March
09/06/09

In infancy, there's not much he needs to worry about, being a baby and all. Eat, sleep, first smiles and first steps. He grows up in a small third-floor apartment with just enough room for his radiant mother, his strict father and his tiny self. He grows up the only Indian kid in a mostly black neighborhood in New Jersey, an interesting experience, not that he really cares.

In childhood, he is happy, until his parents are gunned down in their convenience store one beautiful sunny March afternoon. He cries a lot but doesn't let anyone see it. He sits on the sidewalk outside their building, blank but full of caring, until a social worker comes and leads him away.

In high school, he is adjusting. He lives with his third set of foster parents, the ones that embraced him and adopted him. They are white and they have a lot of money. In the March that came during twelfth grade, he marks a rite of passage by taking their name. He is grateful to the Kutners, and now he will be one of them. Graduation is sad but happy this year.

In college, he parties a lot because that's what guys like him do. By guys like him, he means guys from rich white families. He thinks, secretly, there aren't really a whole lot of guys like him. Maybe there aren't any. Everybody loves Lawrence Kutner; he's mellow and happy and feels good to be around: a solid, dependable guy. March comes and goes uneventfully. Life is easy again, like being a baby.

In the year between college and graduate school, he cries a lot but doesn't let anyone see it. He sort of misses them. He has a lot of friends from college, and even a girlfriend or two. Sometimes he wonders where they are and how it's going with them but mostly he sits and thinks. He works part-time in a convenience store even though his adoptive parents give him a comfortable amount of money. He quits in March and waits out the summer for the semester to begin.

In graduate school, he's mostly composed himself again; he gets good grades and is on good terms with his classmates. He's different than in college though, he doesn't really party and he doesn't talk to his old friends or his girlfriends. He studies a lot. He speaks with his adoptive parents no less than twice a week and they are so, so very proud of him when he graduates with honors and launches into his first internship that March.

In the hospital, he is the same good old solid dependable guy. It's a routine he is very good at. All the doctors like and respect him and they try to pick on him a little less than most of the newbies. His coworkers like him too. He's a comforting presence. He completes his internship, and then goes on to be a resident in sports medicine, and by the time he is thirty, he's ready for new adventures and moves on to the next big thing.

In the next two years he gets along with his new coworkers, maybe has a crush on one or two of the prettier ones. The girls think he's sweet and friendly and the guys admire him because he's fearless and sets a patient on fire. Nobody really notices that he doesn't have friends or a life outside the hospital until March when he decides it's time once more to move on to the next big thing, and a pretty girl finds him on his bedroom floor dead.