Page 7 of The Grumpy Doc's Surprise Delivery

He spots me sitting alone in the circle and his face almost falls, though he saves himself and forces his face into an irritated neutral. I doubt this is a guy who ever smiles.

“Good morning,” he says, coming to sit next to me.

“Hey,” I mumble. “How did you sleep?”

“Fine, I guess. You?”

“Like a baby.”

“I’m so happy for you,” he huffs.

I know for a fact that he went to bed later than me, because I could still hear him yelling into his phone when I went to sleep.

We sit in silence as the room slowly fills up and finally Bruno comes back to the tiny stage that’s been set up for him, shuffling behind the podium and taking hold of the remote for the projector. At least there haven’t been any technical issues. That would make all this a thousand times more unbearable.

“Good morning, everyone,” he says in a voice that is entirely too cheerful for eight o’clock in the morning. “I hope you all slept well, because we’ve got a busy day today. I hope everyone’s sitting in their pairs already too, because we’re going to be doing a lot of teamwork this morning.”

“Great,” mutters Liam, and much as I hate to, I can’t help but agree with him.

Teamwork is important in our line of work, so vitally important, but that doesn’t make sitting in a room of strangers, doing pointless exercises with them any more fun.

“So,” Bruno continues, ignoring all the murmurings from the audience. “We’re going to give you twenty minutes to say hi to your partners, get to know each other a little better, and then we’re going to jump right in with some activities. How does that sound?”

The rest of the room bursts into applause, but me and Liam share an uneasy look.

“This is torture,” he says.

I nod in agreement. “Team building exercises can be frustrating,” I say, then realize I’m agreeing with him, so I clamp my mouth shut.

“They’re a waste of time.” Liam sighs.

“I guess it’s what we’re here for, though,” I say, trying to scramble back to some passive high land.

“I hate that training courses like this always turn out to be some sort of exercise-based garbage,” he says. “I thought that maybe this being made specifically for medical professionals, we wouldactually do something relevant to the job. But it looks like it’s the same old tired shtick as usual.”

I nod again. I almost want to ask him how many of these training courses he’s been to, but that feels too much like conversation.

Conversation feels too much like I’m actually going to forgive him for being an ass, and I’m still too mad at him for that.

Fortunately, before the conversation can progress into anything that could remotely be mistaken for friendly, Bruno starts talking again, cutting into everyone’s chat with a squeal of microphone static. “Great. So now that we’ve all woken up a little more, why don’t we split off into some circles?”

An unhappy mumble goes around, and Bruno reassesses his plan. “Hmm.” He hums brightly. “Well, we’re all in one big circle now. I think there’s thirty of us, yes? That’s a little bigger than I usually like for this kind of thing, but we’ll manage. All right everyone, make sure you’re sitting next to your partner.”

There’s a moment of scrambling where people leave those they came with to go and sit with the strangers we’re about to be stuck with. Liam and I don’t move, frozen in place as we watch everyone else move. After all, neither of us knows a single other person in the room.

As soon as the movement quiets down, Bruno clears his throat again. “Okay. We’ll answer as a team, and remember, for the next few days, all your hard work is going to show on the leaderboard. So whichever team I think is performing best is going to walk out of here with a prize.”

“What’s the prize?” I whisper to Liam.

He glares at me. “I don’t know. I missed the opening speech just as much as you did.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“It’s a gift card for some medical supplies,” hisses the woman sitting next to us, her face as stony as Liam’s. “It’s nothing that exciting.”

Clearly our bickering is starting to annoy other people as well as me.

“Thanks,” I mutter, happy to find a helpful attendee.

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