If you missed previous segments of the CMEslinger saga, you can read them here:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6

And now, our latest segment:

Part 7 (Derek)
With a long sigh, Marge removed her clear-framed reading glasses and carelessly tossed them onto a stack of receipts.

“Well boys, everything seems in order here. I think we’re just about all set to get this thing started.”

The CMEslinger and the man in black simultaneously said “good” and rose from the seats they had taken while waiting for Marge to finish her review.

“Sit back down,” Marge scolded. “I’m not through with you two, yet.”

Chagrined, the two rivals sat back down on opposite ends of the only couch in Room 242.

“Phinneas organized this competition to end your fighting, but he still has one last lesson for you. Do either of you remember his favorite saying?” Marge asked with a blank face.

“You idiots went to school for half your life and you still don’t know nothin’?” guessed the CMEslinger.

“No, not that saying. The other one.”

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Mentor a man who knows how to fish and you will never have to fish again,” replied the man in black.

“Correct. You both know how important mentorship was to Phinneas and how honored he was to receive the Maitland Memorial Mentorship Award back in 2021. He was proud to mentor you both and you repaid him by breaking his heart.”

The CMEslinger and the man in black both stared down at their feet with grim expressions. A sly grin began to creep across Marge’s face.

“This competition is not only about your skills as a CME professional, but it is also about your effectiveness as a mentor. This is Phinneas’s final lesson.” Marge motioned to the hotel room door, as if excusing them from her presence.

Puzzled, the two men hesitantly stood up and walked over to the door. Reaching it first, the man in black grabbed the door knob and tried to turn it. It wouldn’t budge. He rattled it a few times and then tried turning it with two hands, but it still wouldn’t move.

Shouldering him out of the way, the CMEslinger gripped the knob but Marge interrupted him.

“Don’t bother. Maintenance reversed the door knob and I had my assistant Leon lock it from the outside. He’ll scan his keycard and unlock it when I give him the code word. Until then, no one is going anywhere.”

“What’s going on?” asked the confused CMEslinger.

“Yeah,” agreed the man in black. “Give him the code word. The symposia doors open in five minutes. We have to get to our rooms!”

Smiling broadly now, Marge slowly shook her head.

“You are staying here with me. And so is he. This competition is now in the hands of your staff. A good mentor will have a staff that is prepared to take over in his or her absence. Just as Phinneas mentored and trained you to take over for him, he wanted to make sure you were doing the same. A mentor never stops mentoring.”

The man in black stared at her in disbelief and then slowly reached for his phone in his front pocket.

“Once again, I urge you not to bother,” Marge said pleasantly. “I’ve disabled the wifi in the room and had everyone on your staff block your number. You won’t be able to communicate with them.”

“So, what are we supposed to do now?” asked the CMEslinger. “Just stand here and do nothing?”

“At 7 o’clock sharp, Leon will visit each symposium and count the number of attendees. He will then return to Room 242, knock twice, pause, then knock twice again. I will state the code word and he will unlock the door. He will then reveal the winner of the competition.”

“And until then?” asked a very annoyed man in black.

“We wait,” replied Marge, her smile broadening even more.

If you missed previous segments of the CMEslinger saga, you can read them here:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5

And now, our latest segment:

Part 6 (Scott)
The man in black snarled as he turned on his heels to go find Marge. The CMEslinger took his time, lingering a few feet behind, letting his nemesis have this final small victory.

“Room 242,” the man in black muttered. “Here we are.”

As the CMEslinger approached, the man in black opened the door to find Marge, as expected, pouring one last time over a mountain of invoices and receipts. She had already given her blessing to each man’s expenditures, assuring both parties that this was a fair fight, but no one was surprised to see her doing one last check. Her fastidious nature was the reason she had survived 23 years alongside Phinneas as the organization’s accreditation guru. Often a thorn in the sides of everyone around her, Marge was as pure as a mountain stream, a rare bastion of fairness that made her the only possible choice as referee of this “winner take all” competition.

It had been a complicated 3 months, ever since the day that Phinneas summoned the men to his office on a warm September afternoon. With a tear in his eye, he addressed them both that day.

“Men, watching the two of you grow as CME professionals is among my most cherished accomplishments. And yet watching one small incident tear you apart is among my biggest disappointments. I am tired of the bickering, the back and forth ‘he said this and he said that.’ This needs to end. Today.”

