVE
NEW YORK
I stepinto my private office at the hospital I co-own with two business partners who are also physicians, and out of sheer curiosity, I press two fingers to the side of my neck to check my pulse.
No surprise—it’s perfectly steady, as if I’ve been resting for twenty minutes instead of just having walked out of an operating room after saving the life of an Arab tycoon.
The surgery was long, the odds of survival minimal. At least, that would’ve been the case in anyone else’s hands. Not in mine. I accept nothing less than resurrection.
There’s a certain irony in the fact that a man incapable of love is the same man who makes other people’s hearts beat again—especially considering how many cling to the cliché that the heart is where feelings reside.
But the truth is, the brain is in charge of everything. The heart is merely a receptor of emotion.
I think of the nickname the global medical community has given me and my two business partners: Gods in White.
Yes, we are. Every day, we hold lives in our hands and bring them back from the edge—returning them to their homes and families . . . families often just as toxic as mine.
The reminder of tonight’s dinner—thedinner—inevitably shifts my thoughts to the future.
I need heirs. And I’m on the path to getting them.
But instead of feeling content, I feel as though there’s a thick rope wrapped around my throat.
I’ve spent the years since med school in a long line of short-term relationships with women who mean absolutely nothing to me—until a few years ago, when Athanasios?1, William?2, and I had a conversation.
We agreed it was time to settle down. We’re all in the same age bracket—I'm about three years younger than both of them—and we’ve achieved every professional milestone imaginable.
We’re three surgeons considered the best in our fields.
Athanasios is a world-class neurosurgeon.
William is a reconstructive plastic surgeon, specializing in burn victims.
And I . . . I deal with hearts.
I’ve saved the lives of kings, diplomats, global leaders.
There’s nowhere left to climb. The summit’s behind me, and everything beyond it feels more like routine than challenge.
The only true challenge left?
My personal life—and the massive step I’ve informally committed to: marriage.
Athanasios and William are more like family to me than my actual brothers or cousin, and yet . . . I haven’t told either of them about the damn almost-engagement.
Why haven’t I?
A psychoanalyst might say that it’s because once I tell them, there’s no turning back.
I’ve forbidden Jodie—my girlfriend and soon-to-be fiancée, whom I’ve been seeing for four months now—and anyone else in my family from announcing the news until I give the go-ahead. For now, it’s a secret arrangement, although my mother looks like she’s ready to burst if she doesn’t scream to the world that she’ll finally be a grandmother in the next few years.
