Introduction

During the four years of physician Margaret Overton's acrimonious divorce, she dated widely and indiscriminately, determined to find her soul mate and live happily ever after. But then she discovered she had a brain aneurysm. She discovered it at a particularly awkward moment on a date with one of many Mr. Wrongs.

Good in a Crisis is Overton's laugh-out-loud funny story of dealing with the most serious of life's problems: loss of life, loss of love, loss of innocence. It's about spirituality, self-delusion, even sheer stupidity. It's written from a physician's perspective, but it's not about medicine, per se; it's about coming of age in adulthood, an effort to help others through the awful events that can cluster in midlife. She does this with laughter and the recognition that you may come out the other end, as Overton did, definitely humbled… and only slightly smarter.

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Excerpt

Chapter One
On Memorial Day 2002 I woke up and decided to leave my husband.
I refer to him as my husband, but my best friends Hayley and
Kate often referred to him as the Sperm Donor. I always thought
that seemed harsh until I decided that seemed right.
Th ere was only one argument, really, that I remember. In mid-
November 2001, on a Sunday morning, Stig called to ask what I
was doing that day. He’d been up early, making rounds at the
hospital.
“Thanksgiving is Thursday,” I said. “There’s a lot to do. I’ve got to
bring the decorations and turkey dishes up from the storage locker,
and I was going to take the boxes that are piled up in the dining
room downstairs, get them out of the way. We’ve got about sixteen
coming. I thought this might be a good time to get some of the dead
plants off the terrace also.”
He didn’t say anything.
“You know, the service elevator is broken,” I said. Th e passenger
elevator didn’t go all the way to the basement. Th at meant that the
boxes had to be carried down a flight of stairs. Some of them I
couldn’t lift. I knew I couldn’t lift the dead plants off the terrace.
“How dare you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t nag me. How dare you ask me to help you? I bring home
the bacon! Don’t ever forget that! I bring home the fucking bacon!
And I don’t ever want to be asked to help do anything around the
house, not ever again! Do you understand that?”
I hung up the phone. My hands shook.
Th e rage in his voice was out of proportion to a few boxes to
be carried to the basement. And who said stuff like “I bring home
the bacon”? It was irrelevant. I’d worked or been in school our
entire marriage. As had he.
But it was a pivotal event. He stopped talking to me. And I
stopped sleeping.
I’d stopped bringing home any bacon three years earlier, when
our house keeper/babysitter left suddenly, my dad died, and I broke
my arm, all of which occurred within a six- week period. Th ose
events traumatized our daughters, Bea and Ruthann, as well as me,
and I felt I needed to give the girls more time and attention than
my job allowed. So I took a leave of absence and signed up for classes
in a part- time graduate program while they were at school.
Th e next year we moved from our house in the suburbs to a condo
in the city. Stig hated the “fi shbowl” of suburban life; he found it
confi ning.
We bought an old, glorious pent house in Chicago, filled with
light and tall ceilings. Th e kids took to the new life immediately,
adapting with a deftness I envied. But I had trouble adjusting to
city living; I didn’t belong, I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t get it—
the grocery shopping, the dry cleaning; I couldn’t find stuff . Th e
streets were all one way, parking didn’t exist, and when I tried to
do my errands on foot, I wore myself out. Our dog Olga hated it
too. She missed her yard. Shortly after the move downtown I tore
the ligaments in my knee and had to have an ACL reconstruction.
I was miles instead of minutes from my newly widowed mother,
miles away from my friends, lost without a garden. I no longer had
the job that had always defi ned me; my daughters were busy with
high school. And from the time we moved away from the “fi shbowl”
of suburban living that confi ned Stig and comforted me, it
seemed he came home even less frequently.
One eve ning in early 2002, he called to say he would pick up
Ruthann and me for dinner. She was a sophomore in high school
at the time. Bea was now a freshman at college. I had a few months
remaining to fi nish my graduate work.
“Th at’s weird,” Ruthie said. “Do you think he thinks it’s one of
our birthdays? Maybe he’s confused.” We rarely ate together.
When we got in the car, I asked him about his day. He turned
up the radio and didn’t answer.
Th e next afternoon Ruthann said, “Mom, let’s go for a walk.”
We live in a neighborhood north of downtown Chicago called
Lakeview. It is a nice mix of young and old, straight and gay, crossdressing
and not. We walked with Olga past some buildings with
For Rent notices. Ruthie went over to a sign posted on a two- fl at
and read out loud.
“Two bedrooms, two baths, fourteen hundred dollars a month.
What’s A slash C mean?”
“Air conditioning.”
“We can do it, Mom. We can aff ord fourteen hundred a month,
can’t we?”
I started to cry.
Ruthie turned around and looked at me. “I don’t ever want to
see what he did to you last night happen again. I don’t ever want
to see you silenced again. When you started to speak, and he
turned up the radio, I thought, Th at’s it. We’re moving out.”
I nodded. She took my arm, and we walked on.
But it took me another few months. I couldn’t fi gure out the logistics.
I didn’t have money of my own— he’d made sure of that.
Th en miraculously my old anesthesia group called and off ered me a
job. Just like that. It would be part time, to start, working only at
the surgical center. I would not be a partner, as I’d been in the past.
Th ree days a week, then possibly more. I would start in six months,
but I said yes. Yes! It did not take long before I fi gured out the rest.
My plan had been to wait until Ruthie left for college, but one day
I knew that was wrong. We could no longer wait. I was no role model
to her or to Bea, waiting.
It’s always been like that for me. I equivocate, hesitate, sometimes
for years, then bam! Clarity strikes, out of the blue. Well, maybe
not clarity, exactly. Maybe resolve struck me. What ever it was, it
struck hard on Memorial Day.
Stig had been out of town, Eu rope I think, and returned that afternoon.
