Page 42 of Sinful in Scrubs

I quickly hit theUndocommand to bring the email back to my inbox. Once it was safely returned, I immediately double-clicked and opened it.

“Took you long enough,” I muttered to my computer monitor.

It seemed that they had a potential opening. They wanted to talk to me about it.

“Your timing sucks.”

I flagged the email so that I would remember to come back to it and formulate a response. I didn’t have time for this. I had to pull together talking points, and I should probably put together a slide deck for the review board. The clock was ticking, and I didn’t have enough time to do everything that needed to be done.

I picked up the phone and dialed James Collins, the hospitalist in charge of our department.

“Hey, James,” I said as soon as he picked up.

Much to my relief, he was able to rearrange the schedule so that I could maximize work hours for the protocol proposal and presentation.

I had hoped to get a moment to have a conversation with Marcus to confirm he had seen my email and that he had ideas I could throw into a slide deck. But our schedules and patient loads kept us from being able to much more than nod in acknowledgement of each other’s existence. Fortunately, that evening, he had sent me a good, solid page of ideas that I could use.

I managed to get my schedule shifted so that I had office hours. I spent way too much time on this presentation as it was, and my office walls felt as if they were closing in on me. The morning of the presentation, my office was entirely too confining as I fleshed out my slide deck to accompany my talking points for the presentation. I packed up my laptop and notes and headed to the atrium. After a quick stop at the cafeteria for a large cup of caffeine, I set up and began working.

There was something about the open sky above me and all the plants that helped my brain function properly.

“What are you so keenly focused on?”

“Oh, hi,” I said as I looked up. Marcus had startled me. My heart pounded a little faster, and it took me a second to catch my breath.

“This stupid presentation.”

“Oh, right. That’s today.”

“I still don’t have any idea how they found out about it. You didn’t talk to anyone, did you?”

He shrugged. “Maybe, but nothing in an official capacity. More along the lines of sharing thoughts. And if I had, why would they have reached out to you?”

I smirked. “To make me scramble.”

At that moment, his smart watch buzzed, and he checked it.

“Yeah, that’s me. Looks like we have incoming. I think you’ll do just great. Come find me after you’re done. I’ll buy you a drink, or a coffee, and you can tell me how it went.”

I watched him saunter off. Now was not the time to admire his broad, square shoulders or speculate at what his backside looked like under that white doctor’s coat. I had a presentation to finish and hopefully practice at least once before I had to head up to the conference room.

When the alarm on my phone went off, I braced myself. It was time to face the board. To face Kevin. It was time to go talk about the need for intake protocols on trauma victims and how that would improve our ability to provide quality care.

I think I held my breath the entire walk from the atrium to the conference room because I didn’t let it out until I saw Kevin’s smirking face when I stepped inside.

One look at him, and I knew. This was going to be a farce at my expense. Maybe I did have time to follow up with that offer from LA.

20

MARCUS

Ichecked the time on my watch. Emma should be out of her presentation any minute, and I hoped she’d come tell me about it.

We had too many patients for me to just be able to leave the emergency department, even for just fifteen minutes. Fortunately, none of the current cases were heavy trauma or life-threatening injuries. Every time I heard feet walking down the hall, I looked up, hoping it would be her.

It felt like all the anxiety she had clearly been feeling when I spoke to her earlier had transferred to me. If something like that were even possible, I would have taken all of her doubt so that she could present in a calm manner.

I wasn’t a big fan of doing those kinds of presentations in front of non-medical personnel. Give me a room full of med students, doctors, or nurses, and I had no problem. But put me in front of a room of executives and command structure, and I always felt like I was speaking a different language to them.

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