Page 59 of Sinful in Scrubs

I turned to head up the stairs.

“She said she would destroy my PlayStation,” he wailed.

I let out a heavy breath. Tonight was going to be a long night. I didn’t have the wherewithal to face making dinner at this point. I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and tossed my credit card onto the floor next to where Jason sat. “Could you maybe order pizza or some sandwiches to be delivered? Don’t go too crazy.”

I took the stairs two at a time and didn’t knock before I threw open Lily’s bedroom door.

“Lily!” I roared.

She flinched, throwing her headphones off her head. “What the hell, Dad? You scared the crap out of me.”

“We need to have a serious talk.”

She rolled her eyes. “All talks with you, Dad, are serious.”

“I don’t want your attitude or that tone, and I want you to tell me exactly what you have done.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been doing my homework.”

I grimaced, pulling in hard on my anger and reminding myself that she was just a kid. She was just a kid, and she was lashing out because she was hurt.

“What did you do to Dr. Chen? What—” I cut myself off, shaking my head. “Who did you call? What were those calls about? And what did you say?”

Panic washed over Lily. Her skin went pale, her eyes went wide, and her mouth made a tiny little O as she realized this was not going to be a good conversation.

27

EMMA

The alarm went off with its annoying, repetitive beeping sound. With a groan, I rolled over and pushed myself up and out of bed.

Apparently, it was another glorious day in L.A., but how would I know? In my desperation to get out of New York, I had not left myself any time to acclimate to the West Coast. I thought apartments in New York were expensive, but the cost of living in L.A. was absolutely through the roof. My dreams of finding a small, furnished bungalow to rent near the beach—just that, a complete dream. Bungalows didn’t exist near the beach anymore.

Finding a place that was furnished and within a price range I thought was reasonable was insane. And I needed a car, but I didn’t give myself time to go car shopping. I certainly hadn’t researched public transit enough. L.A. had decent public transit, but it wasn’t like New York where I was only a block or two away from a bus or subway line at any given moment. In L.A., you were either on the bus route specifically, or you were desperate for a car. And I was desperate for a car.

The cost of getting to and from work, while not exactly exorbitant, was beginning to cut into my budget in a way I had not accommodated for.

None of these were actually horrible problems. I was simply not prepared for the reality of L.A. The sun was always out, the weather was beautifully warm, I never needed a jacket, and there were a big ocean and a beach out there somewhere. Only, I hadn’t given myself adequate time to do or see any of these things.

What I had managed to see of L.A., I hated to admit, seemed like the worst of it. Every morning, the Uber I took to work got stuck in traffic, and the traffic never seemed to let up. It was constant in the morning and constant in the evening when I got off work.

And the hospital?

That was another mistake. In my eagerness to run away from the mess I had made with Marcus—and the mess that I made with Kevin—I should have come and visited first. The hospital was not warm and welcoming. It was an older building without any of the modern upgrades I had become so used to at Manhattan Memorial.

I appreciated that during my first week I wasn’t thrown straight into the deep end of the trauma department. Instead, I was given an orientation to how they ran things at St. Cedars. But I was a trauma surgeon, and after two weeks, they still had me trailing behind a hospitalist, taking notes as if I were an intern or only just now starting my residency.

“Dr. Chen, do you have a comment?”

I looked up at Dr. Burnett. “Pardon?”

“You had a comment?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Are you sure? It sounded as if you had thoughts regarding the patient’s treatment.”

I smiled at the patient and shook my head again. “No, not at all.”

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