Page 7 of Sinful in Scrubs

The truth was, I’d already spent more time than I should have thinking about Dr. Marcus Walker. Between the tattoo and the way his salt-and-pepper hair complemented his sharp jawline, he was… distracting.

But I wasn’t about to admit that to Sarah. Not yet.

I had precious little free time during my work week. My apartment, selected specifically for its location in proximity to Manhattan Memorial, was a brisk walk of several blocks.

Every day, I would walk to work, and every night, I would bemoan the walk home on sore feet.

Typically, I would stop into a bodega or a pizza-by-the-slice window for a less-than-healthy dinner that I would eat while sitting in a semi-vegetative state in front of a mindless television program. I’d take a shower and go to bed, only to repeat the process the next day.

But last night, that vegetative state was interrupted. Visions of Marcus’s tribal tattoo kept invading my thoughts during a time when I very specifically didn’t want any.

Turning off for mindless activities was vital for my rest and recuperation. I needed to be able to disengage from work, even if for a few meager hours, or this lifestyle I was living would overwhelm me and swallow me whole.

As we finished our impromptu snack, my phone buzzed on the table. I glanced at the screen and saw a text from the charge nurse.

New patient in trauma, ETA ten minutes.

“Duty calls,” I said, standing and grabbing my trash.

Sarah nodded. “Same here. Let’s grab margaritas Friday night. We’ll talk more about Dr. Silver Fox then.”

I rolled my eyes but couldn’t hide the small smile tugging at the corners of my lips. “We’ll see.”

As I walked back toward the trauma department, I tried to push thoughts of Marcus out of my mind. I had a job to do, patients to focus on, and no time for distractions.

4

MARCUS

The charge nurse—I glanced at her ID quickly,Hernandez—hovered as I flipped through the chart in my hand.

“I told you, we follow standard documentation protocols,” she said.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years of working in different hospitals, it’s that there is no such thing as a standardized protocol. Hell, even field hospitals under different commands have variations in procedures.”

“We’ve got incoming!” one of the nurses at the station said as she hung up the phone.

I handed the chart back to Nurse Hernandez. “What have we got?” I asked.

“Triage will be updated when the EMTs arrive.”

“What, exactly, do you mean?”

“Triage will debrief us, usually on an incoming case,” Hernandez started to explain, not the nurse who had cut me off. “If we’ve got incoming, the emergency crews give us as much information as they’re going to bother to give us. And the intake nurse waits until the entire team is gathered so she only has to explain things once.”

“Oh.” I shrugged. That made perfect sense. Otherwise, she was constantly having to repeat herself, not something that was useful in an emergency situation.

“You make it sound like we don’t necessarily know what’s coming,” I said.

Nurse Hernandez shrugged. “Sometimes, we don’t. Sometimes, they just let us know who’s coming in and what shape they’re in. Sometimes, they’re able to give us all kinds of details. A lot depends on the condition of the patient and the crew on the ambulance. Let’s be honest, if they’re busy working on that patient, they don’t have time to tell us much more than approximate age, if they even know that, and what kind of trauma we’re expecting to come in. If it’s an easy case, we’ll get the full rundown.”

I nodded. It was not unlike working in a field hospital where communications tended to be minimal, and the emergency medical team was often too busy securing the patient for transport.

I tagged along behind her like some puppy expecting a reward in the form of a treat or a pat on the head, like the new kid on the block, as if I had never had a job before. But I guess that was pretty much the case, seeing how this was technically my third day at this location. Instead of learning policies and procedures and the administration’s expectations of me on the first day, I had been thrust right into the deep end of the trauma pool—something I was slightly more familiar with.

Every organization wanted their staff to make reports, fill out forms, and document everything. Nobody wanted their documents completed the same way, which was what Nurse Hernandez was so condescendingly going over with me when the call came in.

“Okay, I’m here. What’s up?” Dr. Emma Chen jogged in and came to a halt.

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