Page 41 of Grumpy Sunshine

He was smart as fuck, quick as a whip, and extremely competent.

As a person, though…

The next few hours were going to really suck.

Marsh gave me the rundown of everything I would need to know as I reviewed the chart.

I nodded.

Like I always did, I said, “I’ll go check in with the family, then meet you in the operating room.”

Dr.Marsh rolled his eyes.

Emergent cases, you never really got to see your patients before you were in there doing your thing.

But when they were alert, I always wanted to introduce myself to the family.

“We have about ten minutes or so.”Dr.Marsh looked frustrated then.“We’ve had a bad morning.Almost all of the operating rooms are in use but one, and they’re cleaning up from the previous surgery.Not fast enough, but they’re getting it done.”

You could only go so fast and it be considered clean and sterile.

In medical shows, they didn’t show you the amount of time that it took to get the room ready again.

Nor did they show you all the work that the surgical technicians had to go through beforehand to make sure the OR was ready for work.

Dr.Marsh likely figured the room magically appeared ready and didn’t think about how it got to that point.

Though, he would be the first to complain if something wasn’t the way he wanted it.

“Sure thing,” I said as I knocked on the patient’s open door.

Three sets of eyes looked up, and two of them looked freaked out.

I smiled at them and held out my hand, introducing myself.

“I’m Dr.Clayborne,” I said as I shook the mom’s hand first, then the dad’s.“I’ll be the anesthesiologist.”

“Ford Spurlock,” the man introduced himself.The woman looked too freaked out to get a coherent word out.“This is our son, Chevy.”

I grinned at that name.

“Nice name,” I said as I turned to the little boy who was lying in his hospital bed with a bunch of tubes and stickers on him.“How are you feeling?”

“Bad,” he rasped.

I squatted down until my ass met my calves and heard the chain of my wallet hit the floor.

The dog tags that I hadn’t taken off since I was eighteen and entering the military slid free of my shirt with the movement as well, catching his eyes.

“I’ll bet,” I said.“But when I get you put to sleep, you’ll feel really great.”

Not so great when you wake up…

Not that I’d tell him that.I didn’t want him too scared.

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” he grumbled.

I grinned.“Yeah?Well, you won’t have to stay that way for long.Only long enough for us to get that mad appendix out of your belly.”

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