Page 5 of Sinful in Scrubs

The kids thought it was perfectly horrible.

I stepped into the kitchen, and the smells of garlic and oregano caught my attention. There were no pots on the stove. In comparison to the mess of the dining room, the kitchen was fully moved into and spotless. The dishes that had been in the sink this morning were gone.

I let out a long, heavy breath and shook my head. Lily was her mother’s daughter. She might be overly dramatic, but she always came through. Even when she didn’t want me to think she had.

I opened the oven. It was on. Three cardboard pizza boxes were tucked in, keeping warm. Lily had made sure dinner was taken care of. She just hadn’t cooked it. And pizza to celebrate my first day on the job was perfect.

I grabbed a beer and a soda from the fridge. Once back in the den, I shoved Lily into a sitting position and sat so when she fell back, she would be leaning against me. I handed her the can of soda.

“Pizza, huh? And I thought you said it wasn’t your responsibility to be aware of things like dinner.”

She took a sip. “It’s what Mom would have done.”

“It’s exactly what Mom would have done. Including acting like there wasn’t anything for dinner.”

Lily snuggled in against my shoulder. I didn’t get enough of this. She had been pulling away, into herself for the past few years. It made my heart happy to have this quiet moment with her. I loved my kids more than they could possibly know. I really hoped she understood how precious moments like this were.

3

EMMA

Isaw Sarah sitting in the atrium at a table in front of her laptop as I headed to the cafeteria for a break. I liked to spend my office hours in the atrium too. It was a wide-open space with soaring ceilings and some life-sized trees—the closest thing to the great outdoors that I got to experience during the work week.

I think the atrium was designed to help calm and soothe the patients and their families. The cold, harsh, brutalistic boxes of modern medicine were on the way out. Comforting, warm, welcoming hospital environments were a continuing trend. Personally, I preferred the park-like atmosphere over the harsh plastic and metal waiting rooms from when I was a student and resident.

Hospitals were big, scary places. The average person’s blood pressure went up simply by walking through the front doors. It didn’t matter if they were a patient or a visitor. I liked the trees. I didn’t get out in the fresh air often enough, not that there was fresh air in the city. But the atrium made me feel as if I were outside in perfect weather.

I entered the cafeteria and, after spotting Sarah, I decided to grab a snack instead of the coffee I had originally planned for. The hospital had recently finished a remodel of the central cafeteria, providing fresher meals with international flavor stations. One could still get a pasty white bread and egg salad sandwich wrapped in plastic from the giant refrigerator section, but they now also had fresh sushi.

I paused to watch the sushi chefs roll their offerings and selected a small plastic tray with a spicy tuna roll and crunchy top. I grabbed two sets of chop sticks and two large Diet Cokes from the glassed-in refrigerators and paid before heading back out to the atrium.

“You’re interrupting,” Sarah said as I stepped up to the table she was working at.

I slid the sushi across the table. It stopped short of her laptop. “But I come bearing offerings.”

I placed a bottle of Diet Coke next to her. She glanced at the cold bottle, condensation starting to bead on the surface, before she looked up at me.

“You brought snacks?”

“I did,” I said gleefully as I took a chair.

I unwrapped the cheap bamboo chopsticks while Sarah popped open the lid to the sushi tray. She made nom-nom sounds as she extricated a slice of spicy tuna roll with her fingertips before popping it into her mouth. She closed her eyes, and I knew I was her hero of the moment.

I handed her one pair of chopsticks while reaching for a piece of sushi with mine. I wasn’t as enamored with it as she was, but it hit the spot. It felt like a decadent snack in the middle of the afternoon instead of the healthy and wholesome bite of food that it was.

“Reports?” I asked, nodding to her laptop.

“Too many to count,” she said. “There’s never enough hours in the day to get everything we need done. Administration wants reports twice a day, yet they don’t provide enough staff so we can take adequate office time to write up our notes. Forget about having enough time to make rounds and see all of your patients.”

Dr. Sarah Martinez was one of the resident hospitalists. After I patched up my patients, I handed them over to her wonderful staff of nurses and doctors. While I would always check on a patient at least once after surgery, twice if I had time, Sarah and her staff were the physicians on hand whenever a patient needed to speak with a doctor. She spent most of her day walking from floor to floor checking in on each patient at least once a day.

“Tell me about it,” I moaned.

“I heard there’s a new doctor in your department,” she said in a sing-song voice.

I narrowed my eyes at her. I knew that voice. That voice meant,You need to go out, enjoy yourself, and get laid.

“Uh-huh,” I said dubiously.

---