He'd become the archetypal, intellectually provincial workaholic with no time for anyone but his patients. But all that was changing, and regrets and guilt, particularly about family issues, had to be put on hold. The new Dr. Craig Bowman had left behind the lockstep, hurried, unfulfilling, and uncultured workaday life. He knew that some people might call his situation a midlife crisis, but he had a different name for it. He called it a rebirth or, more accurately, an awakening.

Over the previous year, Craig had become committed to – even obsessed with – transforming himself into a more interesting, hap-pier, well-rounded, better person and, because of it, a better doctor. On the desk of his in-town apartment was a pile of catalogues from various local universities, including Harvard. He intended to take classes in humanities: maybe one or two a semester to make up for lost time. And best of all, thanks to his makeover, he'd been able to return to his beloved research, which had completely fallen by the wayside once he'd started practice. What had started out in medical school as a remunerative job doing scut work for a professor studying sodium channels in muscle and nerve cells had turned into a passion when he was elevated to the level of a fellow researcher. Craig had even co-authored several scientific papers to great acclaim while he'd been a medical student and then resident. Now he was back at the bench, able to spend two afternoons a week in the lab, and he loved it. Leona called him a Renaissance man, and although he knew the description was premature, he thought that with a couple of years of effort, he might come close.

The origin of Craig's metamorphosis had been rather sudden and had taken him by complete surprise. Just over a year previously, and quite serendipitously, his professional life and practice had changed dramatically with the double benefit of significantly raising his income as well as his job satisfaction.