Amber must have felt the same because she rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say that.”
Roan’d bet she hadn’t said anything remotely that tame. Some of the female paramedics gave a lot more military vibes than he had anticipated. If it had been in the Navy, the note would have been using quotes verbatim. He’d guess it would have read, “She called him a motherfucker and told him to go suture his dick in a tree.”
Salke wasn’t deterred. “She used relatively strong language. I, however, may have escalated the situation.”
“No, you didn't.” She tried to maneuver past him without success.
Salke was going to bat for her while digging his hole deeper. “Yes, I may have implied that her name, Amber Raine, could be exhibiting the wonders of her body.”
“You told her you wanted her to be an anatomy specimen and wear her head as a hat?” Roan’s dry observation made the nurses chuckle, as he could only pray he wasn’t about to have a sexual harassment suit on his hands. There was no way HE was glancing down to determine the type of physique Salke would have commented on.
“Wrong genre. Less of Saw and more Eyes Wide Shut,” Salke admitted.
“He told her she had a great stripper name!” a nurse called out from the back of the crowd.
Even better. Roan rubbed his temples. “Salke! Is this true?”
“From a certain point of view.” Salke was bright red.
“Ignore him. I’m the one at fault. I always make jokes that I could either swing on the fire pole or the stage with my name. He called my bluff.” Amber shrugged.
“No more. No calling bluffs. No pole dancing, stripper name, or sexual humor is allowed in the OR.” He gestured with his clipboard at the two offenders. “Both of you are pulled off service until further notice. I’ll talk to your superiors about when you’re allowed back in. In the meantime, work it out—which means, Salke, you’re more at fault than her.”
The two miscreants fled in opposite directions, and the crowd quickly dissipated to gossip about the debacle out of his hearing.
His first order of business was to locate Dr. Kandal. Per his morning schedule, she was in a procedure in OR 12 for another hour. She didn’t have any procedures scheduled for an hour after that, while he, Drew, and the anesthesia residents were supposed to meet in the shared surgery/anesthesia conference room for cranial facial complex case review.
It would be best if Kandal’s case didn’t run over. They were past the halfway point of the month, and he’d been getting into a rhythm of how to maximize his time with Clarissa. On her call night, he’d take on extra cases to keep his skills up to date and do extra administrative paperwork. It gave him an extra cushion to make their evenings together more special.
To his surprise, Kandal came out thirty minutes early, leaving her resident to close.
She glanced at his face and immediately asked what the hell happened in Spanish. “Vale. ¿Qué demonios ha pasado?”
He unleashed an entire rant in Spanish before switching to English. “I temporarily suspended them. “This was so much easier in the Navy, when everyone had to just follow orders. Very clear.”
Kandal laughed. “You're missing half the fun.”
“Explain to me how I ended up with these firefighter paramedics? I’ve never seen any program like this before. Is this a one-off thing since they don’t have another class of trainees?” he complained. No one had told him when he applied for the job he’d also have to handle this.
“This the first year of the pilot Rescue Alpha program. They’re working out the kinks for next year’s class. All the ladies committed to this year as paramedics and have to do a certain number of ER, OB, and surgery shifts,” Kandal told him. “They have their uses, like coming to the rescue during the Veteran’s Day Blizzard.”
He hadn’t noticed much about their involvement back in November, since anesthesia hadn’t needed them in the OR that day. Roan had been running an emergency case in OB at the time, which had ultimately led him back to Clarissa.
Didn’t mean these paramedics were a match made in heaven for anesthesia. As evidenced by Paramedic Amber, being the background voice of reason as anesthesia wasn’t one of her strengths. “Some of them would probably be better off as firefighters.”
“I agree, and it’s another excellent reason you don’t have to train new ones till next year. No one is sure how much turnover there will be. Maybe the next set will be less prone to this type of verbal diarrhea.” She tilted her head at him. “About the suspensions. You are within your rights to punish them both. However, considering that this is more of a squabble that occurred between the equivalent of a fourth-year med student and an intern, would you have suspended them for the same behavior?”
She had a point, particularly for the paramedic. “Then I was too hard on them? The punishment for the resident is technically yours, and he wasn’t a newbie. Rather unprofessional for him.”
“Are you spending too much time behind a desk?” She reminded him that she was the head of the division of general surgery and maintained a busy surgery schedule. “Have you not attended surgeries with Glazier and Steadman?”
Once again, she had her finger on the pulse of the MetroGen OR. Alex Casserty wasn’t alone in his belief that Glazier was Ortho-Satan. He and Steadman had no qualms about rather unprofessionally shredding anyone who earned their ire. “When compared to those shining examples, these two are good?”
“Good is kind of a stretch,” Kandal conceded before continuing. “Communication problems are kind of a given. Salke’s been in school his whole life and is a tiny bit of a nerd. He’s got a degree in aeronautical engineering. She was a firefighter who used to be surrounded by roughneck guys. Their ability to interact is more like a jar of jam having a conversation with a building. Technically, they’re both nouns that contain glass, but that might be all they have in common.”
“I don't even know how to respond to that.” He stretched his arms across his chest, loosening up the tightness. “You recommend I lighten up the punishment. Give them another chance?”
“Let them work it out on their own. They’re adults,” Kandal said.
