Jennifer started working as a medical assistant in our medical office about three months after my divorced finalized. At first, I didn't really notice her. I was part of a large medical group and turnover in the entry-level staff seemed to be the rule. We would achieve a state of relative stability, and then one person would leave for any of a number of reasons: a promotion, school, a job closer to home, a better paying job, or asked not to come back at all. Once the first person left, the cascade would start again, and I would be working with an entire new staff in short order. The patients kept coming though and the doctors mostly stayed the same year to year and the office kept humming along despite the bumps in the road.
Jennifer was the fourth and final in a line of four blond MAs our office manager had hired over the last few months to replace our previous crop of mostly brunettes. Looking back now, it seems appropriate that she would also be the last of the four to leave our office fifteen or sixteen months later. I had trouble telling the four them apart at the start, especially from behind when they all had their hair up in ponytails or buns. By the end, I knew exactly who Jennifer was.
After my marriage collapsed, I only had my work to keep me busy: seeing patients in the office, rounding in the hospital, and attending an increasingly long list of committee meetings in my early mornings, lunch hours, and evenings. For the time being anyway, I had sworn off romance. My wife and I had lost our virginity to each other, though not on our wedding day. We had been the best of friends and to the outside world seemed a perfect couple for the ten years or so that our relationship lasted. If I could not make a relationship work with someone like her, why would I ever try relationships and marriage again? Love just brought too many complications and too much heartache.
All of that is to say that I did not believe in love at first sight or love at all at that point in my life. If you take the "first" literally, then this story does not change that in any way. I did not fall in love with Jennifer on the first day or the second day or likely even the twenty-ninth day. If you take the second half of the phrase though, the "sight" portion, as really experiencing the presence of someone else not just as a back ground character or scenery in the play of your own life but really and truly apprehending their presence, their existence and vitality, then I would say that I did fall in love with Jennifer in that one first instant, in that one first glance when I did finally see her for the first time.
As I said, the office was busy and large. Jennifer and I were not often paired together in the beginning. I have a reputation for being tolerant and easy going with the staff, especially the new hires, but I am also busy. Working as my MA might be easy due to my nature, but a little rough because of the pace I needed to keep. The office scuttlebutt that I picked up from time to time suggested that certain MAs preferred not to work with me because I was too busy. They preferred being able to take their time (or phone breaks) with some of the doctors who set a little more sedate pace. It turned out that Jennifer was a quick learner, enjoyed her job, and was not afraid to step up and work. A couple months into her tenure, Jennifer's supervisor started pairing the two of us together more often.
When Jennifer and I worked together, my patients were roomed quickly, their data was in the computer, and papers were completed and ready. At least once a week I heard patients say how pleasant she was and how much she seemed to love her job. She coaxed the littlest ones to read the eye charts, put them at ease when they were scared, and got the shots over as quickly and humanely as possible. She even updated the office workflow to help speed up the prior authorization process for medications.
And then one day it happened. It was spring in the middle of a nondescript week on a nondescript day. My schedule was a mix of sick and well patients but not very heavy. The rotation schedule had kept Jennifer and I separate for a week or two, but now we had been working together a couple of days in a row. She caught up with me in the hallway. "Dr Stevens, can you verify Johnny's vaccines?" she asked.
Well honestly, I have no idea what she actually asked me, those words are gone now, but it must have been something as innocuous as that. I turned and looked up from the chart in my hand and the thoughts of my last patient or maybe of my next one. Who can tell what was happening when your world shifts so drastically? I saw Jennifer for the first time: her warm deep brown eyes lidded with long thick lashes, her straight nose with a rounded tip, her pink full lips, her oval face, her smooth rounded jaw, her wavy blond hair with light brown highlights cascading past her shoulders. An electric charge shot from my brain straight into my chest or maybe the opposite way, but I know I visibly jerked at the sight of her, of her beauty. Smitten: struck with a blow. Even though it sounds almost childish to use it, that was what I was, smitten by Jennifer. I never wanted to look away from her. I wanted to fall on my knees in front of her, to grab her and hold her to me, to confess my undying love.
Jennifer saw my reaction though I'm not sure she knew what it meant. She flinched back slightly and gave me a quizzical look. I must have looked the drooling idiot. Apparently, I answered her with something resembling coherent English because the smile returned to her lips, and she went off to finish her job. I went back to my office to try to reboot my brain.
