Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father Page #4

like, completely normal

and then, one day,

they become a psycho, you know?

I mean,

there had to be some signs.

She'd just be really

inappropriate with things.

Poor taste,

things that she would say.

She was always making

sexually inappropriate comments.

But never threatening.

We never thought of her

as being threatening,

but, just,

something was a little off.

Something wasn't right.

She started calling me

on a regular basis.

She talked forever.

Crude things about

their intimate relationship.

But I thought it was kind of odd

when I met her

that she was not practicing.

She had finished residency

for quite some time,

and yet she was having trouble

getting her credentials.

Nobody said anything

'cause we all respected Andrew.

And if he wasn't putting the

pieces together or something,

it just makes me think

he was just not caring.

He was likely 4,000 miles away

from where he wanted to be

for the rest of his life.

He had had a very difficult,

kind of heartbreaking type

of situation with Heather.

Whatever happened

with their breakup

really kind of devastated him

and just left him vulnerable

to someone like Shirley.

"Andrew!

You know you can do

a lot better."

He said,

"Ah, no, I really can't."

He'd poke fun at himself

all the time.

He'd say he was a short,

portly little fella.

You don't need

to go out with a woman

because you can't

think you can do better.

It was a comfort.

And, in Newfoundland,

it was somebody to be around

and he enjoyed it.

Oh, it's just

a senior-year thing.

After graduation,

he came back to the U.S.

to do a surgery residency

in Syracuse, New York,

and he was miserable.

He hated it.

Shirley also decided to move

to the States to practice.

We were not very aware

of his year in Syracuse,

what a problem

she became to him there.

Was a real hard year for him.

There was really no time

for anything.

And the fact

that there was this somebody

that was making a lot of effort

to maintain a relationship

with him

and represented something else

besides the misery

that it sounded like

his internship was

was hard for him to pass up.

He pretty quickly realized

that surgery wasn't for him

and switched

to a family-practice residency

in Latrobe, Pennsylvania,

in July of 2001.

And he loved it.

He said, "When you finally find

that thing

that you know is your niche,

it's worth everything

in the world."

And he now wanted her

to go away.

He did not invite her

to Matt's wedding.

Yeah, and she thought

she was going to be coming.

She just already had it

arranged.

The morning of the wedding,

Andrew's cellphone

started ringing.

And he'd answer it,

and it's Shirley.

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