We had a barbecue to attend at Hayley and Daniel’s house
in Winnetka, Illinois. Stig wanted me to pick him up from the airport,
then drive him to Winnetka.
“Why don’t you take a cab?” I asked. We’d barely spoken in two
months. I didn’t think he wanted quality time with me in the car. It
surprised me he would even go to the party. Th ese were my friends.
“You aren’t willing to pick me up from the airport?”
It was a test, I was failing, and I no longer cared.
“I’m working,” I said. “I’m in the middle of something, and I’d
like to keep going.” Th e man was a surgeon. He could aff ord a taxi.
When I arrived at the party, I stood between Hayley and Kate.
Th e three of us have worked together for two de cades. I remember
hearing the words come out of my mouth: “I’m going to leave him.”
Once I said them out loud, that was it. My words had weight, and
intent. I realized, as I said them, that I’d given myself permission.
Finally I felt free.
Kate turned to her husband Neal and whispered in his ear.
“I’m sorry, Margaret,” Neal said, then he hugged me.
“Don’t be,” I answered. “It’s time.”
Why hadn’t I left him when I’d found an article of women’s clothing
in the backseat of my car ten years earlier? I guess I wasn’t ready.
When I confronted him with the garment, he admitted everything.
Th e woman was his scrub nurse. Let’s give the man snaps for
originality.
Stig told me that the reason he cheated that time was that I’d
emasculated him by buying myself a rabbit swing coat on sale
for $600 from Henri Bendel, when they fi rst opened on Michigan
Avenue.
I found this explanation confusing. I’d earned the money. Perhaps
I had unknowingly married an herbivore? Was he a meateating,
leather- wearing closet PETA member all those years, and I
hadn’t known? Why wasn’t he emasculated when I paid the mortgage?
Did his girlfriend wear bunny ears?
But he groveled, so I stuck it out, wore the coat, sold the car, and
thought he’d cleaned up his act.
On the way home from the party, I asked Stig if he was having
an aff air. It would have explained a lot.
“No,” he shouted. “Are you?”
I looked out the window and did not bother to answer. It
occurred to me that one might identify the end of a relationship by
the sheer volume of what’s left unsaid.
I waited a few days after clarity struck, then wrote him a letter stating
I would not be joining him on our upcoming twentieth- anniversary
hiking trip to the Alps. I would be moving out instead. Both girls
had summer programs lined up; Bea was attending summer school,
Ruthann would be going to camp.
I put the letter on his desk. Talking to him directly never worked
out as planned. Plus I’d stopped sleeping in our bedroom and seldom
saw him if and when he came home. Stig now wanted to sell
the condo. Since my job would start in October, I knew it was my
chance to make the break.
After I gave him the letter suggesting a separation, he did not
respond.
One morning I walked into our bedroom. He sat at the pine
desk, working on his laptop. He quickly closed it when he
saw me.
Our bedroom was lovely— we could aff ord good taste, as we had
both made decent money for a number of years. A pleated- silk
bed skirt brushed the fl oor, and a linen throw covered the bed. We
had plantation shutters on the windows. Above the bed hung a
pine carving, an antique piece with two wooden hearts intertwined.
A huge poster of a Renoir painting depicting two young girls hung
beside the desk— a redhead and a blonde, just like our daughters.
Piles of books covered every available surface. An armoire hid the
tele vi sion, and the matelassé lounge chair was beside the bed. I stood
near the lounge, then sat.
“What do you think about the separation?” It had been two weeks
since I’d given him the letter.
I studied him. He was a stocky man, compact and fi rm. He wore
baggy jeans, and his shirt collar was too loose. He’d lost weight.
As an anesthesiologist, I notice things others might not. Like jaw
length, neck motion, human density. It’s density that interests me,
because it’s something we pay attention to but don’t discuss. Dense
people tend to be heavy, or they can be muscular. Men carry their
fat on the inside, in the belly region, and with age they tighten up,
develop jowls, and lose fl exibility. Loose people can be fat or thin,
but their bodies move around more easily. Stig was dense, more so
when he was heavy. But now he wasn’t just dense, he was tight and
hiding something. It’s easier to take care of loose people in the operating
room, regardless of their weight. My guess is that it’s better
to be loose in life.
Stig didn’t say anything for a long moment. He just stared at me,
and I thought that he looked like someone I’d never seen before.
His hair looked the same, but he’d grown a goatee, along with half
the men in America. And his expression— I don’t know how to put
it except that it seemed scrunched, pinched, so taut that no blood
could fl ow to the surface. His face held rage. And I had no idea
where it came from. I suspected it was existential rage. I suspected
he was as lost to himself as he was to me.
“Th at’s fi ne,” he said, sealing the fate of our marriage in a single
syllable. He nodded. “Fine.” One word.
Twenty years, two children, and that was it. No discussion,
just . . . fi ne.
I started to say something, but then thought better of it. I nodded
and left the room.
A few days later I moved to our weekend house in Michigan. Stig
went on the hiking trip without me.
Clarity, as I’ve come to understand, is not contagious.
“Are you fi ling for divorce?” I asked him. Over the phone. We never
saw each other.
“I fi gured you were going to, so I beat you to it,” he answered.
Stig liked to compete whenever possible. So I borrowed money
from my mother for a lawyer.
When I came back to the city to meet with a Realtor, the building
engineer mentioned that my husband’s girlfriend looked, from behind,
just like one of my daughters. Th at was how I found out he
had a girlfriend. He’d been bringing her over while I was living in
Michigan. I spent my summer there while he hiked in the Alps,
drove around Lake Michigan with his girlfriend, and played golf.
... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. Margaret Overton writes in her Author’s Note, “My story begins with a divorce. The divorce precipitated a series of midlife events that happened to someone who’d always assumed she was safe.” Why did Overton assume her life was “safe?” How does her situation turn dangerous, and what tactics does she use to reclaim her safety?


