I'm Fine and Neither Are You(43)

Tears began pooling behind my eyes, and I blinked in panic. In addition to abject humiliation, crying in front of my colleague, supervisor, and the biggest donor of my career was a guarantee I wouldn’t have the opportunity to make the same mistake twice.

I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” I said to Nancy. “I just realized that’s not the document I prepared specifically for you.”

“But we can get it to you today,” said Russ.

“Thank you, Russell,” said Yolanda, whose fire-starter stare was seconds away from igniting my eyebrows.

Nancy held up her hand. Then she looked at me expectantly. “I don’t need a piece of paper. Ms. Ruiz-Kar, can you tell me about the type of students who will benefit from my scholarship?”

I could, I realized with relief. Better yet, I didn’t need a brochure to do it. “Absolutely,” I said. “Let me tell you about Leticia Alvarez, a first-generation college graduate whose family immigrated to the US from El Salvador when she was just five years old. Leticia, who will begin her first year at the medical school this fall, has been a stellar student her entire life. But she’s not your everyday high achiever. You see, she and her family lived through the 2001 earthquakes that ravaged El Salvador. Leticia’s mother was killed after being crushed by a building, but Leticia’s family says she’s the reason her younger brother, Eduardo, survived.”

I paused and was pleased to see that Nancy had leaned forward to listen. “At just five years old, she managed to pull him out of the rubble and care for him until they were reunited with their father two days later. Leticia says the experience inspired her to pursue medicine. She hopes to practice emergency medicine, ideally working with a relief organization like Doctors Without Borders after her residency.”

“Good,” said Nancy. “Tell me more.”



Yolanda’s email was at the top of my inbox when I returned from walking Nancy Weingarten out of the building.

See me.

I sighed, knowing she would berate me for not batting it out of the park. When I reached her office, the door was open. She waved me in.

“Right. Well, let’s talk that through. We want to ensure best practices . . .” It took me a moment to realize she was on the phone. She continued for another minute while I stood there, then hung up without saying goodbye. Her body remained facing her computer as her head swiveled to me. “What happened back there?” She didn’t give me a chance to answer. “We discussed giving Nancy Weingarten the deep dive! We agreed to engage her on the granular level! That was . . .” Her head pivoted toward her computer, and she began to type. After a minute, she stopped as abruptly as she began and turned back to me. “Dean Willis was counting on this. You’ll have to tell him yourself—I don’t have the bandwidth for it this week.”

“Nancy is ready to finalize the endowment,” I said.

It was true. After everyone had filed out of the conference room, I had attempted to apologize to Nancy about the brochure and my uneven performance.

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” she said, waving off my words.

“But I am,” I stammered.

She eyed me from behind her glasses. “May I ask you a personal question?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Do you have children?”

“Two. A daughter who’s eight and a son who’s six.”

Nancy gave me a wan smile. She was short and lean, with narrowed, knowing eyes that gave her a wizard-like quality. I hadn’t done the math, but I was fairly sure she was already well into her eighties. “I had a feeling you might. I have three myself. I almost lost my mind until they went off to college. It’s hard to work and have children, even if your husband helps. Which, unfortunately, mine did not. But as you know, things were different back then. I was the only woman on our block who had a job.” She patted my arm. “Penelope, dear, can I give you a bit of advice?”

“Please do.”

“Stop trying to make it look easy.”

“Um . . . is that what I’m doing?” I knew the minute I said the words that it was.

“Do you see men acting like that?” She clucked her tongue. “Maybe it’s changed for your generation. Judging from your colleague’s behavior, I highly doubt it. Most men, they pretend to sweat over every single detail and then tell everyone it was even harder than they made it. If life is rough for you right now, act like it. You tripped back there, but you picked yourself back up and continued on, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

She laughed. “What you should be saying is, ‘Yes, it was hard, but I did it anyway, and now I have the biggest female-generated endowment in the medical school’s history to show for it.”

“You mean—”

“God knows Harvard doesn’t need my money.”

The bit of hope I’d been clinging to blossomed into joy. “Thank you,” I said. “That really means so much to me, and the medical school.”

Nancy smiled at me. “Thank yourself.”

Now Yolanda was arching a penciled eyebrow in disbelief. “You mean to say Weingarten agreed to the endowment.”

“Yes.” I sounded tired. But I was tired. Sanjay had been helping around the house more, but between my grief and confusion and the kids and Cecily and trying to make up for the work I didn’t do after Jenny died, I was still so worn out I could crawl into a ball in Yolanda’s leather lounge chair and wake up next year. “In addition to the scholarship, she’s donating two hundred thousand to the General Fund.” The General Fund was our most important campaign initiative, as donations could be used for almost any nonfacility purpose at the medical school, hospital, or research center. It also happened to be the area where we had the hardest time getting contributions of more than a few hundred dollars; turns out that people willing to part with large sums tend to want a say in where their money goes.