Page 35 of Anatomy of a Meet Cute
“Then I thought, If we can treat wealthy women’s doulas as a welcome thing, why not make the tradition available in other communities? We would better serve the needs of our patients by working within a culturally familiar framework. And here we are.”
“It’s weird, and I love it.” Duesa had placed her elbows on the glass desk and steepled her fingers. Her eyes were closed as she nodded. Before Sam could decide if she was offended or flattered, Duesa abruptly opened her eyes and said, “Your why is sound. Anjo Foundation wants to know the story we will tell the world. Not schools and résumés. I have that on paper. Who are you? What is your backstory? Who ... are ...you?”
The question made Sam think of the caterpillar inAlice in Wonderland, and she bit back the urge to laugh at the image of Duesa blowing smoke rings and surrounded by psychedelic colors. Sam looked at Grant, who looked at her, the two of them silently doing the you-want-to-go-first dance.
Clearly remembering her stubborn streak, Grant exhaled and said, “I’m a fourth-generation Bay Area resident on my mother’s side. My mother is an opera singer, and my father is the director at one of the local Chinese community centers. I think my parents would have loved for me to be a musician so we could be like a family act, but I can’t carry a tune, and I hated piano lessons. They finally gave up and let me join the science club and become a doctor. It’s okay; both of my sisters are musicians, so they got over it.” Grant paused his story to add a casual shrug, then said, “Eventually.”
Charm rolled off Grant as he laughed at his own story, and Sam had to remind herself that she was sitting next to the same man who she’d nearly had to physically pummel with a basketball to make him help her. Who was this easygoing son of a musician? And was he related to the flirty guy in the elevator? What else didn’t she know about Grant?
Duesa’s laugh floated around the room. “You know what I love about this story? Usually, we get these guys coming in here, and they want to tell me about their degrees from Harvard and Wharton and how they won this cutthroat competition and beat out that guy over there. But you”—Duesa stopped to gesture at Grant with an outstretchedhand—“you tell me about piano lessons. I love it. And you? Who are you?”
Sticking with Grant’s theme of radical candor, Sam threw out a moon shot. “I am a military kid. My dad retired from the navy when I was in the seventh grade, and we settled down in the glorious city of Akron, Ohio, where my mom became a biology teacher. I have an older brother who is a saint that works in marketing. I’m not a saint. But I am highly competitive, and I recently beat this guy playing basketball. A thing I’ll never let him forget, even if he is my senior adviser.”
Grant snorted, and Sam turned to watch him shake his head. “Okay, what she isn’t saying is that she played in college on a good team on TV and stuff, as did one other guy on her team. It wasn’t like it was a super fair game.”
“It wasn’t college.” Sam laughed and shook her head. “It was high school. They only televised the state playoffs.”
“Oh, my bad,” Grant chuckled. “She just played on a high school team that was good enough to make it to the state playoffs.”
“You two are so adorable,” Duesa said, grinning at them like she had found a treasure. “I love this energy. Great for video. It’s perfect. Sam, I do have one question for you. I know new doctors’ schedules are miserable. Why do this now?”
Grant swiveled in his chair to watch her more closely, as if he was also wondering about this. Looking down, she ran her palms across the front of her skirt to hide her nerves, then said, “For me, it’s both personal and professional. I broke my foot playing basketball in high school. Anyway, since I couldn’t attend PE, my mom arranged for me to do community service tutoring young people working on their GEDs. They were mostly girls, really, who had stopped out of school when they became mothers. I think my mom didn’t like my boyfriend, so she was trying to scare me.”
Sam paused as Duesa shook her head and laughed at her mother. When her laughter died down, Sam continued. “Anyway, it didn’t scareme, but it did make me think about public policy as I watched them struggle with basic questions about their health and their babies’ health. They needed someone who had been in their shoes to help them navigate their new lives—a task my very ill-equipped high school self was not qualified for. It made me recognize the power of mentors.”
“That must have been difficult to watch.” Duesa nodded, her energy level dipping slightly.