After that, I noticed Jennifer all the time: the lilt of her laugh, the way she unconsciously touched the base of her neck when talking about a cute child, the playful light that danced in her eyes when she joked with her workmates (and oh, god yes, when she joked with me), the way the light played off her hair, and of course the curve of her hip and the swell of those beautiful breasts. Whenever I thought no one was looking, I stared at her in profile, from behind, from any angle I could. Whenever the weekly assignments came out, I looked to see if she would be working with me and if not would she at least be working in a pod close by. If I knew she was opening the office for the day, I arrived early to be nearer to her. If she were closing, I tried to time my leaving with hers so that I could walk down to the garage with her and the other MAs. I joked with her more often, thanked her and complimented her on her work, explained the medical decisions more often, hung out a little longer in the staff lounge at lunch if she was there, and made more small talk with her.
For all that schoolboy mooning, I tried to keep myself professional. When I went home at night, I tried to look rationally at myself and the likelihood Jennifer would ever feel the same way. I could never make the math add up in my favor.
I was a thirty-six year old divorced man. She was old enough to go out for drinks, but was probably twenty-two or twenty-three at best. We must have been more than a decade apart. I was too old for her. When her birthday rolled around though, I found out she was twenty-eight. An eight-year age gap sounded better than fifteen.
Jennifer was pretty and vivacious and surely had a boyfriend. On the other hand, she did attend the group's holiday party with one of the other women from the office while most of the staff who were part of a couple came with husband or boyfriend in tow. She never mentioned anyone special in my earshot, but she did go on a trip to Cancun with some "friends" and talked about hiking and camping with the same vague genderless "friends". I was too afraid to press any further for fear of what I might find out. She did talk about her parents and grandparents whom she still lived with and helped out. Without an obvious boyfriend, maybe I did have a chance, but of course maybe she was into women instead. She did not give me that vibe, but other people I worked with daily had fooled me in the past, and so I could not trust my judgment in that department.
As a rule, the group discourages office romances and the group's sexual harassment policy was clear about relationships between superiors and subordinates -- don't go there. Although I was not Jennifer's actual boss, the doctors certainly have a significant power over the staff. Most of them are relatively young, and don't have the years of education and experience the doctors have. Overall, they tend to respect us and probably look up to us. Their experience at work is definitely affected by the doctors. In that situation, it was inappropriate to approach Jennifer romantically. Any approach I made could easily be seen as harassment. If she rejected me, would I still treat her fairly? Would I start to level complaints with her supervisor over any mistakes she made? Would she just feel uncomfortable at work knowing my eyes were on her all the time? And if she did agree to go out with me, would it be real or because she felt she had to or to further her own agenda and advancement with the group?
Finally though, we worked well together, and I liked the comfortable relationship we had developed. We could joke and laugh together and smile at each other. We had a kind of friendship if only a work friendship. What did I have to loose? Everything. If I made a move, if I told her how I really felt, and she did not reciprocate, what small part of her I had now might be gone forever. Maybe she already had picked up on my clues and just wanted to continue as a friend.
Stalemate. My heart demanded I throw myself at Jennifer's feet and propose. My mind told me that was a bad idea. I pushed my feelings deep down. I allowed myself the surreptitious glances and inner sighs when she passed, but I kept my distance.
Nine months later, as suddenly as I had been smitten in the first place and just as decisively, I received a punch to the gut. That blow did seem to open a window of opportunity for me. A follow up dagger blow to the heart slammed that same window shut and laughed in my face.
The doctors, the front and back office leads, and our office manager, Elizabeth, were gathered in the nurses' station for our monthly office meeting. Elizabeth was reviewing our current staffing, in a word "short" when she said, "And next Friday is Jennifer's last day." Gut punch. I knew someday it would happen, but I still was not prepared for the physical force of those words. She had been taking some recent PTO without much of an explanation. Obviously job hunting. Still, hope springs eternal, and I realized with a jolt that since she was not longer an employee, many of my barriers to asking her out were falling. These thoughts were racing through my head, and so I did not hear the questions, but Elizabeth's answer brought me up short. "She's going to nursing school in Nebraska." Dagger thrust to the heart.
*****
It was the end of Jennifer's penultimate day. She would work the next morning, enjoy a good-bye lunch and be gone from my life forever. Even though we had worked together all day, I still had not found the opportunity to talk to her alone. There had always been another MA or doctor at the nurses' station with us. When I spoke to her, I needed a chance to save face when she shot me down, the chance for her politely demure without excess eyes and ears on us.
Fortunately, she was working the closing shift and before she got ready to leave for the night, she would stop by my office to check in one last time. I knew what I was going to say, but I still felt like a hormonal teenager about to ask out his first girl.
Footsteps approached in the hallway. I looked up to see Jennifer pass by my office to knock on the door of an exam room down the hallway occupied by one of my partners and his last patient. I heard him give his permission for her to go. I swiveled in my chair before she got to my doorway.
"Hi, Dr Stevens." She was flashing me one of her thousand watt smiles. "Do you need anything else before we go?"
