The Doctors Clare: Finding Their Way to Beaufort

“I’m the gas and he’s the brake,” Dr. Michelle Bens Clare says with a laugh.

Dr. William Clare shakes his head in good-humored agreement. “She’s yes and I’m no.”

The couple — who joined the Beaufort Memorial medical staff in March, he as an internal medicine specialist at Beaufort Memorial Lady’s Island Internal Medicine, she as a specialist in emergency medicine in the hospital’s emergency department — may characterize their marriage like that, but it’s clear they’re in the car together. And the drive, wherever it takes them, is going to be fun.

Where it’s taken them recently is Beaufort. Though the city is a shortish actual distance from Mount Pleasant, their former home, it’s miles and miles away in feel, they happily report.

“I’d kind of soured on Charleston — the growth, the traffic, the pace — a couple of years ago,” says William. From someone who was born and raised in the Holy City, who’d hung out a shingle in his hometown after residency and never practiced medicine anywhere else, this was no idle thought.

The question was, where to go? He and Michelle mulled it over.

“Maybe we should move to Michigan,” she suggested. The East Lansing native was close to her family, who still lived in the area. It would be nice for Michael, their young son, to grow up with family nearby.

Michigan was a definite possibility, they agreed. They’d go for a visit and scope it out.

It was winter there. It was freezing.

“I know what,” Michelle said to William. “Let's don't do this. I left Michigan for a reason.”

And Just Like That …

Each summer when she was young, Michelle’s family would camp on Lake Huron.

“My father always, always wanted to build a lake house, but never did,” she says.

Before his death last April, he told her how much he regretted it. His regret weighed heavily on his daughter, who’d adored him. She did not want to have similar regrets about not creating a family getaway. On top of that, the couple was working longer and longer hours, William at his busy practice, Michelle in an emergency room overwhelmed by the pandemic. They needed — they wanted — more time with Michael, more time as a family, more fun in their lives. When a tiny cottage on Fripp Island came available, they made the kind of snap decision they call “completely crazy for both of us”: They hit the gas and bought it.

But they hadn’t stopped looking for a new home base.

“On weekends we’d pass through Beaufort on our way to Fripp and say to each other, ‘This is a really cute town — we should move here!’” says Michelle. “Then we’d go back to Mount Pleasant.”

One night last summer, some lengthy soul-searching settled it: They would move to Beaufort.

“The town reminds me of Charleston when I was growing up,” William says. In other words, it was perfect for them.

“Hey, we’re moving! We’re selling the house!” they announced to Michael the next morning. Michael was in.

Read More: A Family Affair

‘I Married a Doctor’

The talk turns to medical marriages, specifically theirs. What’s it like being married to another doctor?

“We like it!” exclaims Michelle. Thanks to medical school rotations and moonlighting during residency, each knows from experience something of the other’s specialty and has “a healthy respect” for what practice of that specialty — and of medicine itself — requires. But the two agree they wouldn’t trade places with their spouse.

Obviously, their professional paths don’t officially intersect on a daily basis, but on occasion, William will call Michelle in the ER to let her know a patient of his is on the way.

At the end of the work day they often compare notes, offering up a sample conversation that probably reveals as much about their temperaments as about their work, which they both love.

“What did you see today?” Michelle might ask William.

“Hypertension, diabetes. How about you?”

“I treated a guy who was shot.”

Read More: Dr. Rhonda Wallace’s Long and Winding Road to Becoming a Physician

Destined for Medicine

That they ended up as doctors came as no surprise to either of them.

“As far back as I can remember, I was going to medical school,” says William, adding that though he’d followed his father into internal medicine, the elder William P. Clare was emphatically hands-off regarding the career choice.

Not so for Michelle’s father. “Hands-on” is how she describes him.

“‘You’re smart. You can be anything you want,’ he said. I knew from when I was six that what I wanted to be was a doctor,” she recalls.

Growing up she was also a competitive tennis player and remains passionate about the sport to this day. William, then recently divorced with two teenage sons, started playing a decade ago after he met Michelle on a date arranged by ER nurses who insisted the doctors would click.

“He’s not bad,” his wife says. In May, the couple headed to the Italian Open in Rome for some pointers.

William’s passion has long been gardening. In small kitchen gardens, he’s grown an impressive array of vegetables each year, but he’s clearly proudest of his various citrus trees. Growing the plants can be tricky, he says. It requires not only TLC, but also specialized knowledge in micronutrients and other specifics that he’s taken classes to acquire.

He’s handy, too — and over the years, that’s come in, well, handy. He won over his in-laws by fixing their dishwasher and toilet. But right now, with their brand-new house on Lady’s Island, his repair services are not much in demand, he says with mock dismay.

The life the Doctors Clare have created for themselves in Beaufort is exactly the one they’d hoped for: During the week, work and school; on weekends, quiet and beauty and time together, just the three of them, at the beach. No Wi-Fi, no TV, only books.

“Fripp is like our throwback house,” Michelle says, summing it up nicely.

Whether you’ve recently moved to Beaufort like the Clares or simply need a new doctor, find a primary care provider accepting new patients.