“One drink,” she reminded him as they shook hands, gently but rather formally, before Jake jogged to his BMW and whisked Andrea away.
Door closed but smile still firmly in place, Megan ambled slowly, dreamily, back the piano bench and began to play.
***
Nothing gives you perspective like watching someone’s life falling apart.
Megan’s third patient of the evening took an exhausting, teary hour, at the end of which Megan held Candice for a long moment before sending her on her way, back into an uncertain life.
Volunteering at a women’s health clinic in one of Boston’s poorest neighborhoods was an eye-opener. In the past three months, Megan had seen it all, or certainly felt as though she had. Every type of abuse, accident, confusion and heartache had made its way through their doors. Megan wondered, almost every time she came here, just how much good she could actually do. The tidal wave of miserable, downtrodden women sapped her strength and, worse, her optimism.
But then again, each shift she would meet someone who reaffirmed her faith in humanity. Like Zoe, the ex-addict with two kids who came for discount prescriptions and help from the food bank. Clean for six years, a steady job... She was a success story. It brought a little balance and good cheer.
The waiting room was empty by 11.20. Megan yawned, stretched and brought out her phone to finish reading an article she had found earlier: Who is the Real Jake McMahon? It seemed mostly to be poorly-informed speculation, but she had become committed to finding out as much as she could. Many of the newspaper search results were less than edifying; the tabloids portrayed him as a serial philanderer, a barfly with winning ways and charm to burn. One website listed, with alluring photos, all of the models and actresses Jake was rumored to have dated. The page was so long, Megan had to scroll down six times.
Photographers had made a point of getting shirtless pictures of Jake at the beach or, in one outrageous invasion of his privacy, in the back garden of his place in London. Organizing them by date, Megan could follow the impressive evolution of his musculature, from scrawny geek with glasses, through Boston University point guard, to the buff, self-assured specimen who had so charmingly asked her out earlier tonight. The sites which promised even more revealing photos were peddling fakes, she found, quickly closing the window on her iPad before a colleague had the chance to notice the lurid threesome scene into which Jake’s likeness had been artlessly Photoshopped.
Digging deeper, with the waiting room still unusually quiet, Megan read more about Jake’s business life, quickly piecing together a more rounded impression of the man. He was a marketing hotshot, to be sure, and had a way with the press which combined suave charm with indisputably genuine acumen. While Tom worked largely behind the scenes, crafting the future of digital storage, Jake handled the negotiations with Chinese suppliers, the sensitive issues regarding outsourcing to India, and the ceaseless requests for interviews and magazine profiles. He had barely left the front pages since his famous hint that, “Going public is a real possibility”. Half the investment houses on Wall Street were clamoring for a meeting, desperate to underwrite the “IPO of the decade”.
Megan stopped herself for a moment. Googling someone before a date, she told herself, was standard practice these days, but part of her felt that Jake was at a particular disadvantage, given the wealth of speculation about his love life which floated daily around the Blogosphere. If she’d had a date with a medical student, Megan mused, there wouldn’t be pages dedicated to his past conquests. Did it matter, after all, if Jake had played the field? He was a young, handsome man with all the time in the world to ‘settle down’ with the right woman.
Still, the litany of short relationships unsettled Megan. “One drink,” she whispered to his most glamorous image, a portrait of him in a beautifully-fitting suit, apparently taken at an awards dinner. “One drink. Nothing more.”
***
Megan could happily have strangled the scheduling office, but that wouldn’t have changed anything. Here she was, an hour from being picked up by the legendary Jake McMahon, and she was only now getting scrubbed after a six-hour ward shift.
“Did Mrs. Bennett get discharged?” her nurse colleague wanted to know.
Megan nodded. “I think we’ll see her again, unless she agrees to use a walker. Three falls in a month, wasn’t it?”