The Dean’s Life: A short story by Michael Fine

By Michael Fine

© 2026 by Michael Fine

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.  Without limiting the author’s exclusive rights, any use or reproduction of this work to “train” generative AI technologies is strictly prohibited.  The author reserves all rights to license this work for AI training and development.

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When you get to a certain age, you realize there is no God, even if you believe in God.  That is, you accept that there is no one watching you, no one who will step in to intervene.  No praise and no blame.  No divine retribution.  No finger on any scale.  Too little justice – sometimes discipline and focus pays off; sometimes character matters; and sometimes what goes around does come around, but not always.  Far from always.  The bad guys often win.  We drift toward chaos and greed.  Bad culture chases away good culture.  You pays your money, you takes your chances.  The cavalry isn’t coming, and neither is Calvary.  You try to make your own luck, or not.  And even then, it’s a crap shoot.  God may not play dice with the universe, but God sure lets us play dice and shoot craps with ourselves and with one another.  Who knew?

She’d made it.  Suzette had dotted all her “i’s” and crossed all her “t’s”.  She kept her focus all those years, and she performed, which is to say, she delivered on what had been asked of her, and hadn’t deviated or gotten distracted for one moment.  One foot in front of the next.  No invention.  No distortion.  No manipulation.  Not really.  Straight and narrow.  Followed directions. She had buckled down and worked when work was called for, without complaining.  She bided her time, assumed responsibility when that was called for and asserted herself just to the right degree, when being assertive, when leading, mattered.  So, she was seen.  So, she was a woman, true, but a woman who couldn’t be ignored.  But also wasn’t a problem. No one ever thought of her as radical, disruptive, or off the reservation. She was respected, not feared.  Always a safe, strong choice who would get the work done, protect the institution and never rock the boat.  A leader.  In a world that is suspicious of the status quo, a world that values strength and clarity over complexity, and hates change, regardless of the need for change.  A consensus builder.  Perhaps not exactly a uniter, but certainly not a divider.

And so, Suzette was now the Dean.  She had a big office, an administrative assistant, a CFO and a CIO and a CMO and a Chief of Staff who all worked for her.  She sat at the top, commanding a staff of over five thousand and a billion-dollar budget – and she ran a tight ship.  She battened down the hatches.  Kept the inputs narrow and controllable and outputs measurable and reportable, was conscious of their bandwidth, and kept their scope narrow and focused.  They did what they were charged with doing and not one more thing.  Stayed within budget.  Raised money from Alumni.  Suzette stayed responsive and transparent to her Board.  People relied on her.  Trusted her to get the job done.  She kept the School under the radar.  Kept them all safe. A sure and steady hand on the tiller.

As a result, Suzette herself was financially secure, as she deserved to be.  She had a big old colonial in town and a beautiful lake house in the Adirondacks, just a five-hour drive when she needed to get away.  For when she needed quiet.  To calm herself.  To self-regulate.  To let the pressures of work drop away, like leaves from a tree in October.  To free her mind, her spirit, and her soul.

She didn’t think much about politics or the culture or even society, whatever that is, because those arenas were out of her realm.  Nothing about the self or the soul or the heartbreak and anguish of many and the arrogance of the few.  She had situational awareness, of course.  She had staff whose job made them all attentive to the President, to Congress, to the Governor and the legislature, so things stayed buttoned down.  Consultants helped.  There were Zooms and meetings with peers.

The foment of the political world was manageable, more or less.  Politicians make noise to draw attention to themselves.  We hire lobbyists and make political contributions to everyone, so our voice will be heard when necessary.  So they know not to mess with us.  See no evil, hear no evil, do no evil.  But better to be under the radar.  And stay under the radar. Raise your head up and they’ll cut it off, every single time.  So keep your head down and your shoulder to the wheel.  No bellyaching.

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So, Suzette was ready to let it all dissolve for a bit when spring came, after all the acceptance letters were out and the residency positions were filled, and she could breathe for a moment before the cycle started again.

There was a Monday holiday. She called Lee Shurtleaf, the handyman who kept an eye on the house for her and asked him to open the lake house.

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She drove out Friday afternoon.  The days had lengthened so most of the drive was in daylight. Better that way. The air wasn’t warm yet but there were spring breezes.  The forsythia had bloomed and now the cherries and other trees with white blossoms – the hawthorns and Bradford pears – were coming on, their white branches shifting in those breezes like spray thrown up by the ocean when the waves splash over the seaside rocks.  White.  Pure.  Brilliant.  The earth was alive again.

