Page 24 of Baby for Dr. Damaged

And for another, I go golfing with him once a month at West Seattle Golf Course. He almost always wins, I almost always let him. It’s good to have the boss think fondly of you, no matter how long you’ve been on staff.

And what can I say? Moneydoeshelp. And I have more than enough to wave around. It turns out finding a way to diagnose a disease has an embarrassingly large payout and that's after the treatment research teams get all the funding they could ever need.

Still, even with the tricks up my sleeve, it’s a bit daunting getting all the way up to his office and then trying to talk my way into the position as head of research. Randal wants to know all about the disease. I need to get printouts. I need to present him with an outline for the research, where we’re starting, why we’re starting there.

It takes me two weeks to get everything together and back to him; the plan of attack, who I want looking into it with me and why. The resources that we’re going to need, the time that we’ll be putting into it. Everything has to be carefully put down onto paper, triple checked, and approved.

But approve it he does, and by the end of the month, I’ve found myself heading a research team for a cure for Margur’s disease.

When I tell Amanda, she throws her arms around me, in a tight hug. “You’re amazing! How did you do it? I was sure he would say no!”

“I signed a check for one of the other projects that he wants done,” I say, hugging her back.

“Thank you,” Amanda tells me, her voice cracking.

Amanda is my second for the task. She knows more about the illness than anyone else at the hospital. It was her thesis topic in med school, and she has hands-on experience with someone suffering from it where the rest of us don’t.

Nancy Howell and Kurt Lockwood are the other two doctors on the team, both of them surgical specialists. Cara is our only other resident that’s allowed to help out. She’s quick on her feet, smart, and good at spotting errors no one else managed to catch. We’re not allowed to skip hospital shifts to do the research, so we end up pulling a lot of late hours.

A lot of early hours, too.

Kurt tells me, a few days into it, “You know, when you asked me for a favor, I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Someone needs to do the work,” I tell him, facetiously. “And you were getting dusty, spending all that time sitting around.”

“Laying,” corrects Kurt, with a smug sort of smile. “Usually with someone.”

I roll my eyes at the joke and turn back to the papers that I was reading. Kurt’s a bit of a player but he’s smart as a whip, as wealthy as they come, and he owes me big time. I trust him. And the truth is, I know that I can count on him not to slack off.

Often, we come in at four in the morning to research, and then do our shift at the hospital and come back down to the research lab for an extra hour when we’re off. It’s a constant slamming of double-duty shifts and red-hour shifts, desperately trying to study the illness and cobble something of value together.

Sometimes, I don’t go home.

It’s easier to just stay the night in the sleep room.

It’s my third time doing that this month. I feel guilty about not driving home to Bonnie, but I’m so tired that I think it would be a hazard for me to get behind the wheel right now. The last thing I want to do is cause an accident.

I’m pulling open the door to the sleep room when Amanda catches me. “Hey,” she asks. “What are you doing?”

“Sleeping,” I say, with a laugh. “That’s usually what gets done in this room.”

A sly smirk crosses Amanda’s features. “I mean, usually but not always. I can think of a few other things that the room is good for.”

“Well, tonight it’s good for sleeping.” I can’t help but smile back at her, though I’m so tired that I find myself just leaning against the door.

She looks me over, no doubt taking in the slightly haggard look about me. Amanda doesn’t balk, though. She looks just as rough.

It’s for a good reason, though. And we’ve made a little bit of headway, too. Not much. Not anywhere close to being enough. But a little.

Amanda asks, “You want some company?”

“I’ll never say no to your company,” I tell her, finally peeling myself away from the door and stepping into the sleep room. The bunks are made up with fresh linens. I don’t even take my shoes off before dropping down onto the thin mattress.

A moment later, Amanda is dropping down onto it, with me.

If someone else comes into the room, there are going to be questions about why we’re all tucked up with each other. It might be a slight mark against our respective titles, but I can’t bring myself to care about it.

My arm loops around her waist and the thin, crisp and crinkly white sheet is pulled up over top of us. The room is designed to be dark, for people pulling doubles and red eyes who need a ten- or fifteen-minute nap in between rounds.

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