On the day that Maxwell Dennison Montgomery II was born, his father was caught in the throes of the surgery that would later come to define his career. That success would later come to overshadow the birth of the sole Montgomery heir.
From birth, Maxwell was a fairly unsettled child. His father was constantly too busy with his medical career to attend to his son. His mother, being the up-and-coming Seattle socialite that she was, rarely made time to care for him either. He was left, almost entirely, in the care of a live-in nanny.
Just one week after his third birthday, Maxwell was placed in an early preschool program with a series of five separate tutors, one for each day of the week. These five tutors would come to the Maxwell manor for several hours at a time to instruct Maxwell on the academic things that he would need to succeed in the future. While his father and mother both believed that they were doing their son a great favor, it resulted in serious social ineptitude for the boy. It wouldn't be until the age of seven that Maxwell would begin to branch out and socialize with other children his own age.
Had it not been for his one and only friend, a neighborhood boy named Jonathan Adcock, his parents might have worried far more about the social repercussions of their in-home preschool program. As it was, Maxwell had hardly any time to spend doing typical toddler things with his best friend, Jonathan. His time was divided into hour-long increments; each slot was devoted to something specific, and there were two slots per day allotted for what his parents called 'free time.' Maxwell almost always used this time to play age-appropriate and normal things with Jonathan, but it never seemed to be enough. When Maxwell entered kindergarten at Bright Water School, right alongside Jonathan, the boys' teacher cautioned Maxwell and Amira on the detriment that they were causing their son in limiting his time for play. It was then and only then that the Montgomery parents allowed more time for their son to explore the world around him.
Maxwell seemed to discover at a very early age that his socioeconomic status gave him an edge when it came to almost everything. He immediately began utilizing that to his advantage. He wore all of the best clothes, owned the biggest house, knew all the coolest places to hang out, and had a tight hold on the hierarchy of his class as early as the age of ten. Where Maxwell went, Jonathan was right there at his side. The pair of boys ruled over the private institutions in which their parents opted to enroll them.
When Maxwell was around eleven years old, the picturesque family life that everyone saw in the Montgomery family came crashing down into a very ugly reality. Amira, at some point in her marriage to Maxwell, had fallen in love with another man. As is always true with the upper class, gossip ran rampant among the women in the higher crest of Seattle's social elite. Her infidelity came to light just before Maxwell's twelfth birthday. His father, though devastated by the loss of the true love of his life, failed to see what the root cause of the adultery was and never quite found the time to adequately mourn the divorce. Instead, he threw himself even further into his career, keen on making a widely renowned name for himself in the realm of pediatric neurosurgery. Maxwell did his best to hide whatever emotions he was feeling from the outside world. He became cold, almost cruel, to everyone around him. As far as school was concerned, Maxwell remained fixated on maintaining his popularity. The fact that it took such work to get "in" with he and his best friend only served to make him more of a hot commodity.
Although he wasn't much of an athlete, Maxwell had been conditioned from the age of four to train in sports like soccer and lacrosse. He opted to participate in lacrosse, track, and rowing while attending Lakeside Middle + Upper Schools. Instantly, he exhibited a raw talent for rowing, but Maxwell was not at all interested in pursuing any sort of athletic scholarship. His father made it clear that Maxwell was expected to showcase nothing less than perfect excellence in academics. In spite of his active social life, Maxwell was consumed with the idea of impressing his father. He spent every waking minute -- every moment that he wasn't already involved in causing trouble with Jonathan, finding his next flavor of the week, or excelling in one of his three sports -- holed up in one of the two Lakeside libraries with countless books and assignments.
Upon graduating in 2009, Maxwell earned the illustrious valedictorian spot in his class. Although his father cautioned him on settling for a university in Washington, instead holding out hope that his son would continue his education at an Ivy League institution, Maxwell chose to accept an academic scholarship from the University of Washington in the heart of Seattle. His father and mother, as a graduation gift, purchased him a home not far from the college campus. Maxwell chose not to work and, instead, kept his focus on school. Dual-majoring in microbiology and neurobiology, it took less than two full academic years for Maxwell to realize that the University of Washington wouldn't land him in any of the major medical schools he hoped to attend. As the summer of 2012 approached, he submitted an application to Harvard University, accepted more because of his father's notoriety and wealth than for any of his accomplishments. Assured that was the only way he would ever get into the school, Maxwell took on the identity of a surgeon's son, solely for the sake of pushing his way into medical school and a renowned surgical career of his own. Only time will tell if he succeeds or fails.
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