She put an audiobook in the car music system and luxuriated in her solitude.  No phones ringing.  No emergencies.  No decisions.  No administrative assistant asking questions, or urgent messages from this one and that one, who were all only intelligent enough to pass their worries along but not intelligent enough to make decisions for themselves. They were all afraid of their own shadows and didn’t believe that stuff about it being better to apologize than ask permission.  They all asked permission, for everything, over and over again.

But not right then.  Right then, they all hurried off to their own sanctuaries and right then, for once, they let Suzette alone.

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The lights next to the driveway were lit as Suzette drove up.  A few house lights were on. The air smelled of woodsmoke, so there was likely to be a fire in the fireplace. Lee Shurtleaf was expensive, but he was good at what he did.  Which was keeping the house running without incident.  He was even better at letting Suzette alone, so she could come and go, however infrequently, without hassle or worry.

Suzette got out of her car.

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Spring had not come to the Adirondacks yet.  The air was cold.  Brisk.  The woodsmoke was a calming smell, like the smell of toast, the smell of home and warmth, of peace and safety.  Inside, there was a fire in the fireplace.  The moon had not risen yet but there was silvery light to the east and north over the lake, and that light was reflected in the mirror-still lake.  There were spring peepers, just a few, but still singing, and loons.  Suzette praised God a little, in her own way, for that house and her life and this moment of peace.

She made herself an Irish coffee, to warm herself, inside and out, and she took it into the living room, next to the fire, where she intended to drink it slowly as she watched the moon rise over the lake.

Then she fell asleep.

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Knocking.  That was the next thing she heard. Klump-klump-klump. Loud enough to wake her.  Strong and clear enough to understand that someone was there and wasn’t shy.  But not muffled or tenuous.  From a hand that was strong and sure.

Klump-klump-klump.

Suzette shook herself awake, not certain where she was.  For a moment she thought she’d fallen asleep on the small couch in her office, which was in front of a table that itself was surrounded by chairs, where she had meetings with the powerful people who came to her but who weren’t to be sat at a conference table.  People who came to parley, not to clinch a deal.  She feared she’d missed a meeting.  Or a phone call.

No, she was not there though, not in the office.  The light was different.

Klump-klump-klump.

There was a crook in Suzette’s neck.  Sleep in her eyes.  She could only imagine what her hair looked like and the creases in and puffiness of her face.

Klump-klump-klump.

There was a lake outside.  The sun was up.  Her neck hurt.

Suzette was at the lake house, and someone was knocking at the door.  Her door.  Her place.  Where she’d come to be away from everyone.

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The man was standing a few paces back from the stone steps in front of her door.  He was a rough-shod white man in a tan outdoorsman’s jacket, with black hair and a bad haircut.  Behind him, in the driveway, was a huge red extended-cab pickup truck with a red bed-cap.  There was a dog in the cab, pressing its nose against the window glass.  The man was square and hefty.  He had his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his workpants.

“Yes?” Suzette said.  Her voice was clipped, even short.  She imagined that she looked a mess – but then, this was her house, it was early on a Saturday morning and she was not expecting company.

“Hope I’m not disturbing,” the man said.  “I’m Jake Smith.  Live over to the old furnace in Wells.  Larry Kane, your neighbor, sent me over.”

“Larry Kane?” Suzette said.  Truth be told, Suzette didn’t know any of her neighbors on the lake.  She knew Lee Shurtleaf, who took care of things.  No one else mattered.  She just wasn’t there that much.

“Larry Kane who runs the outfitters in town.  He’s got the piece just north of you on the road.  The hilly piece.  Doesn’t go down to the lake though.  That Larry Kane.”

“I suppose,” Suzette said.

“Well Larry Kane lets me hunt his land.  I got a blind, set up for turkey.  But those turkeys, those gobblers, they don’t stay put on his land.  They come across to roost on your land.  So, I was wondering if I might hunt your land as well, just for this season.”

“Hunt?” Suzette said.

“Hunt turkey.  For the meat.  I hunt to fill my freezer.  Feed my family that way.”

“Hunt?” Suzette said.  She thought, but didn’t say, in this day and age?  Hunt with guns?