2. Overton slowly comes to “the understanding that everything you think you know, everything you count on, can change in a heartbeat. I guess that’s the essence of middle age.” (5) Which of Overton’s crises are specifically midlife problems? Which could happen to someone older or younger?


3. Consider how Stig is portrayed in Good in a Crisis. What are his best and worst qualities? What kind of husband and father was he? Why might Overton have married him in the first place?


4. After her friend Paul’s heart attack, Overton explains a device that saves his life: “It’s a machine that reduces the workload of the heart while supporting the circulation. Kind of like what a friend does in a crisis.” (3) How do Overton’s friends support her during her various crises? What kind of support does she, in turn, offer her friends during their own periods of trouble?


5. Compare the numerous first dates that Overton goes on. Which of these Internet dates is the most comical, and why?


6. Discuss how Overton handles the diagnosis of a brain aneurysm. How does she face the truth of her dangerous situation? Which of her coping mechanisms seems the most and least rational?


7. Discuss Overton’s relationship with her two daughters, Ruthann and Bea. What kind of mother is she? How does her divorce change her family’s dynamics? How does each daughter help Overton through the divorce, the aneurysm, and other crises?


8. Overton writes that after her brain surgeries, “I couldn’t wrap my head around caution. When you don’t know if you’re going to live or die, what’s the point of it?” (108–109) Discuss some of Overton’s least cautious decisions. What risks does she take? Does she seem to regret her lack of caution? Why or why not?


9. Discuss Overton’s friendship with her fellow anesthesiologist Paul. What lessons was Overton able to learn from Paul, during their years of friendship as well as after his death? Why does she believe that Paul continues to communicate with her, long after his death?


10. In one year, Overton deals with her mother’s illness, the death of her friend Neal, and her daughter Ruthann’s accident. How does Overton handle these simultaneous crises?


11. Overton writes of the men she dated after her divorce, “I found men who avoided intimacy. I found men who avoided life.” (156) In what ways did Overton’s short-term boyfriends avoid intimacy and life? Was Overton attracted to these men? If so, what did she do to make you think this? Why do you think Overton would be attracted to Alex, or Max, or Mitchell?


12. Overton learns from reading in the field of positive psychology that “I had within me, we all have within ourselves, the capacity to be happy.” (167) How does this realization change Overton’s state of mind?


13. How does Overton’s aneurysm eventually make her a better physician? What kind of perspective and sensitivity is she able to bring to her career after her brush with death?


14. Discuss Overton’s first impressions of Charles on their first date. What warning signs does Overton ignore? What impact does the violent encounter with Charles have upon Overton’s life?


15. Overton writes at the end of her memoir, “I feel quite confident that you the reader would like a Hollywood ending to this story. As the writer, I wish I could give it to you.” (233) Even if it’s not a “Hollywood ending,” what glimmers of hope do we find at the end of Good in a Crisis?

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