Page 2 of Sinful in Scrubs

“Dr. Chen, please.” She gestured at me.

I looked down. I was covered in blood. I looked like I had been stabbed. Pressing my hand into my abdomen, I grimaced. “It’s not mine.”

“Dr. Chen, please put on a fresh top. You are traumatizing our young patients even more,” Rosa said.

She was right. The immediate emergency was over. If I were going to deal with another patient, I should clean up. Normally, I wouldn’t be covered in the results of emergency surgeries. There were surgery robes and other protective wear for me to have on, but tonight’s situation hadn’t allowed for the luxury of PPE, Personal Protective Equipment.

“Thank you, good idea.” I let out a tired chuckle. I had been so focused on what needed to be done, and then what I needed to do next, that I hadn’t really noticed the blood that had gotten on me when I leaned on my patient.

I pushed into a prep room and pulled my top off. “Yuck,” I said as I dropped it into a biohazard bin.

I needed a shower, but there wasn’t time. I grabbed a handful of paper towels and began scrubbing my torso. Not too much had gotten on my skin, but still…

My skin turned rosy from the hot water and intense scrubbing I had subjected it to. Satisfied that my torso was clean, I turned my attention to scrubbing my arms up past my elbows. I had my face buried in my hands, giving that and my neck as thorough a cleaning as possible at the sink, when I heard that deep voice again.

“Oh, excuse me, I didn’t realize.” He blustered and coughed around a few stammers, and then he left.

I ignored him and continued washing in peace. A few seconds later, he returned.

“This is a prep room, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yeah, why?” I dried my neck and chest as I looked at him. He was avoiding looking at me. What was his problem?

“I thought I must have walked into the women’s room.”

“Huh?” That’s when I glanced down at myself. “Ah, sorry. I was doing a quick change. The front of my shirt was covered in blood. Had to wash a bit off me.”

I was standing there in my blue scrub pants and a bra. If I wore more utilitarian undergarments, he probably wouldn’t have reacted the same. But I don’t wear practical underwear. It’s boring. And I have to wear scrubs eighty percent of the time I’m at work, so I like to wear fancy underwear. Today’s bra was sheer nude with black lace details. My dark nipples were completely visible.

I gulped and quickly grabbed a clean top from the pile of available scrubs. No wonder he was acting embarrassed. I was essentially exposed to him. What a great first impression.

“Sorry,” I mumbled as I pulled the scrub top over my head. I turned my back to him so my actions didn’t flash my nipples any more.

“You’re Dr. Emma Chen, right?”

Fully dressed, I turned with an embarrassed chuckle. “Yeah, um, who are you?”

“Marcus, Marcus Walker. Pleased to meet you.”

“And you’re a doctor?” I asked.

“I’m the new guy on staff,” he admitted.

“Oh, that’s right. They did bring on a new doctor. What a way to start your tenure at Manhattan Memorial, with a messy car versus pedestrians situation.”

“Messy? More like criminal. Those kids are going to need more than time to recover. Did the little girl you were working on make it?”

Dr. Marcus Walker leaned against the sinks as if we were chatting over nothing more than the weather or something we saw on TV the night before. He didn’t seem bothered by what he had been thrust into his first night at a new job. Now that I was clothed, he seemed perfectly relaxed. He was tall, with long limbs. Biceps bulged and strained against the short sleeves of his blue scrubs. A fading tattoo with the spiked scrollwork of the tribal aesthetic seemed to pierce his skin in its claw-like grasp. The tat ended just below his elbow, and there was a tell-tale peek of more ink work just under the edge of the neckline of his scrubs.

A wry smile emphasized his cheek bones, and his eyes were a piercing, ice-cold blue.

“She’s in recovery,” I said.

Marcus Walker was a good-looking man, and he had seemed completely flustered when I was half-naked in front of him. That was a nice boost to my ego.

“Where did you learn that trick?”

“Trick?” I asked.

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