“But can’t you let go and still work here?”
“No.” She shut her eyes for a moment, bracing herself for the rest of this. “I’ve accepted another position.”
“Another hospital? There aren’t any better hospitals in Indianapolis than Memorial.”
“It’s not a hospital, and it’s not in Indianapolis.” She swallowed hard. “I’m going to Costa Rica.”
“The hell you are!” he bellowed. “What are you thinking, Juliette?”
She knew this was hard on him, and she’d considered leading up to this little by little. But her dad was hardheaded, and he was as apt to shut out the hints she might drop as he was to listen to them. Quite honestly, Alexander Allen heard only what he wanted to hear.
“What I’m thinking is that I’ve already made arrangements for a place to stay, and I’ll be leaving one month from Friday.”
“To do what?”
Now, this was where it became even more difficult. “I’m going to head up a medical recruitment agency.”
Her dad opened up his mouth to respond, but shut it again when nothing came out.
“The goal is to find first-rate medical personnel to bring there. Costa Rica, and even Central America as a whole, can’t supply the existing demand for medical professionals so they’re recruiting from universities and hospitals all over the world, and I’m going to be in charge of United States recruitment.”
“I know about medical recruitment. Lost a top-rate radiologist to Thailand a couple of years ago.”
“So you know how important it is to put the best people in situations where they can help a hospital or, in Costa Rica’s case, provide the best quality of care they can to the greatest number of people.”
“Which leaves people like me in the position of having to find a new radiologist or transplant surgeon or oncologist, depending on who you’re recruiting away from me.”
“But you’re already in an easier position to find the best doctors to fill your positions. You have easier access to the medical schools, a never-ending supply of residents to fill any number of positions in the hospital and you have connections to every major hospital in the country. These are things Costa Rica doesn’t have, so in order for them to find the best qualified professionals they have to reach out differently than you do. Which, in this case, will be through me.”
It was an exciting new venture for her and, while she wouldn’t be offering direct medical care herself, she envisioned herself involved in a great, beneficial service. And all she ever wanted to be as a doctor was someone who benefited her patients, and by providing the patients in Costa Rica with good health-care practitioners she’d be helping more patients than she’d ever be able to help as a single practitioner in a clinic. In fact, when she thought about how many lives only one single recruited doctor could improve, she was overwhelmed. And when she thought of how many practitioners she would recruit and how many patients they would touch, it boggled her mind. “It’s an important job, Dad. And I’m excited about it.”
“Excited or not, you’re throwing away a good medical career. You were a fine hospital physician, Juliette. In whatever capacity you chose.”
“You were, too, once upon a time, but you traded that in for a desk and thousand-dollar business suits. So don’t just sit there and accuse me of leaving medicine, because I’m not doing anything that you haven’t already done.”
“But in Costa Rica? Why there? Why not investigate something different closer to home, if you’re hell-bent on getting out of Memorial. Maybe medical research. We’ve got one of the world’s largest facilities just a few miles from here. Or maybe teaching. I mean, we’ve got, arguably, one of the best medical schools in the country right at our back door.”
“But I don’t want to teach, and I especially don’t want to do research. I also don’t want to work for an insurance company or provide medical care for a national sports franchise. What I want, Dad, is to find something that excites me. Something that offers a large group of people medical services they might not otherwise get. Something that will help an entire country improve its standard of care.”
“There’s nothing I can do to change your mind?” her dad asked, sounding as if the wind had finally been knocked out of his sails.
Juliette shook her head. “No, Dad. There’s not. I’ve been looking into the details of my new position for weeks now, and I’m truly convinced this is something I want to do at this point in my life.”
“Well, I’m going to leave your position open for a while. Staff it with a temp, in case you get to Costa Rica and decide your new job isn’t for you. That way, you’ll have a place to come back to, just in case.”
Her dad was a handsome, vital man, and she hoped that once she was gone, and he didn’t have anybody else to depend on, he might actually go out and get a life for himself. Maybe get married. Or travel. Or sail around the world the way he used to talk about when she was a little girl. In some ways, Juliette felt as if she’d been holding him back. She still lived with him, worked with him, was someone to keep him company when no one else was around. It was an easy way for both of them but she believed that so much togetherness had stunted them both. She didn’t date, hadn’t dated very much as a whole, thanks to her work commitments, and she’d certainly never gone out and looked for employment outside of what her father had handed her.
Yes, that was all easy. But now it was over. It was time for her to move on. “If I do come back to Indianapolis in the future, I won’t be coming back to Memorial because I don’t think it’s a good idea that we work together anymore. We need to be separate, and if I’m here at Memorial that’s not going to happen.”
“Is this about something I’ve done to you, Juliette?” he asked, sounding like a totally defeated man.
“No, Dad. It’s about something I haven’t done for myself.” And about everything she wanted to do for herself in the future.
* * *
One month down, and so far she was enjoying her new job. She’d had the opportunity to interview sixteen potential candidates for open positions in various hospitals. Seven doctors, three registered nurses, three respiratory therapists, a physical therapist and two X-ray technicians, one of whom specialized in mammograms. And there were another ten on her list for the upcoming two weeks. The bonus was, she loved Costa Rica. What she’d seen of it so far was beautiful. The people were nice. The food good. The only thing was, her lifestyle was a bit more subdued than what she was used to. She didn’t have a nice shiny Jaguar to drive, but a tiny, used compact car provided by the agency. And her flat—not exactly luxurious like her home back in Indiana, but she was getting used to smaller, no-frills quarters and cheaper furniture. It was a drastic lifestyle change, she did have to admit, but she was doing the best she could with what she had.
Perhaps the most drastic change, though—the one thing she hadn’t counted on—was that she missed direct patient care in a big way. She’d reconciled herself to experiencing some withdrawal before she’d come here, but what she’d been feeling was overwhelming as she’d never considered that stepping away from it would take such an emotional toll on her. But it had. She was restless. When she didn’t stop herself, her mind wandered back to the days when she’d been involved directly in patient care. And it wasn’t that she didn’t like her job, because she did, and she had no intention of walking away from it. But she could physically, as well as emotionally, feel the lack in herself and she was afraid it was something that was only going to continue growing if she didn’t find a fix for it.
“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Cynthia Jurgensen, her office mate as well as her roommate, asked her. Like Juliette, Cynthia was a medical recruiter. Her recruitment area was the Scandinavian countries, as she had a heritage there. And, like Juliette, Cynthia had experienced the thrill