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She blinked at him like he’d just spoken a foreign language. “Beau and I brought them in yesterday afternoon, and I thought I’d…” Go on, player, explain what the hell you’re thinking. “…swing by and see how they’re doing?”
“Well, aren’t you a sweetheart? I hate to say you made a trip for nothing, but we discharged them about an hour ago.”
A brick of disappointment landed in his gut. “Seriously?”
She nodded. “Look at it this way. You did a good job. Neither mommy nor baby suffered any complications from the nontraditional delivery location, so…welcome to modern healthcare.”
“Who came to pick them up?”
This time she shook her head. “Nobody. I was on break, so I didn’t handle the discharge, but she left on her own, as far as I know.”
The brick of disappointment turned into something else—something sharper, heavier, and infinitely more frustrating. His chance to check up on her slipped through his fingers. “Y’all let a girl walk out of here on her own with a newborn, only twenty-four hours after giving birth?”
“Hunter, she’s not a girl, and the need to keep her here ended once the attending signed off. You know how it works.”
Yeah, he did. Didn’t mean he had to like it, but giving the desk nurse abuse wouldn’t change things. “Sorry. I know you don’t make the policies.”
“Amen to that, baby, but I’m sorry you missed her.”
“Yeah.” He tapped the desk with his knuckles as a lackluster ‘thank you’ and backed away. “Me, too.”
On his way to the car, he decided to round out his shitty day by tackling something he’d been putting off. Twenty minutes later he strode through the hallway of the other place he shouldn’t be anywhere near on his day off—work—and knocked on the frame of his shift supervisor’s open door. “Hey, Ash, got a minute?”
He deliberately cornered Ashley Granger in the tiny office, because he knew she’d try to slip past him if he gave her any room to maneuver. She looked up from her computer and transferred her scowl from the screen to him. The furrow between her big wide-set eyes and stern press of her pouty lips did nothing to dim her resemblance to Lana Del Rey.
“Yes, unless you want to change your shift. Then no. I’ve just finalized the schedule. I don’t want to hear about how you’ve got a hot getaway planned with your flavor of the minute and need such-and-such days off.”
Unfair assumption. He never pulled that crap. Yes he dated—clearly more than Ashley approved of, as if it was any of her business. And yes, completing his entire undergrad degree around his work schedule had given rise to a few requests to change his schedule. Nobody else had seemed to care one way or the other, but Ashley always found reason to give him grief. She was maybe a year or two older than him and had only a couple years more experience under her tiny belt, but she treated him like a rookie. A slacker rookie, at that.
He refused to let her know it got to him. Instead, he offered her a grin. “I wouldn’t dare mess with your precious schedule.” Holding his smile in place, he stepped into the office and used his heel to push the door shut behind him. “But I’d like to figure out why you’re messing with mine.”
Her frown deepened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I asked you for a med school recommendation letter before Thanksgiving. The admissions office sent me a notice telling me they still haven’t received one. It’s January, Ash. What gives?”
Her frown tightened to a wince, and he knew the letter hadn’t slipped through the cracks somewhere on the school’s end. She hadn’t sent one.
“Your delay is hanging up my application, and if they don’t have the letter by the deadline, I’m out of the running. So”—he sat in the hard molded plastic chair across from her desk and leaned forward—“what do I need to do to coax the rec letter out of you?”
She picked up a pencil and drummed the eraser end on her desk for several long moments. Finally, she heaved in a breath. “I’m going to be brutally honest with you. I’ve started the letter I don’t know how many times, and the first part goes fine. I can state without reservation you possess good instincts, you’re calm under pressure, you diagnose and treat with confidence, and your bedside manner wins over the most difficult patients.”
Sounded decent to him. “Done deal. Slap a signature on the damn thing and send it off.”
“But then I come to the part where I’m supposed to say you’ll make a good doctor, and…” The pencil drumming picked up speed. “I find myself struggling to put that in writing.”
The sensation of being sucker-punched made it hard to speak. “Jesus, Ashley, what the fuck?”
She tossed the pencil down and slapped a palm on her desk. “I’m not happy I feel this way, okay? But the God’s honest truth is…I don’t know if you should be a doctor.”
The pencil rolled across the desk toward him. He rescued it before it reached the edge and fought a strong urge to break it in half. Maybe put his fist through the wall while he was at it. “What do you have against me?”
“As a paramedic? Absolutely nothing. You’re aces at swooping in, stabilizing the situation, and passing the patient off cleanly and efficiently. You can handle anything. You’re a real hero.”
He cringed at the little jab. “I have a desire to help people. That’s kind of a must-have in this field of work.”
She pointed at him. “Yeah, but you don’t know where to draw the line. You want to control every outcome, and worse, deep down, you think you can. You overpromise, and you don’t even know you’re doing it.”
His jaw felt tight enough to crack. He took a slow, deliberate breath before countering. “I project confidence. That’s part of the job. I have never overpromised.”
