The call came on December 18 while I was sitting in a boardroom at Boston Medical Center, halfway through a discussion about our Q4 projections. My phone lit up on the polished table beside my notes, but I let it go to voicemail without breaking eye contact with the CFO. By the time the meeting ended at 4:30 p.m., the winter light had already drained from the Boston skyline.
I glanced at my phone and found three missed calls from my younger sister, Rachel, along with a text that said, Call me about Christmas. I stepped into my corner office on the fourteenth floor of BMC’s research tower, shut the glass door behind me, and called her back. “Finally,” Rachel answered, irritation cutting through the line.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”
“I was in a board meeting. What’s going on?”
“It’s about Christmas Eve. Mom and Dad’s annual party.” She paused, and in that pause I heard the answer before she gave it.
“We need you to skip it this year.”
I set my coffee down slowly. “Excuse me?”
“Look, don’t make this a big thing. It’s just that my boyfriend is coming.
Dr. Marcus Chin. He’s a cardiothoracic surgeon at Mass General, and he’s kind of a big deal.
He’s being considered for department head, and I’ve told him about our family, about how successful we all are. Dad’s accounting firm. Mom’s interior design business.
Me working in pharmaceutical sales.”
She trailed off, but the missing part of the sentence sat between us anyway. “But not about me,” I said. “Natalie, come on.
You know how it is. You’re thirty-four, still single, living in that tiny apartment, working some hospital job we don’t really understand. Marcus comes from a family of doctors and academics.
If he meets you and realizes you’re… struggling, it’s going to raise questions about our family.”
I looked at the wall across from my desk. There was a framed Fortune magazine cover hanging in the soft office light. The Future of Healthcare Technology, it read.
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