He spent the next 30 minutes going over the rules of the “loser-leaves-CME” competition. He had already secured a satellite symposium time slot from 6-8 pm on the opening night of the biggest specialist meeting of the year. The rooms would be identical in size, each seating a maximum of 472 attendees, equidistant from the hotel lobby. Each man was given $200,000 to spend as they saw fit – activity design, audience generation, faculty recruitment, staffing, you name it. Whoever had more butts in seats at 7 pm–exactly halfway through the symposium time slot–was the winner. Of course, Phinneas pointed to Marge sitting quietly in the corner and told both parties that all receipts would need to be handed over to her to ensure a fair playing field.

“There will be no shenanigans,” Phinneas said. “Everything remains above board. I put my trust in the both of you as gentlemen.”

Neither the CMEslinger nor the man in black knew it would be the last time they saw Phinneas in person (he never told anyone that he had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer 5 months ago), but they nonetheless knew that this competition would be a fair fight. They might not trust each other anywhere else, but this time, for these stakes, they did.

Not surprisingly, both parties took a very different path. The CMEslinger, being a technology geek, invested a good chunk of his dollars in VR technology and scientific programmers, promising every attendee a chance to latch on a headset to see on a molecular level how the latest therapeutic breakthrough worked. The man in black scoffed at these methods, instead relying on the old school approach of securing the biggest name faculty in the industry to man the stage as well as a detailed promotional plan with multiple waves of print and electronic announcements.

As Phinneas always said, “What’s newer ain’t always better. Except when it is.”

The clock ticked toward 5 pm when the symposium rooms would open to the public, but neither man broke a sweat. This was the moment that would define their careers, the moment to prove once and for all who was the King of CME.

What they didn’t know was that Phinneas had one last surprise in store for them both.

If you missed previous segments of the CMEslinger saga, you can read them here:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

And now, our latest segment:

Part 5 (Derek)
An amused smirk played across the man in black’s lips.

“I’ll give you this, CMEslinger, you always were the resilient one. Dumb as a ewe in heat, but resilient.”

The man in black heard the CMEslinger scoff at the other end of the line.

“I admit it took me longer than it should have to figure out your plan. Aunt Betty deserves an Oscar for her performance. But you got a little too clever trying to reuse one of your old proposals. You did a decent job editing out most of your trademark elements, but you couldn’t hide them all. Plus, you just couldn’t resist including two spaces after all the periods and openly mocking me with your blatant disregard of the Oxford comma. You might just as well have written ‘The man in black was here’ at the top of every page. You also forgot that I spent every weekend and summer day from junior high school thru college working at my grandpa Landis’s auto repair shop. It only took me about 15 minutes of tinkering to have the Wrangler humming like new. Now get your butt down here and let’s get to it!”

Cursing Grandpa Landis under his breath, the man in black hung up the phone, slipped his shoes back on, and headed for the elevator. He punched the button for the lobby and calmly waited as the elevator descended.

A minute later, the elevator doors slid open at the lobby level to reveal the CMEslinger standing directly in front of the doors, legs shoulder width apart, arms akimbo, waiting. As the man in black took a step out of the elevator, the two old-friends-now-bitter-rivals surveyed each other from head to toe.

“For Phinneas’s sake,” snorted the CMEslinger. “This is a conference, not a funeral. Would it kill you to lighten up your wardrobe a bit? Maybe work in some navy blue?”

The man in black narrowed his eyes but maintained his usual smirk.

“Very clever, Ralph Lauren. You’ll have to pardon me for not taking sartorial advice from a man in chaps and a neckerchief. Now, are we going to stand around here gabbing about the latest fashion trends or are we going to get to work?”

The CMEslinger didn’t respond immediately, but held the man in black’s gaze.

“I’m ready when you are.”

“Good. Let’s find Marge.”

It had been Phinneas’s idea and it was Phinneas who had made all the arrangements. He had given up all attempts at a reconciliation between his two former protégés and had finally agreed to their request for an ultimate showdown. It was the last thing he did before passing on.

The concept was brilliant in its simplicity. Two competing satellite symposia at the largest medical conference in the world. Whoever has the most attendees at their symposium is the winner. The loser agrees to leave the world of CME forever.

They had both agreed to the rules. And they had both agreed that Marge was in charge.