Doctored by Sandeep Jauhar

Author:Sandeep Jauhar
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429945844
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

EIGHT

Pact

Go after exactly what you want, not what you want. For you never get anything but the things that you exactly wanted.

—Alan Gregg, twentieth-century physician

Amir Chaudhry’s main office was in a gray building standing on concrete pillars in a leafy middle-class suburb on Long Island with narrow streets and old clapboard houses that had a certain weatherworn charm. Just down the road were a strip mall and, beyond it, the local high school, where a sign out front announced the weekend’s sporting events. My appointment was at one o’clock, but Chaudhry had called me that morning to ask me to come a bit early. He had a full roster of outpatients, and once he was done at the office he had to make rounds at two hospitals.

The waiting room on the second floor was packed. I checked in at the front desk and took a seat among the throng of mostly Indian and Pakistani patients talking on cell phones or tending to their infants. His assistant soon called me in. She led me down a narrow corridor to Chaudhry’s chamber. Manila folders were stacked in tall piles on an elegant cherrywood desk. On the walls were framed certificates from hospitals in Karachi and Queens. On the far side of the room was a poster of an illuminated lighthouse that read “Success doesn’t come to you. You go to it.”

After about five minutes, Chaudhry entered. He greeted me warmly and asked me to sit down. A short, balding Pakistani in his mid-forties, he had huge red ears, gold wire-framed glasses, and a white coat embroidered with the words “We Care.” He sank into a leather chair behind his desk, swiveling sideways to face a bureau with pictures of his four children. The piles of folders hid most of his body, save for his head and shoes, expensive Hugo Boss loafers. We made small talk for a couple of minutes—when was I going to move to Long Island?—but I could tell he was eager to get to the matter at hand.

He started off by saying that he had discussed my situation with Rajiv, whom he considered like a brother, and that he was glad to help. But first he wanted to tell me a little about his practice.

I nodded, feeling abashed at being so exposed.

He had been working as a cardiologist for five years, mostly as a solo practitioner. About a year prior he had tried partnering with another cardiologist, but that relationship had not worked out.

“I needed a second office,” he explained. “I was losing patients from the hospital who did not want to come to the South Shore, so I thought if I had an office in Queens, patients would follow me and my days would be totally busy.”

“Your days weren’t busy enough already?” I asked. It came out like a challenge, which I had not intended.

Chaudhry smiled wanly. “A year ago I was not as busy as I am now,” he replied. “Just look at my eyes.” They were bloodshot.

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