do no harm.

NICOLAS ROSSIGNOL. neurological surgeon at weill cornell. manhattan.

[nicrossignol]

Nicolas was not a man with a lot of free time. He tended to work seventy to eighty hours a week, and as the father of three young children his remaining waking hours were devoted to them. Today, though, his wife had taken them to visit their grandparents, and for the first time in what felt like months he had nothing to do. Walking in Central Park, he noticed a small object on the ground. “Excuse me,” he addressed the person who had just walked past him. “Is that yours?”

[nicrossignol]

⚜ — hey, is that Jake Gyllenhaal? oh no, that’s just NICOLAS ROSSIGNOL, the thirty-eight year old cis male who is a neurosurgeon, and live up in Manhattan. i’ve heard they are heterosexual, and decisive + scrupulous, but the bad tongues say he can be inscrutable + stubborn. they are known around New York as the Black Sheep, but only time will tell if that’s true.

The Rossignols [pronunciation] are extremely, obscenely rich, and have been for a very long time. Nicolas’ Swiss father Sébastien is the chairman and CEO of the family’s empire — one of the world’s largest privately held companies— and his American mother Claudia (née Pike) comes from old money (think the Vanderbilts or Rockefellers) as well.

His parents had a turbulent relationship, playing a happy couple when needed but openly contemptuous and unfaithful behind closed doors. Their children, meanwhile, didn’t see much of them. When Nic and his siblings weren’t off at boarding school in Switzerland, they stayed in a separate wing of the family’s (many) residences.

Sébastien, in particular, saw his children only as pawns. From the beginning, they were simply informed of what their fates as the scions of the Rossignol dynasty would be and expected to comply. Claudia (the ne plus ultra of socialtes), though less outwardly less unkind, was hardly better.  Among his siblings, Nic was always the black sheep, the favorite of neither his father nor his mother, the forgotten middle child pushed aside in favor of the others.

Around the time he turned eighteen, Nic had an epiphany: he didn’t have to be part of any of it.He didn’t want to be shackled to the company in a job he didn’t really earn, spend the rest of his life competing with his siblings over who would succeed their father, or remain enmeshed in his family’s toxicity. So he walked away. 

Eventually deciding to go to medical school, he became interested in neurology and surgery during the rotations in his third and fourth year. Now, he’s a neurosurgeon at Weill Cornell. His work is immensely rewarding to him.

He’s a pretty quiet guy, seems sort of unassuming at first glance, and while he’s friendly, also not the easiest person to get to know.

Underneath it all, he has a steel backbone. He knows who he is and what’s important to him.

Nic’s relationship with his family is close to nonexistent. There’s no animosity on his part, but he just doesn’t care to have a relationship with most of them. He’s married now, with three children, and wants his kids to have a very different upbringing than he did.