I SPECIALIZE IN THE TREATMENT of T-cell childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The smaller the patient, the less time we have. The cells multiply and move so fast that it’s a fierce race, the opponent impossibly swift. I typically treat the children and infants with a combination of chemotherapy and targeted therapy with a tyrosine kinase inhibitor. Inhibitor. That’s what I am. An introverted inhibitor. My job is to prevent, to discourage, to put up walls and deterrents against the cancer cells. I was pretty good at doing that in my personal life, too. John vanquished all my defenses, though. I still don’t know how he managed that.
I’ve built a name for myself over the years. Professionally, I let my work speak for itself, and it’s gratifying in a small way that my practice calendar is full. Although distressing in a much larger sense, because it means a waiting list of sick kids, many of them hopeless cases, nevertheless hoping for a chance, any chance, I might offer. The fact that I often publish my research—my articles in the Journal of Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology and the Journal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology have won awards—and increasingly speak at conferences has intensified the attention on my professional life. But I’ve always kept my personal life—what little there is of it—personal. That is now proving impossible. For the media uproar has been frankly astounding.
I’m not sure if it’s just a slow news month, or whether the idea of a man with three wives is simply so titillating that it pushed everything else off the front page. I take some satisfaction in the fact that no one has yet managed to take a clear photo of me and no usable video. I cover my face every time I go outside. Most publications and TV shows are running my official photograph from the hospital’s website. It’s not particularly flattering, with my brown hair in a neat, sterile bob and a fake half smile plastered on my face.
The PR director of the hospital has been working with security to keep the reporters at bay at the front entrance. Still, some Judas on the hospital staff must have left a side door strategically open because a news crew managed to almost reach my office this morning. I was in there explaining to the distraught parents of a ten-year-old girl who had presented with excessive bruising on her legs and arms that it was probably not due to soccer practice. My assistant caught sight of the cameras and called the PR director, who then roused security and rooted the crew out of the building before they got to me. Even so, one particularly clever reporter bandaged her young daughter’s two kneecaps and almost managed to make it to my office before being stopped by an alert aide. Since then, a security guard has been posted at the doorway to the pediatric oncology clinic and no one is allowed into the waiting area unless they have a child with them and a scheduled appointment.
I give the reporters nothing, and still they have the facts. So delicious are these that even the LA Times has run with the story. As have Newsweek, Time, People, inTouch, and a score of less reputable magazines. I don’t listen to the messages on my voicemail inviting me to appear on Good Morning America, Morning Joe, and other radio and television shows. I think about my fellow wives, wonder if they’re talking. I haven’t seen any comment from either of them in the press after that first, disastrous, Chronicle piece—the hole in the dam that turned into the flood.
It’s salacious stuff. People are repeating it in the elevators, in the break room of the hospital. There are sudden silences when I walk into the cafeteria, or past the nurses’ station. One poor out-of-the-loop orderly even whispered the gossip to me. “Did you hear?” he asked, to the amused horror of everyone around us, as I filled my coffee cup. “This doctor was married to three women! And one of them works here!” I managed an “Imagine that!” before someone hissed the truth to him. He turned bright red, but I didn’t resent his words. Only a handful of people at the medical center understood that John and I were in a relationship. Even fewer knew we’d actually gotten married. But with the press going wild, I’m resigned that everyone is privy to the most intimate details of my life.