Debbie often teased him about living so close, a five-minute commute walking through the garage. She said he would never have a personal life. But Robert was satisfied with what he was doing. He loved his job and the people he worked with. He didn’t even notice when another doctor, a lovely French-Egyptian woman, showed interest. It appeared to Debbie the female doctor was attracted to him by the way her big, exotic brown eyes looked into his. And her deep voice with the amazing accent was sexy. How could Robert not notice the obvious advances? But he seemed clueless. Debbie wondered if she should say something, but she then decided Sevigny was too sophisticated for Robert, too interested in social life, travel, and culture—all things that Robert appeared not to care about at all.
Robert had been found wandering along a highway near the Canadian border not too far from Buffalo, NY, when he was six. There was evidence he had been in some kind of accident and had been walking for days before the authorities found him battered and bruised with the imprints of seatbelts across his chest. At first, he didn’t talk at all, and then he would only tell them his name was Robert. No one in the area in the US or Canada had reported him missing. After several months of investigating, he was put into the foster system.
The first foster family he lived with moved to Melrose, MA, north of Boston. When they wanted to move to Georgia, Robert was taken out of the home and placed with Joseph and Bertha Young in Medford. He had no recollection of his life before he was found on the highway. He was reserved, quiet, and shy.
The Youngs had fostered children for many years. Bertha gave up long ago on adopting an infant or toddler. Every time she got attached to one, the child was returned to his family. They mostly took in older children now, sometimes as many as four at a time. Robert was the youngest, at the age of nine. The next year, two of the older children graduated from high school, and the other one went to live with one of his relatives.
Joseph and Bertha took Robert into Boston on a Saturday. They walked the historic red line through the city seeing all the sites, including where the Boston Tea Party took place, and walked on the tall ship the USS Constitution. Robert enjoyed the day and all the history.
That evening at dinner at the famous Oyster House, Joseph and Bertha asked his permission to adopt him. Robert was so happy. Finally, someone who really cared about him.
The Youngs were in their fifties when they adopted Robert. He was ten. Joseph was very attentive to his new son, helping with his studies and taking him fishing when they had the time. Robert told him he wanted to be a brain surgeon when he grew up.
Joseph helped Robert apply to med school at Harvard. He was accepted and given a scholarship that helped with the expenses. His second year there, Bertha had a stroke and died. Robert and his dad continued to be close until Joseph died from heart disease five years after Robert joined the practice at New Haven.
A year after Robert started working with his team, a young college girl, Ava, came in with a head injury caused by a dirt bike accident. She had a severe concussion and remained in the hospital for several weeks. When she was conscious, she showed great affection toward Robert. It was common for head trauma patients to feel that way since their doctor was usually the one the patient remembered first and latched onto for help. But as she continued to recover, her parents encouraged a relationship. They believed that their daughter marrying a neurosurgeon would be perfect for both her and the family. She was impulsive and needed a steady hand. It would be so lucky if she didn’t have to worry about a career, if she could just do what she wanted, have children, live an easy life. And her mother thought how satisfying it would be, introducing her son-in-law, the doctor.
Although Robert resisted, having been told many times not to get involved with patients, the relationship blossomed, and they dated while she was in therapy. The only loving woman Robert remembered in his life was his adoptive mother. He missed her affection and care for him. Naturally reserved, he’d never learned how to get beyond the awkwardness of early dates—the bond with Ava avoided all that, moving straight into emotional intimacy. He found it difficult to ignore the pleasure he got from his young patient’s affection; it was as if he were the most important person in her life.
He thought about it, of course; he took his colleagues’ warnings seriously. But her feelings seemed genuine to him—he believed she could see how much he cared about helping people, not only her, and that this was something she both admired and shared. And she seemed fascinated by medicine and hospitals, by the buzz of life and death that was his world. Just holding her hand or kissing her could bring him peace. He believed this was true love and looked at engagement rings. She didn’t like diamonds. An opal, maybe? Sapphires?
But once she returned to college, she seemed dissatisfied. She complained about minor problems and sometimes didn’t return his calls. At first, she said it
