She was right. They weren’t. But hearing her say it out loud made him feel worse than he had in a long, long time.
“Do they think it was weird for you to open a practice in Rainbow Valley?” Cynthia asked. “Is that the problem?”
“Truthfully, with them, there’s really no approval or disapproval where I’m concerned. It’s as if they wrote me off a long time ago, like a failed experiment.” He sighed. “Good thing, because I never would have gotten through medical school.”
“So why would you even consider it?”
“Because that’s what Morgensen men do. My father is all about hearts, even though he doesn’t have one. My grandfather was a heart surgeon, too. But to tell you the truth, I had a tough time even getting through dental school. Med school would have been a disaster.”
A wave of depression overcame him, so he sat down on Cynthia’s overstuffed sofa and sank halfway to China. He tried to rescue himself, but it was pointless. Finally he just gave up and slumped like a rag doll. He hoped he didn’t look as forlorn as he felt, but stuck in her sofa the way he was, how could he not?
“I didn’t want to be a heart surgeon. It just wasn’t in me. But there was a time when I would have given anything if it had been.”
Cynthia sat down next to him. “No. You should go with what you’re good at. And you’re a good dentist.”
“Right. Do you know I graduated in the bottom one-fourth of my class?” He closed his eyes. “I have no idea why I told you that.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re still very good at what you do.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Your hands,” she said.
“What about my hands?”
“Every time you pick up a drill, it’s like…” She looked away, rolling her eyes self-consciously. “No. It sounds stupid.”
“No! It’s not stupid!” He leaned closer, like a starving animal digging through a Dumpster, looking for that one morsel of food that would keep him alive. “Tell me.”
She gave him a little shrug. “I don’t know. It’s like a musician playing a violin, or an artist painting a portrait. When you’re doing a filling or a root canal or whatever, you have so much skill and precision. And even though you don’t have the best chair-side manner—”
“I don’t?”
“You’re too businesslike. Anyway…” She traced her fingertip over the back of his hand, sending shivers straight up his arm. “…you have these beautiful hands that are perfect for the job. Your patients think you’re an excellent dentist.”
“They do?”
“Of course. I’m the one they pay. And they’re happy to do it.”
Thinking back, he’d always done well during the hands-on parts of dental school. It was the exams that had killed him. It had always freaked him out to have a numerical score attached to his work, something his parents could point to with a sigh of disappointment and say, Of course we hoped you’d do better.
“And then there are the patients you give your services to for half price because you tell them you need to practice a particular procedure,” Cynthia said.
“So what’s wrong with needing practice?”
She made a scoffing noise. “Please. You don’t need practice. But it’s sure a convenient explanation for why you do nice things for people with financial problems, isn’t it?”
“So what else am I supposed to do? Turn them away? Half price is better than no price.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I don’t know why it makes you uncomfortable if people think you’re nice.”