Kimmery Martin - The Queen of Hearts

BERKLEY

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375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

Copyright 2018 by Kimmery Martin

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Martin, Kimmery, author.

Title: The queen of hearts/Kimmery Martin.

Description: First edition. | New York: Berkley, 2018.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017009750 (print) | LCCN 2017027056 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399585067 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399585050 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Female friendshipFiction. | Life-change eventsFiction. | Triangles (Interpersonal relations)Fiction. | Domestic fiction. | BISAC: FICTION/Contemporary Women. | FICTION/Family Life. | FICTION/Medical. | GSAFD: Love stories.

Classification: LCC PS3613.A7822 (ebook) | LCC PS3613.A7822 Q44 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.6dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009750

First Edition: February 2018

Jacket art: blue convolvulus by Pierre-Joseph Redoute/Fine Art; summer flowers by Florilegius; scarlet and yellow flowered greater Indian cress by Florilegius; antique medical illustration of heart by ilbusca; splint spike thorn by Florilegius; rose panachee by Florilegius; broad-bordered bee and larva by Florilegius; red-throated bee-eater by Florilegius

Jacket design by Colleen Reinhart

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

For Judy Martin, who taught me to love books

Chapter One

MEETINGS ARE THE ENEMY OF PROGRESS

Almost a hundred years before I was born, a man named Samuel Langhorne Clemensbetter known to most of us as Mark Twainsaid this about the human heart: You cant reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns. This is entirely true, as far as Im concerned, and I should know: Ive devoted my professional life to the study of hearts, to their intricate, indefatigable machinery, and to their endless propensity to go awry.

We thump for all sorts of reasons. Some are beautiful and life-affirming. Some are misguided, recognizable to everyone but you as catastrophically stupid. We thump for the unsuitable stoner in our college biochem class, with his easy, wicked grin. We thump when somebody we dont like gets their comeuppance. We thump at cruelty and danger.

Ive never spent much time revisiting the past, having thought Id reached a settled spot in life where most of my wildly inappropriate thumping was behind me. Even if I wanted to look backward, Id slogged through the last two decades unglued by sleep deprivationfirst by my medical training and then by an onslaught of babiesso my recall of some of those years has been washed as smooth as sand.

But there are some things I dont want to remember. Emma and I have an unspoken agreement regarding our third year of medical school: we dont bring it up. Maybe even more than me, Emma has good reason to avoid those topics, and if theres one characteristic youd assign to my closest friend within a nanosecond of meeting her, its self-discipline.

So I was completely dismantled when Emma texted me she wanted to talk about it.

I cast a sneaky glance at the phone screen in my lap, reading the text three times to be sure. It didnt change. The screen dimmed and I fumbled to keep it lit, somehow managing to dislodge the phone from my lap so it hit the wooden floor with a clunk. As I retrieved it and shoved it into my bag, ten pairs of judgmental eyeballs swiveled my way. Who would have the effrontery to read texts during an important meeting? At the head of the table, the speaker, Caroline Cooper (alma mater: Georgia, plus Vanderbilt Law School), gave me a frosty look.

Zadie? You with us? Clearly rhetorical. My friend Betsy Packard (Duke University) threw me a surreptitious wink as Caroline forged ahead without a pause for me to answer. Okay... we need to evaluate the metrics so were optimally positioned for next year. Lets leverage our assets. Caroline flipped her blond pageboy. She was wiry and lean, with the grizzled look of too much tennis. Yes, Jennifer, did you have a question?

Jennifer Grosset (B-school, UVA) cleared her throat. I understand we need to incentivize, but it seems to me the mission-critical thing here is to bring the teachers online. Im wondering if theres a good strategic alliance there.

Holy smoke. This was what happened when a bunch of highly educated bankers and lawyers took time off to raise their kids. You couldnt get five seconds into a preschool meeting without the need for a bizspeak translator. Same thing in my cardiology practice: the hospital execs and the docs who ran the office were all so deeply steeped in corporate culture that hours could go by without anyone clearly stating anything. Everything was actionable and recontextualized and pursuant to everything else.

In my opinion, meetings are the enemy of progress.

Everyone around the table was nodding about the alliance issue with the teachers. This was politically tricky, though, and a babble of heated voices sprang up. Caroline pitched her voice above the din: Simmer down, yall. Lets do a little crowdsourcing.

More nodding.

I shivered. Everyone looked cold, since they were all dressed skimpily and the AC was jacked up to arctic level in deference to the scorching temperature outdoors. Fashion-wise, the women fell into one of two camps. The first group looked like theyd just come from exercising, although they all had neat hair and no one smelled bad. It was considered socially acceptable to wear spandex workout gear around town to morning school meetings and whatnot, as long as you were under a size six, maximum, and had a nice ass.

The second group was beautifully pulled together. They sported gold-plated sandals, chiffon halters, Herms bracelets, skintight jeggings, and metallic aviators pushed onto perfectly coiffed blond manes.

As the discussion veered toward teacher gifts, I felt my phone vibrating in my bag.

Unable to resist, I slid it out. Emma again. Can you stop by before work tmw? Need to talk about Nick.

My heart started to hammer, an anxious, involuntary little tachycardia. We all have a Nick in our pasts: a seemingly ordinary person who, through some mysterious subatomic combination of chemistry and personality, was capable of reaching inside you and exposing some luminescent core you didnt know you possessed. This kind of person could make you greater than youd have been alone.

But he could also make you terrible.

If someone had told me when I was twenty-four that Id be witness to many violent deaths that year, I would not have been surprised. I expected it, even desired it, with an anticipation that mirrored my general outlook on life: happy, heedless, and thirsty to learn. But if my omniscient adviser had gone on to tell me that Id be the cause of one of the deaths, Id have been dumbfounded. That kind of trauma was inconceivable to me.