“Season’s opening soon for gobblers.  I’d like to get me a few.  Legal limit is two gobblers.  And they’re back there.  I’ve seen them.  But they go over on your land.”

“Why would I let anyone hunt my property?” Suzette said.

“You’d never see me.  I hunt at daybreak.  Gone by 9 A.M.  I stay back in the woods, back away from children and dogs.  Away from all these houses near the lake.”

Suzette fell silent.  The idea of anyone hunting at all, or hunting her land, had never occurred to her.  It seemed so…primitive.  Guns.  Bullets flying and so forth.  She had visions of men with knives, on one knee, disemboweling dead creatures, of coyotes and vultures hanging about, ready to sup on the entrails.  Gruesome.  Unnecessary.  Not how civilized people live.

“I don’t know,” she said, mostly to give herself time to frame her polite refusal.

“Venison.  Want some venison steaks?” the man said.  “I got extra.  For the private landowners where I hunt.”

“I don’t know,” Suzette said.  She rarely cooked now.  Almost never ate meat at all.  She’d had venison only once or twice in her life, and only at very sophisticated restaurants, high level farm-to-table, all local produce places.  Venison was tough and gamey.  But interesting.  And certainly not run of the mill.  It had never occurred to her to take any produce off this land.  Or to let anyone hunt for anything.  Let alone on her land.

“I’ll bring you some venison steaks so as you can taste them.  Leave them right here. In a cooler.  Later this afternoon.  Don’t need to disturb you a second time.”

“I don’t know,” Suzette said.  She was used to being in charge, and in control of the situation.

“I just need you to sign a little permission slip,” the man said.  “For the fish and game.  Required when I hunt on private land.  Which isn’t posted, by the way.  Your land needs to be posted to make it illegal to hunt here, and it isn’t posted.  But I still need you to sign this little slip, to make it all legal and proper.”  He took a pen and an index card out of the top pocket of his dark tan jacket and wrote on it.  Then he held it out to her.

“What did you say your name was, again,” she asked, so she could ask Lee Shurtleaf, who knew everyone around the lake, about him.

“Jake Smith,” he said, as she came through the door and down the stone steps to take the card and the pen.

Suzette signed the card and returned it to him before she realized she had done that.

“Jake Smith.  Simple enough.  I can remember that.”  She looked at the dog, panting behind the window of the car, and briefly at the man again.

“I’ll drop the venison later or in the morning,” Jake Smith said.

And then he was gone, and Suzette realized she barely remembered what he looked like, because he had come and gone so quickly.

Jake Smith.  A hunter.  With a red truck and a dog.  Who was going to leave venison on her doorstep.

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This is not the tawdry love story you are now expecting.  I am no DH Lawrence, and this is 2026, not 1913.  Women have found new ways to develop and exercise power, although the soul and its yearnings are less the center of anyone’s attention then they were, the self and self-control, or not, having eclipsed all our notions of family, community, history and integrity.  We want what we want.  And take it, before someone else does.  Pleasure is an expectation, not the rare escape from a tired, disappointed, human world. We no longer trouble ourselves with questions like, what is right?  What is just?  And what matters?  Who are we, as a people? and have we built a sustainable and just world, what some have called the beloved community.  Now we seem to think we exist only to feel and feed our fantasies and desires. That life is a property right, and not a gift. That justice is an archaic concept. And that nothing is holy or sacred anymore, and probably never was.

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She was awake before dawn when she heard the gunshots.  Three shots, just as the sky was lightening.  It was later than she thought – almost seven A.M.  It was raining.  The sky was overcast.  She thought it was thunder, at first – but there was no lightning.  The wind blew spurts of scattered rain across the lake, kicking up waves which splashed and sprayed over her dock.  The water is still too cold for me to kayak, she thought.  But I’ll have Lee Shurtleaf take out a kayak later or tomorrow if the sun comes out, and kayak in a wetsuit.  I need to ask Lee about this hunter, this Jake Smith.  He’ll know if letting him hunt here was safe and responsible.

Then she remembered.  Gunshots. The gunshots had come from that hunter.  He parked his red truck somewhere on the road or on the long driveway.  And was in her woods, with his dog, behind a blind or in a tree stand.  How is it that hunting is allowed at all, she wondered.  High-powered guns.  Fancy sights.  Space age fabrics and materials for blinds and so forth.  Turkey, and deer, don’t stand a chance.  We have created a world where we think guns and bombs can always win the day for us, can shield us, can empower us, can decide for us.  Not caution, careful preparation, and judicious management.  Not staying under the radar and striking, softly and quietly, with an invisible hand, but only when the iron is hot.

