Page 37 of Her Braun
She'd never had anyone say anything like that to her.
Ever.
"Kay?"
She swallowed and felt her heart squeeze tight inside her chest.
Tell him no,she told herself. Begging.Tell him no.
But when she opened her mouth, she said the craziest thing.
"I'll think about it."
And then he left.
She spent the rest of the night regretting sending him away.
She really did need to get away from Center City so she could clear her head because just being around Gibson made her heart scream louder than her head and that was a dangerous thing. Her brain had always been smarter than her heart.
SEVEN
It was supposedto be a conference with a little bit of downtime. What Kay got with her cramped economy seat on Westward Airlines was a delay of an hour and a half on the tarmac in Center City to match her stale packet of chips and a watered-down ginger ale.
The actual conference had been wonderful. Along with the classes on Hospital Administration, she was able to fit in some sessions on the new and upcoming advances in Emergency Room medicine that almost bordered on science fiction. One of the presenters had enjoyed her interjection about the same tech appearing on an episode of Star Trek. No one else in the room had gotten the obscure reference, but then again, most of them were from a completely different generation of doctors where it was de rigueur to be barely seen and never heard in a conference setting.
Kay had always been the quiet type in school. Her parents made sure to drum into her the need to be observant and a good student. They wanted her to absorb information like a sponge but never make waves with her presence. Understatedwas an understatement. But during college, she noticed that if she remained quiet, then people passed right over her, including her professors. Speaking up was the only way that anyone paid any attention to her.
Oh, it wasn't like the squeaky wheel or anything like that. She didn't say things just to say them, but if she had a strong feeling on something, she'd open her mouth and say it, all the while cringing on the inside. By the time she got to medical school she was a person that her parents didn't even recognize.
On the rare occasions when they would fly in to see her for a few days, going out to restaurants was like entering the Twilight Zone. If she said a word to the waitstaff her mother would stare at her in horror and her dad would ignore her.
They didn't have to scold her for her to understand how disappointed they were in her outspoken ways.
After the first few times their visits were few and farther between.
At first, Kay had mourned the loss of their presence, but that was before she realized that she didn't have to be quiet and retiring when they were there and really, it was a pain to fit back into that mold when she wasn't that person anymore.
Then she joined the staff at Cole Medical in Center City and wondered if she'd ever really been that silent shadow or if that was just how she'd molded herself to make her parents happy.
That’s not to say that it was a hedonistic place of medical joy and laughter, but it was quite a bit easier on her true nature.
She felt like she could be herself.
On the clock.
As a doctor.
Not as a woman.
There were still a number of men on staff who were having trouble understanding the modern world where women had equal standing in the world, let alone medicine. At least the menshe dealt with on a normal basis were fairly easy to deal with and some even made her smile, like one of her friends, Doctor Roan Ashley. They’d worked long, exhausting hours together, and had seen all the highs and lows that you get in the Emergency Room of a large Metropolitan City.
It was different when she ventured out with the ER staff, they always seemed to defer to her as a superior because of the MD after her name.
Those times got under her skin.
She wanted a damn social life where she didn’t have to worry about internal politics. Fraternizing with fellow hospital personnel was always a mine field. There wasn’t an actual policy that prevented it, but everyone understood the gist of it.
It was one thing to speak out. That was encouraged.
