Page 4 of Gone Before Goodbye

“Of course they’ll stare,” he says. “You’re smoking hot.”

Maggie frowns. Some things never change.

“Go,” he says again.

She nods because he’s right and disconnects the app. Her phone case features two M&M candy characters, the Yellow M&M guy holding flowers to the Green M&M woman. Marc had given her the phone case as a half-serious/half-gag gift. Maggie & Marc. M&M. Marc bought M&M pillowcases. He bought M&M throw pillows. Marc thought it was adorable. Maggie thought it was pure cringe, which, of course, only encouraged him.

“Maggie?”

She startles at the sound of the voice and drops her phone in her purse. She turns and sees her old classmate Larry Magid, a dermatologist. The last time she’d seen Larry was five years ago in Nepal when he’d flown over to help her and Marc with an outbreak of Hansen’s disease, more commonly known as leprosy. They both ended up working out of the same hospital, even working out of the same floor, so he was intimately familiar with her current woes.

“Hey, Larry.”

He squirms. “Are you here for… I mean, uh, are you going…?” He semi-gestures toward the building.

“Sure,” Maggie says.

“Oh.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“They’ve named a scholarship in my mother’s memory,” she says.

“Right, I heard.”

“So that’s why I’m here.”

“Right. Gotta go. Mickey will be waiting for me.”

He hurries away as though, Maggie is tempted to shout out loud, she has leprosy. She wants to grab her phone, get Marc on again, and whine, “See what I mean?” but the phone is already in her bag and now she’s a little annoyed so to hell with it.

Maggie hesitantly trudges up the same steps she’d enthusiastically marched up to get her diploma two decades ago. The banner pinned above the door reads:

SCHOLARSHIP RECOGNITION EVENT

WELCOME BACK, JOHNS HOPKINS ALUMS!

The hall is buzzing. The music, a string quartet of current students, plays Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19 in C Major. Her hands at her sides, Maggie can’t help half consciously moving her fingers along with the music, as though there’s a violin in her hand. There are something like five hundred people—physicians and scholarship winners—milling about the esteemed hall. You know it’s a medical event because too many men are wearing bow ties. That’s a big look with doctors, mostly because regular ties hang loosely and get in the way during exams. Her father, an army surgeon who also saw combat as a Field Surgeon 62B—in his case, in Vietnam—always wore bright flowery ones. He claimed it let his patients see him as a bit goofy and thus comfortingly human.

When Maggie finally enters the grand hall, the room doesn’t stop or go silent or any of that, but there is definitely some hesitation in the air.

She stands there for a few long seconds, feeling beyond awkward, as though her hands were suddenly too big. Her face flushes. Why hadshe come? She looks for a friendly or at least familiar face, but the only one she sees is from the poster on an easel up on the dais.

Mom.

God, her mother had been beautiful.

The photo they’d blown up had been taken for the school directory five years ago, Mom’s last year teaching here. This was right before the diagnosis, something she hid from her two daughters for the next three years, until she finally called Maggie at their new clinic in Ghana and said, “I’m going to tell you something if you promise you won’t come home when I do. Your work is too important.” So Maggie promised and Mom told her and they both cried but Maggie kept her promise until her sister Sharon called and said, “It’s almost time.” Then Maggie kissed Marc goodbye at Dubai International, told him to finish up and come home soon, and flew home to sit vigil with Sharon for her mother’s final days.

Maggie locks eyes with her poster-mother because right now it is the only friendly face in the room. She holds her head high as she walks toward the dais. She hopes that it’s narcissism on her part, but conversations seem to halt or at least quiet as she passes. Murmurs ensue, or again maybe that’s just in her head. Still she does not look away, does not let herself use her peripheral vision. Her eyes stay on her mother’s, but she feels the stares now.

A familiar figure steps in her way and says, “Surprised you’d show your face.”

It’s Steve Schipner, aka Sleazy Steve, another reconstructive surgeon like herself and yet hopefully nothing like herself. He has over a million followers on an Instagram account where he displays “before and after” photos and calls himself the Boob Whisperer. She and Steve graduated in the same class and did a surgical rotation together at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University under the tutelage of Dr. Evan Barlow. Steve is that guy who can’t say good morning without making it sound like a sleazy double entendre, ergo the nickname.He lives in Dubai now and specializes in, to quote his profile bio, “ambitious influencers looking to enhance their social media hits, their lives—and their cup size.”

“Yeah, well, I’m full of surprises,” Maggie says.