Rocking the Pink Read Free

wonderful law partners, I still felt like a square peg in a round hole.
    Over the past year in particular, my chosen career had turned me inside out with anxiety and insomnia. My biggest client, a loud-mouthed real estate developer named Frank, had been sued for millions of dollars by multiple investors in a new office complex, who claimed that Frank and his partners had bilked them out of profits on the deal. The lawsuits were threatening to run Frank out of business and into personal bankruptcy, too. On top of that, a few weeks earlier, as I’d defended Frank in this high-stakes contract dispute, he had been criminally indicted for allegedly defrauding investors in the same deal (which he vehemently insisted was a railroad job, and I actually believed him), his high-maintenance wife of fifteen years had filed for divorce, and, just to cap off the death-spiral trifecta, audited by the IRS.

    I wasn’t qualified or interested in defending Frank in criminal, divorce, and tax proceedings; I was a civil litigator. So he hired an army of legal specialists to fight his battles in each of his many lawsuits, the perfect storm of which would have sent a lesser man leaping off the nearest bridge. And now Frank’s army of attorneys, coordinated by me, was fighting tooth and nail to preserve any shred of his life. Frank, understandably, called me multiple times per day in a state of utter panic, wanting to know his legal team’s latest efforts. Every time I looked down at my phone, there was another voicemail from Frank, usually calling to inform me of yet another catastrophic turn in his life. I didn’t know how this guy had avoided a heart attack up to this point; I felt like I was going to have one on his behalf, and it wasn’t even my own life that was imploding so spectacularly.
    â€œFrank,” I told him during his fifth call of that particular day, “you’ve gotta stop calling me so much. Every time you call, it costs you money. Just think cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching every time you dial my number. I’m your lawyer, not your best friend.”
    Even under these horrendous circumstances, Frank still managed to laugh. He loved it when I straight-talked him. “But you’re my best friend, Laura,” he responded, his voice earnest. “I don’t mind having to pay to talk to you.”
    Oh, geez. I’d become this guy’s security blanket amid the biggest shitstorm of his life. I understood his desperation, but I didn’t like being a paid hand-holder. “Frank, that’s gross,” I said matter-of-factly. “I can’t be your woobie. You’re a grown-ass man.”
    â€œBut, Laura, you’re all I have left.”

    My stomach seized. Indeed, my stomach had been in a permanent state of seizure for quite some time. I didn’t want to see this guy go down. I actually liked him, quirky as he was. I thought my teeth were going to fall out of my head from the stress. In fact, I’d started having stress dreams involving teeth—crumbling teeth, shattered teeth, falling-out teeth. And, even worse, my lifelong problem with night terrors—nightmares on steroids, during which the sleeper screams or even runs around with his or her eyes open—was at a fever pitch. Many nights, I shrieked in terror as I witnessed imaginary home invaders, rats crawling all over the floor, or phantom figures jumping out of paintings in my sleep. I was losing my mind . . . and nearly causing Brad nightly cardiac arrest, too.
    And now, on this particular day, when my own life had been hijacked to hell, there was no question that my days of fighting anyone’s battles but my own were over.
    I didn’t mince words. “I have cancer,” I told my law partner, Pete. “I’m not coming back to work.”
    Pete was compassionate, as was usual for him. “Laura, take as much time as you need. Your job is here for you when you’re