The Cardiologist

"Meet people otherwise you won't know that different ones exist," she says.

Beginning in September 2025, I’ll be repeating my endeavour to connect or reconnect with 52 friends over a year-long period. Mark your calendars!

To protect the identity of this person, names and some other small facts have been changed.

Like many Eastern European women, Karina hid face until I got to know her.

“How are you keeping?” she’d say. An expression she picked up during the 17 years she lived in Ireland. A place she spoke fondly of as it’s there where she raised her two daughters, worked in medicine, and accumulated her assets.

We met because of my work. Karina loved jewelry, and I sold it—allotting herself a monthly budget for gems, she’d pick out a few pieces that I’d present. Eventually, we sat for coffee before any transaction to talk business or relationships.

She was blunt. I remained private. We were conducting business after all. Once I let it slip that I was Jewish, a fact I wasn’t sure would be accepted.

“I was promoted to the head of cardiology,” she says during one of our encounters.

Openly proud of her career, Karina arrived in Toronto only a few years prior but rose through the ranks at a large hospital, working long hours while ensuring to buy rings that could slide easily through latex gloves.

It’s spring, weeks ago, when she reminds me why I began writing about people.

“How was Mexico?” I ask of her recent trip.

“Beautiful. My partner and I go to the same place every year,” she says, continuing to explain that they were held up at the airport upon arrival due to his Iranian background.

“It’s not the first time this has happened. He had to serve in the Iranian army when he was young, like all men at the time, but it has nothing to do with who he is,” she says. “He’s been in Canada for over 30 years.”

“How long were you held for?” I reply.

“For hours,” she says.

Karina met her partner within weeks of immigrating to Canada in 2017. “I have a friend who jokes that he found me as I stepped off the plane. But I’m busy, and he agrees to my conditions so our relationship works,” she says.

By 'conditions,' she meant that he agreed to live separately, as she was usually busy with work and had no time to cater to his meal requests.

Months prior, Karina made it known to me that she’d set up multiple couples. “The guy I was thinking of for you just got engaged. I went to speak to him during one of my shifts and then realized he’s getting married,” she says. “Do you care if the person is Jewish?”

“Not as much as I used to, as long as he accepts that I’m Jewish and will want a Jewish family,” I say.

“Jewish families are very close,” she says.

“My parents have a very traditional marriage, so I’m just coming to realize there are many different types of relationships,” I explain.

“It’s important to meet people, otherwise you won’t know that different ones exist,” she says. “Before I met my ex-husband, I had one boyfriend who was my neighbour. Then I met him, we married and moved to Ireland with our daughters. And there, he became a devout Jehovah's Witness. His life became consumed by the church, he met a woman there, and he and I divorced.”

“That’s why I came to Canada. He took the house, and his new wife didn’t want our daughters living with them. So I bought them a two-bedroom apartment. In cash,” she makes clear.

“I remind myself that he is nothing,” she says as she gestures her hand toward the ground. “That house is all he’ll accomplish.”

I always idealized the “boy next door” trope—meeting young, maybe at school, the library or a friend’s birthday party. When that never happened, I was disappointed, but putting pressure on meeting a certain way and meeting young has its obvious limitations. I could have met the wrong person or someone who would have held me back.

“My partner now is the only person I know who puts up math problems on YouTube and solves them. I can talk to him about any subject,” she says.

“Was he ever married?” I ask.

“No. No marriages or children. He’s a nice man. We have some cultural differences because he can be old-fashioned in his thinking, but he takes me out and we go to parties. We meet people. He showed me a new side to life,” she says.

“Were you upset about the end of your marriage?” I ask innocently.

“Of course, I was very upset. I was very upset,” she repeats. “But I poured myself into my work, and I kept going.”

I admire Karina’s candidness and can tell that she enjoyed our conversation.

“Actually, I’m Jewish too,” she admits. “My mother was Jewish, but she was adopted by a Christian family during the war, so we never followed anything.”