Page 41 of Sinful in Scrubs

My thoughts drifted in and out of focus on my task at hand, checking my emails. Mostly, I received general announcements for the hospital—small retirement parties being held in different departments, updates and daily specials on the menu in the cafeteria, alerts to testing of critical safety systems—nothing that necessarily pertained directly to me or my patients.

Until I came across one requiring my presence, requesting a presentation.

I shook my head, wondering what it was about. I didn’t recognize the email sender it came from. I clicked to expand the preview, thinking it might be something like an invitation to a speaking engagement, an invitation to make a presentation at a school, or a speaking engagement for a graduation.

As my eyes flowed over the words, my blood turned cold.

The review board was politely demanding my presence in the form of a request.

What the hell?

I continued to read.

‘We understand that you have developed an intake protocol that would involve third-party resources, and we have questions regarding…’

They had questions regarding how something like that would be implemented and the legality of making requests to the emergency services crews.

“I don’t know how it’s gonna work!” I yelled at my computer screen. I didn’t know how it was going to work either. Marcus and I hadn’t managed to coordinate even the briefest of meetings to discuss what aspects of an intake protocol we even wanted to address.

How the hell did the board find out about it?

I scrolled back up after reading the email again and looked at who sent it. It hadn’t come from the president of the board, and it hadn’t come from any of Manhattan Memorial’s representatives.

I returned to the body of the email and read over it again just to make sure I understood exactly what was being requested. They definitely wanted my presence by Thursday afternoon to lay out the details of the proposed protocol.

But we hadn’t proposed anything yet. I was confused. Had Marcus been talking to someone on the board about seeing a need for such a plan? And if he had, why were they requesting me to make a presentation? In all honesty, this was Marcus’s baby. He should be the one making the presentation.

I scrolled down to the bottom of the email to see if there was a signature, and I let out an irritated sigh. No signature. Just one initial—K—followed by a phone number.

Damn it. Kevin.

This was exactly his style. Somebody must have mentioned to him that we wanted to develop a protocol to streamline the intake of trauma patients. Instead of waiting to find out more information, he comes barreling in, demanding all the answers immediately.

He could have just sent me an email asking about it. Instead, he’s going to involve the entire board and make me look bad. Damn it. He was doing this on purpose. He had to be.

I took the email, hitForward, and directed it to Marcus.

‘I guess he is going to make some trouble for us professionally. I don’t think we have time for a meeting to hash this out. Can you send me any and all thoughts you may have had? I’ve got forty-eight hours to put together a presentation.’

I hitSendand then pulled up the department schedule.

I saw that my hours for the presentation were already blocked off, but in the moments immediately prior to that, I needed to be in the emergency room taking care of patients. That wasn’t going to work for me.

If I needed to do a presentation in forty-eight hours, I was going to need more time. I certainly couldn’t be on the floor for at least an hour beforehand. I would be too distracted and not properly prepared by the time I made it to the meeting.

Damn it, damn it, damn it.

This had Kevin’s manipulation all over it.

I continued to clear out my inbox, seething over Kevin’s audacity at putting me on the spot for a presentation on a protocol I was pretty certain he damn well knew had not been developed.

The next email came from Saint Cedars in L.A. I highlighted it before deleting it, expecting it to just be another one of their newsletter updates.

I had reached out to their trauma team years ago when Kevin and I had first broken up, and somehow, that brief email exchange had landed me on their mailing list, where I received updates once a week or so.

I briefly glanced at the subject line as my cursor hovered above the trash can icon, and just as I hitDelete, my brain registered what the subject line had been.

“What the hell? Wait, wait, no!” I yelled.

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