Page 57 of Sinful in Scrubs

Iwas beginning to worry about Emma, having not seen her for several days. She was either avoiding me completely or something was wrong, and she wasn’t coming into the hospital for one reason or another.

“You haven’t seen Dr. Chen?” I asked Rosa Hernandez one afternoon as we were essentially just hanging out at the nurses’ station. The emergency department was quiet—too quiet—and we were all on edge, just waiting for something major to come in.

“What do you mean, have I seen Dr. Chen?” She practically laughed at me as if I were asking a silly question.

“I haven’t seen Emma in a while, and I was wondering if she was sick or something.”

Rosa squinted at me and looked at me like I had a few too many heads.

“She left.”

“Oh. Did I just miss her?” I asked for confirmation. “Did she get put on the overnight schedule?” Which would have explained her leaving before I came in, or more likely, leaving as I was just coming on my rotation.

“No, Dr. Walker. She left the hospital. She no longer works here.”

“What do you mean?”

I heard the words coming out of Rosa’s mouth, but they really weren’t making much sense to me. “You mean she quit?” Had Kevin finally managed to get through and ruin her, just as she had said he would? Had there really been a conspiracy against her? I certainly was more inclined to believe that there had been.

Rosa shrugged. “Well, considering how quickly she left, there are a few people around here who think she may have been let go.”

“You mean fired?”

“That is what ‘let go’ typically means,” she said, as if I were Dr. Dumb and didn’t know the meaning of words. Of course, I was acting as if she were speaking a foreign language. “She left so suddenly… You know, we’re really not sure what else to make of it. She was here one day, and then she wasn’t on the schedule the next. What are we supposed to think?” She threw her arms up and quirked her brows together.

I agreed. That did seem rather suspicious.

“And you’re only just now noticing?” She was right. Only just now realizing that my favorite work colleague was no longer at work did not bode well, and it did not look good.

“I’ve been a little overwhelmed at home,” I admitted, which wasn’t exactly a lie. The fights with Lily seemed to be getting worse, and even though I managed to locate a therapist who was willing to take us on, they didn’t have an opening in their schedule for quite a while. It was going to be another week or two before Lily got in to see them. And it’s not as if I were doing a very good job at being Mr. Compassionate Parent.

“You’ve got teenagers, don’t you?” Rosa asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, and the oldest is just absolutely wearing me out.”

“Being a teenager is tough,” she said.

“Being a parent of a teenager is tough,” I countered.

“You can say that again. Everything is so traumatic, the world is completely against them, and they can never do anything wrong… or right, as the case may be.”

“You have kids?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve got nieces. My sister’s kids are more than enough for me. When they were little, I loved being able to hand them back and say, ‘Here, you change a diaper.’ And now that they’re older, I can hand them back and say, ‘Here, you deal with today’s trauma.’ And it’s always trauma. Always trauma with those girls.”

“Yeah, my Lily can be pretty dramatic. It’s like she thinks life needs to be a soap opera.”

“Right?”

“Every choice is made directly to ruin her life, especially when it’s her little brother.”

“It sounds like you have a handful,” she said.

I shrugged. “Normally, they’re good kids, but lately…”

I trailed off. I didn’t have the answers.

“Well, it’s too bad Dr. Emma left without saying goodbye,” I said. “She must have had her reasons.”

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