Page 19 of Clinically Bewitched
To her credit, she didn’t argue. “Of course, sir. I’ll hold your bag at the bell desk, and we’ll sort out the room situation after your presentation.”
“Thank you.”
I shoved my bag across the counter, turned, and ran.
The conference room was on the third floor. I took the stairs two at a time, my dress shoes slapping against the marble with enough force to echo through the stairwell. My jacket flapped behind me. My tie was probably crooked. I didn’t care.
I burst through the doors at exactly 2:58 PM.
The moderator, a woman in her fifties with severe glasses and an even more severe expression, looked up from her notes. “Dr. Darcy?”
“Present,” I said, slightly out of breath.
“We were beginning to worry.”
“Flight was canceled. I drove from Denver.”
Her eyebrows rose slightly. “That’s dedication.”
“That’s a contractual obligation to my colleagues who will make my life hell if I don’t do this.”
She almost smiled. “Well. You’re here now. Are you ready?”
I straightened my tie, smoothed down my jacket, and took a deep breath.
Was I ready? I had prepared my talk. I’d rehearsed it seventeen times. I knew every slide, every transition, every pause for emphasis. I’d timed it down to the second.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m ready.”
“Excellent. You’re on in two minutes.”
I walked to the side of the stage, watching as the moderator took the podium and began her introduction. The conference room was packed with at least two hundred people, maybe more. Medical professionals, researchers, students. All here for the annual Neurological Advances Summit.
All here to listen to me talk about something I actually cared about.
“... and it’s my pleasure to introduce Dr. Julien Darcy, a neurosurgeon at Clinically Approved in New Haven, Connecticut. Dr. Darcy’s research focuses on minimally invasive techniques for treating traumatic brain injuries, and his work has been published in several leading journals. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Darcy.”
Applause.
I walked onto the stage, and everything else fell away.
This—this—was my element. Not small talk. Not social events. Not bumping into distracted women in casino lobbies. This was controlled. Structured. Purposeful.
This, I could do.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice steady and clear. “I’m going to talk to you today about the future of neurosurgery... specifically, how recent advances in imaging technology and surgical techniques are allowing us to treat conditions that were previously considered inoperable.”
I clicked to the first slide: a 3D rendering of the human brain, color-coded by region.
“The brain is the most complex organ in the human body. Eighty-six billion neurons, each one connected to thousands of others, creating a network of staggering complexity. For decades, neurosurgery was a blunt instrument; we could remove tumors, repair damage, but always at a cost. Always with collateral damage to surrounding tissue.”
I clicked to the next slide: a comparison of traditional surgical approaches versus minimally invasive techniques.
“But in the last ten years, we’ve seen a revolution. New imaging technologies, along with functional MRI, diffusion tensor imaging, and intraoperative CT, allow us to map the brain with unprecedented precision. We can see not just wherea tumor is, but what it’s connected to. What functions it’s affecting. What we can safely remove and what we can’t.”
I was warming up now, falling into the rhythm of the presentation. This was what I did. This was what I was good at.
“Let me show you a case study...”
