Page 47 of Cava with My Colleague

Finally, the coordinator has to actually step forward and announce that we need to vacate the room for the next event. Jade thanks everyone again, and people begin to file out, but several patients linger, approaching the stage.

Her friends linger too, and Jade excuses herself from a pharma rep and has a brief word with them before hugging them both goodbye.

I start packing up the translation equipment, giving Jade space. But I’m watching her talk to a woman, the two of them clearly talking about the woman’s close-cropped hair, based on the way Jade keeps looking at it. Jade’s face lights up. She reaches out and touches the woman’s arm, saying something that makes them both smile.

This is why she does this work. Not the science, not the research papers, not the career advancement.

This.

After another ten minutes, the room has finally emptied. The hotel staff is stacking chairs. Jade is packing up her laptop, moving slowly, like she’s exhausted.

I should say something. Acknowledge what just happened. Tell her she did well.

But everything I think to say feels inadequate. “Good presentation” doesn’t cover it. “You followed my advice” makes it about me when it clearly isn’t.

So I just stand there, holding my tablet, watching her coil up the laptop cord with shaking hands, and trying to figure out how to talk to someone I thought I understood but clearly didn’t understand at all.

She turns and catches me staring. “What?”

“Nothing,” I say quickly. Then, because I have to say something, “You did well. Very well.”

She nods, but doesn’t quite meet my eyes. “Thanks.”

There’s more I should say, more that I want to say. But the words won’t come, and after a moment she hefts her laptop bag over her shoulder and starts toward the exit.

I follow, my mind still turning over that photograph, that story, the realization that I’ve spent months working with Jade and never bothered to ask why this mattered so much to her.

I thought I was the professional one. The experienced one. The one who understood how important this work was.

But watching her tonight, I realize I’ve been doing this job for five years without ever really understanding who we’re doing it for.

Jade just taught me that.

And I think that is the thing about her. It was never her laugh or the way she fills a room or the fact that she is objectively attractive. It was this. The way she made me see something I’d looked at for years and never noticed. I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t have much practice with desire that arrives like this—slowly, creeping through a door I didn’t even know was there.

18

Jade

After the last pharmaceutical rep leaves, Carlos and I are done for the night. We pack up the brochures and my computer as the hotel staff stacks chairs and cleans the room. I yawn—a lot—even though it’s only nine o’clock. I already told Tessa and Luc I was too tired to do anything else, and even though I would have loved to have dinner with my friends, I just can’t.

I think the Propranolol is making me tired. Well, that paired with digging deep with this new presentation, sharing a personal story that I don’t tell many people. It was more exhausting than being nervous and nauseous and sticking to the old script.

But this time, my hands didn’t shake. My heart raced, especially when my picture came up on the big screen, but I wasn’t nauseous. I don’t share it often, or even talk about my time in treatment. My best friends know, of course, but now Carlos—and an audience of hundreds—know about it.

Emma had been the first one to bring up therapy and medication. She’s been getting treatment for perimenopausal ADHD, and suggested I talk to someone ASAP. I called Manny, and thanks to my persistence and the amazing health care system I was able to see a doctor two days later. Then I went down a rabbit hole of research—side effects, pharmaceutical studies—and yesterday I got my hands on Propranolol.

A therapy appointment was harder to get, but Emma called a friend of a friend and they had a chat with me off-book. I’d liked her—she’d immediately made me feel comfortable and was impressed with my self-imposed exposure therapy.

I have a real appointment next week. In the meantime, I had this new presentation.

My friends and I had debated about this plan, and I’d brought it up with the therapist. How would I feel using my own personal experience to talk about my work? Would it bring up old pain, make me a “survivor” again instead of someone who’s just living her life? Or would the connection it gave me to survivors and advocates be worth showing them what it was like for me?

It was worth it.

Wordlessly, we make our way to the elevators. As soon as I press the button, the left bank dings, and the doors slide open.

In the elevator, I lean against the mirrored wall. Carlos has his hands in his pocket, looking down at his shoes.