Page 49 of Dr. Grump's Surprise Baby

“Oh, yeah, you’re a regular topic of conversation,” Sara said. “Everyone knows that you were top of the class. Some people say we’re lucky you left when you did, because someone else would have been cut in your place.”

“Oh, don’t think like that,” Emily said, even though she had just been thinking something along those same lines herself. “Everyone who is still in that program deserves their spot. I’m the one who couldn’t hack it, even if I was smart enough to getthrough. For my own reasons, I just couldn’t do what needed to be done. I have to live with that every day.”

“Do you wish you could come back?” Sara asked her.

“Sometimes,” Emily said.

“I bet Dr. Berger would let you. He knows you were the best.”

Emily shook her head. “I wouldn’t think of asking him. It would be too humiliating. And besides, I wouldn’t let me come back if I was him. Not after I quit the way I did. The people who deserve those places are the ones who tried their best, whostilltry their best. Not the quitters.”

“You know what?” Sara declared. “You’re too hard on yourself, Emily.”

Emily, who had said that very same thing to Dominic, found it difficult to agree when it came to herself. If she had been just a little harder on herself, she wouldn’t be in this predicament. If only she’d had the strength of character to simply not sleep with her boss! How much willpower did a person need to resist going to bed with the person who controlled the fate of their career?

Of course, that was easy to say while he wasn’t sitting right across from her, staring her down with those eyes that seemed to look right into her soul. Easy to say while the palm of his strong, dexterous hand wasn’t pressed to hers. Maybe she had never really had a chance at resisting him. Maybe it had been a foregone conclusion right from the very start.

And maybe Sara had a point. Maybe she should get out of this hospital. Follow her own advice and start living life again.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll go to the symphony with you.”

“Oh, yay!” Sara said. “I’ll see about getting us tickets, okay?”

“I’ll pay you back, just tell me how much.”

“Yeah, for sure. We’ll work it out,” Sara said gleefully. “Okay. I need to get back to work. Dr. Berger is insane about people coming back late from their lunch breaks.”

“I know he is,” Emily said heavily.

“Do you need to hurry back?”

“No, Dr. Nash is pretty cool about it. I’ll go back up when I finish my sandwich.”

“All right,” Sara said. “I’ll text you about later, okay?”

“Sounds good.”

“See you tonight.” Sara grinned and hurried off.

Emily watched her friend go. It hurt to think that Sara was going to be spending the rest of the day with Dominic, even though she knew that Dominic wasn’t going to make himself any fun to be around.

What Sara had said about him being even more moody than ever before — that was interesting. Emily wondered what the cause of that might be.

Because it was certainly true that getting rid of the worse interns should have cheered him up a bit. He no longer had to carry the dead weight that he’d been dragging around for the past three months. In addition, narrowing the field to only the better half of his interns should have meant a little less work for him — not that anything ever meantlesswork for Dominic, she thought wryly. No matter what came his way, he would find a way to take on more somehow. But it should have given him the chanceto focus on the things he felt were truly important. He could entrust some of the less precise, difficult tasks to the interns now without feeling as if he had to be looking over their shoulders every minute of the day. He could start to trust them.

Somehow, she didn’t think that was what was happening.

And a part of her wondered if the reason he was unhappy now was the same reasonshewas unhappy now. Maybe he was finding it difficult to be away from her. Maybe he also had mixed feelings about the fact that she’d chosen to switch to pediatrics.

But if that was how he felt, she thought, he should have said something when she had told him she was planning to go. For that matter, he should have said something when she had confronted him that day after they had stayed too long at lunch. She had given him so many chances. If he’d wanted her around, he could have told her that any time, and he hadn’t.

Whatever his problem was now, it couldn’t have anything to do with her.

And she wasn’t going to waste any of her time worrying about it.

She finished the last few bites of her sandwich, got up to throw her trash away, and headed back up to the pediatrics floor. She had patients who were waiting for her. And one thing in which she and Dominic were in complete agreement on was the fact that the needs of the patients were more important than whatever petty dramas were taking place in their personal lives.

CHAPTER 20

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