Before the meeting, I had told Sam about our apprehension and the problems I would have trying to practice from our apartment.
“OK,” Sam said, “Dr. Gross is willing to continue to run the practice for 40 percent of what he bills but only for another thirty days. To be clear, that means 40 percent of what he bills, not what is collected. That should give us the time we need to set a fair value for everything and negotiate a lease/purchase agreement.”
“Forty percent, that’s more than we net from the practice now.” Mrs. Schultz spoke for the first time that day. She also gave me a very dirty look.
“Well, that’s just not the case,” Sam rejoined. “Our evaluation of the financial records shows that you and Dr. Schultz have taken out more than 40 percent of the gross on average every month since Dr. Gross has been here, even the first month after he arrived. You should still be able to take considerably more than five hundred a month for yourself and your family.”
“We can’t live on five hundred a month,” she exclaimed.
“It’s more than you’ll have if Dr. Gross leaves or sets up on his own,” Sam answered.
They finally agreed to pay me 40 percent of what I billed for the next thirty days, and I went back to work.
A week and several communications between Sam and the brother did not produce a lease agreement that Sam or I thought fair or beneficial. I was in Sam’s office looking over their last offer.
“They started at twenty-five hundred, and they’re still at two thousand?” I said. “The practice only brought in how much last year?”
Sam flipped over a couple of pages of the yellow legal pad on his desk. “Took in just under fifty-two thousand in the last twelve months,” he said, then looked at me, and shrugged.
“You took home just under eight thousand of that, and Dr. Schultz or, rather, Mrs. Schultz netted almost thirteen, after making payments on the hospital, which, no doubt, she has been banking separately. In any case, the basic problem is that she doesn’t really need anything. Her old man can and will support her, and Schultz will almost certainly end up paying child support and maybe even some alimony. I think the real problem is that the old man is too proud to let some young hotshot get the best of his family in a business deal. It would tarnish his reputation in the community, and the word would get out.”
Sam smiled, perhaps relishing the thought of spreading that information then he got serious.
“I must tell you that at our last meeting her brother told me, and I’ll quote him, ‘The family isn’t going to let that kike jew us any more than he has.’”
“OK,” I said. “That’s enough for me. I’m going to find out if I have some other options.”
“I think that’s a wise and prudent thing to do,” Sam replied.
That same evening, I started calling classmates to find out if any knew of jobs available. One of my former roommates, Dick Rezzonico, was working for Dr. Henshaw in Buckeye, Arizona, a small farming community southwest of Phoenix. Dick had joined the air force and was due to report for basic training in a couple of weeks. Dr. Henshaw needed someone for the practice. I called Dr. Henshaw, and we made a deal over the phone.
Rosalie is an only child, and her parents missed her terribly. Neither she nor they ever said a negative word about my carting her off to the wilds of Montana. I presumed they hoped it was just a temporary thing. She missed her parents, and I missed my family. Her mom and dad were ecstatic when we told them were coming home, and my parents were just as happy.
***
It was difficult to leave new friends and loyal clients, but they had survived without us before we came. Dick opened a pet shop in an empty store in town. He had apparently managed to save more than he let on. He and Barbara bought George Kemper’s house in town. Don landed a job with the Yellowstone Livestock Company working the sale barn.
Rosalie and I had accumulated more stuff than would fit in and on the Ford. I bought a two-wheeled luggage trailer, loaded it with all that stuff, and we left Sidney with Mister again in the back seat. A blizzard chased us all the way through Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado. We were happy to hit the Arizona desert and be home again.
About the Author
David R. Gross graduated from Colorado State University’s veterinary school in 1960 and was in private practice for ten years. He enrolled in graduate school and earned an MS degree in 1972 and a PhD degree in 1974 from the Ohio State University. He taught and did research at Texas A & M University College of Veterinary Medicine for sixteen years and then became director of the Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery Research labs at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine for five years. He retired in 2006 after twelve years as professor and head of Veterinary Biosciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Dr. Gross is a Fellow of the Cardiovascular Section of the American Physiological Society. He published over ninety papers in refereed scientific journals and over a hundred abstracts in proceedings of scientific meetings. He co-edited three multi-authored textbooks, and the third edition of his single-author text, Animal Models in Cardiovascular Research, is in most medical libraries. Since retirement, Dr. Gross has been busy writing both fiction and non-fiction. Visit Dr. Gross’s website, www.docdavesvoice.com.
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