And venison.  He was supposed to bring me venison.  He said he’d leave it in a cooler on the front steps.

Then she heard voices.  A cough.  And then a thud, as if someone had dropped a big rock or a log onto the ground.

She pulled the front door open.

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That man, Jake Smith the hunter, was standing on her drive.  There was another man, a body, laying on his back in her driveway, covered in blood, writhing around, moaning. There was blood everywhere – on the face and hands of Jake Smith, on the gravel driveway, on the white fence next to the driveway, on the fresh new grass, which had just turned green but hadn’t started to grow.  There was blood seeping from one leg of the man on his back.  Streaming from that leg. That leg had a belt wrapped around it, up near the groin.

“Get help,” Jake Smith yelled, panting and still short of breath, for he had carried this man on his back for quarter of a mile.

“Wait,” Suzette said, as she rushed out to the side of the man on his back, who had stopped moving.  She knelt at his side for a moment, looked at the man’s mouth and nose, at his airway to make sure it was clear, watched his chest rise with a breath, and turned his head to her to put a finger on his neck to check for a pulse.

Lee Shurtleaf.

“It was an accident,” Jake Smith said, his face smudged with dirt and blood.

“Call 911,” she said. “Get me that branch, over there, quick.”  She pointed to a dead branch that had fallen from one of the old maples lining her driveway.

Jake Smith brought the branch to her.  She broke it over her knee twice to make a stick about the length of her forearm.  Then she put it under the belt on the Lee Shurtleaf’s leg and turned it, tightening the belt.

The bleeding stopped.

“Now call 911,” Suzette said. “Quick.”

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She pulled up Lee Shurtleaf’s shirt and mashed on his belly, doing what she’d been taught to do, what seemed like a hundred years ago, using her hands again for the first time she could remember.  She turned Lee Shurtleaf on his back and checked his back and neck for an entry wound. Finding none, she turned him over again.  ‘Finding none’ sounded like ‘hearing none’ — words she had used in Board meetings a thousand times, to note no objection or discussion to an agenda item, so she could move the agenda along.

“Stay with him.” Suzette said.  “I’m going to get blankets.  And water.  So, we can keep him warm and hydrated until Rescue gets here.”

“He came into the woods,” Jake Smith.  “I thought…”

“I don’t care what you thought.  He’s always in the woods.  He keeps his eyes on things here.  For me,” Suzette said.

She went into the house.

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After rescue came and went, after the police came and the fish-and-game people came, after the flashing lights and the reports written on iPads or tablets of one sort or another. Suzette went out to her porch to sit and look out over the lake.  The morning mist had blown away by then but there were still clouds drifting high up, so the sunlight came and went.

On the porch was a red cooler, an old metal one with grey corners where the paint had scraped off, with the words COKE stamped in bold white letters on the side and the top.

She had sent Jake Smith the hunter away, and told him to never come back, but he didn’t listen.  Or maybe he’d left the cooler on the porch instead of the front of the house when he’d come to hunt in the morning.

She didn’t know if Lee Shurtleaf was going to live or die.  Live, she thought.  Prayed.  In her own way.

She’d done the best she could.  It had been years, but maybe, just maybe, she had saved a life.  Long ago and far away.  Her hands were still good for something, thank God.

Then she heard gunshots in the woods again.  Not a surprise. The people up here care only for their privacy and their guns.

No one knew she was here or what had happened there earlier.

And no one cared.

It was a little lonely, being in this house by herself.  But she was tough and was made of strong stuff.

She’d go back to work on Monday.  There were buildings to be built, and deals to be made, and contracts to be signed.

That was what mattered.

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(The Dean Lie describes a common phenomenon in medical education, wherein medical school deans vastly overestimate the number of primary care physicians their schools graduate in order for those schools to receive more public funding.  This is one of the many ways the public funding of medical schools and medical schools themselves fail the nation, so we have created a wealth extraction system, instead of a health care system that cares for all Americans.)

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Many thanks to Carol Levitt for proofreading, and to Lauren Hall for all-around help and support.

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