“I didn’t have the skills or power to fix the system then, but I do now. My plan is to make a career as an ob-gyn at SF Central. Why would I wait to make my workplace the kind of environment I want to spend my days in? Waiting doesn’t benefit me or the people who walk through my door, so I may as well put in the extra work now instead of delaying until it is convenient for my schedule.”
For a moment, Duesa squinted at her as if the sheer force of her look were some sort of barometer for Sam’s sincerity. Fighting the childish urge to squint back, Sam waited for a heartbeat. Then two. Grant was just starting to fidget when Duesa yelled, “See! This is why I asked. True innovation does not wait for convenient timing. Heart of steel, this one. And a good story about why she became a doctor too.”
Sam exhaled slowly and smiled as Duesa pointed her finger at her. “I knew I had to meet the woman just wild enough to launch something like this only a few months after starting a job. What you two are doing is truly the heart of social problem-solving.”
Mentally, Sam broke into a happy dance. Duesa liked what she had to say. Better yet, she’d managed to say just the right thing without having to think about it for hours. Sam had been in the Bay Area for no time at all, and already she was feeling the crunch of tech culture on her life. If she wasn’t careful, pretty soon she’d be saying nonsense buzz phrases likeworld-class solutionsandhub for innovationtoo. Sure, Duesa usingsocial problem-solvingseemed a little grandiose for starting a birthing program at a public hospital. But it was peak Silicon Valley jargon, and Sam had earned it.
Clapping her hands together, Duesa said, “I love it! We have got to get this going now. Is four weeks enough time to stand up a prototype?”
“I’m sorry?” Grant asked.
At the same time Sam choked out, “A month?”
“You know. Big announcement. Splashy launch event. New company. Move fast and smash items or whatever the stupid saying is,” Duesa said with a dismissive wave, as if health care were the same as coming up with a mock-up for a new designer-shoe app. Reading their faces, she said, “What? Do you need six weeks? Eight weeks?”
“Launch event?” Grant asked.
“Eight weeks is the max we could do before we need to start seeing progress reports anyway. Don’t worry; Sherilynn will put it in the email.” Duesa stopped talking just long enough to wave her hand dismissively, then plowed on. “Since the reports trigger each funding payment, this works out nicely. You get the program running, and you have good news from the progress report to celebrate at the launch. Yes. I can make that work, but no later because then I am off to visit my mother in Brazil, and then I go straight to Mykonos, and I want to present our involvement in this, so that is as far out as we can push the launch event.”
“Does this mean we got the funding?” Sam asked, still trying to make sense of Duesa’s stream of consciousness.
“I mean, yes. How long have you been in this room?” Duesa asked, leaning forward to look at Grant’s watch. “Twenty minutes. If you hadn’t gotten the funding, you would have been out of here in five minutes. My time is extremely valuable. And I don’t give money to people I don’t like. Now, about promo materials—”
Sam stopped listening as she turned to face Grant. She could feel herself grinning, but she couldn’t stop it. This was happening. Her plan was working. Attempting to force her grin under wraps, Sam tuned back in right as Duesa said, “I’m thinking video. You two have suchgreat chemistry. Very videogenic. I can already see it. I’ll play it before my talk—the venture-summit people are going to eat this up.”
Duesa popped thepsound inup, forcing Sam’s mind back to reality. Clearing her throat gently, Sam said, “I assume we will need our two legal teams to work together on some sort of agreement?”
“Hmmm ...,” Duesa said, giving her head a little shake as if Sam’s real-world question had disrupted her visions of venture-summit success. “Ah! Yes, yes, yes. I’m getting ahead of myself. Sherilynn will work out all of the details. They will send you a draft of the grant agreement, which I’m sure the hospital will want to take a look at. After that, she will be in touch with a promo schedule and to work out the details of the launch event before my trip to Brazil. Let’s say sometime in the afternoon on the ...” Duesa stopped and poked at her own smart watch before saying, “October twenty-second. Does that work for you?”
“I’ll make it work,” Grant said, nodding first at Duesa and then at Sam.
