Page 19 of Dr. Grump's Surprise Baby

She wasn’t mistaken. “I like to work nights,” he said.

“But you also work days.”

He inhaled slowly. “There’s a lot of work to do,” he said. “I take this job seriously.”

“So seriously that you never go home?”

“I have a couch in my office. There are beds in the on-call room. There are plenty of places to sleep in the hospital,” he said, wondering why he was even bothering to explain this to her.”

“Okay,” she said. “Well, you can’t be shocked that I’d be emulating you.”

“You’re here because I’m here? Is that it?”

“You want me to learn how to be a good doctor by watching you, right? That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“Well, look, you can go home,” he told her. “There’s no need for you to hang around here all night.”

“I really do need to get caught up on this reading,” she said. “Sit down, though, if you want.”

“Only if you’re not going to keep talking. I came in here for a little peace and quiet, not to get caught up on gossip.”

Emily mimed locking her lips with a key.

Dominic sat down at the table next to hers and took out a file of his own.

The key must not have been very good, because she spoke almost immediately. “I just don’t see how you can be here all day every day,” she said.

He scowled. “That’s fine,” he said. “I don’t need you to understand that. In fact, I think I specifically asked you to stay out of my personal life, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but… well, don’t you have a family? A wife? Something to go home to?”

“This isn’t the kind of job that’s conducive to that kind of thing,” Dominic told her. “If you’re interested in getting married and starting a family and all that, this might not be the career for you.”

Emily shook her head. “I don’t buy that,” she said. “Doctors can have families.”

“You are never going to have the kind of spare time it would take to do something like that. Not if you stick with this,” Dominic said. “If you work for me, Emily, the job comes first. Always. I don’t want you getting into this on the misunderstanding that you’ll have time to devote to dating and raising your children.”

“Dr. Nash is married, isn’t he?” Emily said.

“Dr. Nash doesn’t work in the ER,” Dominic said. “And besides, you can see how his personal life interferes with his job. Justlook at how he went away on vacation right when a patient needed him the most.”

“It’s not his fault Daniel Wilson’s treatment failed.”

“Of course it isn’t. But you said yourself that he ought to have been there to talk to the family. He left because he couldn’t predict what would happen, and he was gone at the pivotal moment. You didn’t approve of the fact that I had to handle talking to the Wilsons? Well, that’s the reason I had to do it. So if you’re going to venture an opinion about the fact that I’m here in the middle of the night instead of out taking care of a wife and a family, or whatever it is you think a man in my position ought to be doing with his time, consider that. And consider the fact that if you think patient care ought to be a priority, the way you say you do, you’re going to have to put it ahead of everything. You’re going to have to make the same tough choices I’ve made.”

“I think it’s possible to prioritize patient care and still have a personal life,” Emily said.

“And I think I came in here to get some peace and quiet,” Dominic said. “I told you I didn’t want to talk.”

Emily shrugged. She got up and went to the fridge, took out a bottle of juice, and returned to her table.

She was quiet now, and yet Dominic found that she still had his attention. That was frustrating. He didn’t want to pay any attention to her. He wanted to focus on what he had come here to do — relaxing, catching up on reviewing his cases. Maybe, he thought, he should go somewhere else.

But he wasn’t going to let her chase him out of the room. This was still his hospital. She was only an intern here.

What was it about her that was so distracting?

It couldn’t just be the fact that she hadn’t been afraid to disagree with him. Jonathan disagreed with him all the time.

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