Page 115 of A Really Bad Idea

“You can have your stupid wishes,” I tell her as I rip the wishbone off my neck and hold it up in my fist. “You can have your stupid wishes and your fucked up dreams. I don’t believe in them anymore. I don’t believe in you.”

The hot tears come bursting down my cheeks as I declare to her, “This is now yours.”

I throw the wishbone into the water and fall to the basin as I cry for my wish that never came true.

Christian

Everyone has a best friend.

For some, it’s the person you’ve known the longest, the childhood playmate who’s been there for every bad decision … and was probably the one egging you on. For me, that’s my friend Mike. He now lives in Delray Beach where he owns a restaurant off the intercoastal. If it wasn’t for his wife and kids, he’d still be making some questionable choices in late-night debauchery.

Others look to that person from college, the one who was there when no one else was. Those were the coming into your own days. My roommate, Zach, was the guy I partied with, yet he also kept me focused on getting into a good medical school. He’s now an oncologist in Baltimore and kicking ass in his field.

Then, there’s the group who states a sibling, parent, or loved one is their best friend because blood is thicker than water.

That’s me.

Both Mike and Zach are great friends, but they’re not my best friends.

For me, a best friend is the person you can talk to about anything and not worry about being judged or criticized. A person you can shoot the breeze with and leave the conversation, feeling better than before. The one who helps you when you’re down, not hands you a shot and tells you to go home with the brunette at the bar.

Thanks, Mike.

That person, that would be my father.

When I lost my virginity at seventeen, I told him because I didn’t know who else to talk to. My friends weren’t much help. They were full of high fives and story exchanges, something I knew early on I wasn’t into. It only took a week for my dad to see something was off with me. I wasn’t down. In fact, I felt good about myself. I just felt different. He knew it.

He took me for a drive to the shore. We went to the beach and sat on a wooden bench overlooking the ocean. He brought two beers—one for him, one for me. Yes, I was way too young to drink, but he said, if I was old enough to have sex, I was old enough to have a beer.

Just one.

He was adamant about that.

“There are three keys to a good life. Success, love, and happiness,” he explained as we stared out into the rolling waves of the Atlantic. “You can have success in spades, love in bounty, and fun with the wicked in the best ways. Life is a balance of abundance and control. If you don’t share in your success, you’ll never prosper. If you treat those you love with disrespect, you’ll live in great misery. And, if you overindulge in the vices, you will lose the success and the love.”

Dr. Thomas Gallagher is a wise man.

I have always looked to him as a role model. He’s the consummate gentleman, kind to his friends and a scratch golfer. My mother often says he’s a great husband, although she wishes he’d stop leaving newspaper sections all over the house. He’s like a child leaving a trail of crumbs, except it’s the business section in the kitchen, technology in the living room, and sports in the study.

He’s the reason I became a surgeon. I marveled at his ability to cure people and found the heart both challenging and simplistic. We’d spend hours discussing the human anatomy, and he’d let me shadow him in his office.

I’ve come to my father for advice many times throughout my life. As a kid, it was school advice, friendship dilemmas, and health tips. As I got older, it was career advice, dating dilemmas, and more health tips. Not much has changed.

He’s guided me through my medical training. When I had to choose between the University of California, San Francisco or School of Medicine at Temple University, he helped me with the decision to leave my family, saying, “Follow your dreams. You can always come home.”

As I struggled with the training for a new procedure, one many in the medical community deemed impossible with my experience, my father flew out west to help perfect my technique.

His advice was, “To master a skill, you need to have patience, heart, and a fuck you attitude.”

That was the first time I’d heard my father curse in years.

And, when I told my father, at twenty-five, I was in love with Meadow Duvane, he told me, “Let her go.”

I know it sounds foolish, but let me tell you a little story.

It doesn’t start when we were thirteen, and she convinced me Sally Romano had herpes. I knew she was lying, and to be honest, I didn’t mind. I hadn’t wanted to hang out with Sally, and Meadow was way more fun. At least, that was what I thought. Believe me when I say, I had no idea she was only pretending to like roller coasters.

No, this story starts when we were fifteen. And the girl’s name was Amanda Rackshaw. She was my first serious girlfriend, who I was madly in love with. Well, as in love as a teenage boy with raging hormones could be.