Page 24 of Dr. Grump's Surprise Baby

“No?”

“You must be eating cafeteria food three meals a day,” she said. “When was the last time you got out of this hospital and had a real meal?”

“Okay, maybe it has been a while…”

“There’s a great diner two blocks from here,” she said. “We could walk over and get something to eat there. They serve breakfast all day, but they’ve also got great burgers. I’m sure you’d find something you would like there. How about it?”

“Diner food?” Dr. Berger hesitated.

“I promise it’s better than the eighteen-hour-old deli sandwiches in the cafeteria,” Emily told him. “It’s my favorite place to eat around here. Come and check it out. You won’t be sorry.”

Dr. Berger hesitated for a moment. “All right,” he said at last. “We’ll go over there. Only for a little while. Then I’m going to want to get back.”

“You’ve got it,” Emily said. Inside, she was glowing with pride. She had actually persuaded him to get out of the hospital, even if only for a little while. It felt like almost as much of a victory as their success in the operating room had.

CHAPTER 10

DOMINIC

“Imust have walked past this place a dozen times and never noticed it,” Dominic observed as Emily led him into the twenty-four-hour diner.

“Well, you’ve got to get out of the hospital more, Dr. Berger,” Emily said.

“You can call me Dominic,” he told her. “Since we’re out of the hospital right now, there’s no need to be formal.”

She nodded. “Okay, then.”

“Do we wait to be seated?”

She pointed to a sign that saidPlease Seat Yourself. “I like the table over here, by the window,” she said. “Is that okay with you?”

“Sure, anything’s fine.” He followed her over to the table and took a seat. There were already menus on the table, and he picked one up and began to look it over. “What’s good here?”

“I always order off the breakfast menu, but I’m kind of a breakfast food fiend,” she said. “I’ll always opt for a good omelet when it’s available to me.”

“And they’ve got good ones here?”

“Oh, fantastic, trust me.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “An omelet it is.”

A server came by, looking tired and checked out. Dominic glanced at his phone and realized for the first time that it was four o’clock in the morning. He and Emily were amped up because they had been in surgery for three hours, but the staff here must be exhausted.

“So,” he said once the server had taken their order. “That was your first surgery, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Good,” she said. “I mean, a little shaken up, but it wasn’t hard in any of the ways I expected it to be. Staying on my feet the whole time, keeping my hands steady, keeping my focus — that was all fine.”

“What was the hard part for you?”

“I think on some level I was worried that we’d do something wrong and the guy wouldn’t make it. Don’t you worry about that?”

“You can’t really afford to worry about things like that,” Dominic told her. “This is what I mean, Emily. You’re too sensitive when it comes to the patients.”

“You’re saying I shouldn’t be worried about whether they live or die?”

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