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London prayed she didn’t choke on the cookie as she swallowed. She cleared her throat.
“Yes, Carmen?”
Unlike the other doctors on the floor, London had been given permission to call Carmen by her first name. A right earned after London approached the hospital administration on the nurses’ behalf regarding understaffing and mandatory overtime. Even the attending physicians addressed her as Nurse Francis or Miss Francis.
What could she say? The nurses loved her.
“Have you heard anything about the meeting happening this morning?” Carmen asked. “Nurses weren’t invited. Even the ones who have been here for decades.”
“I heard the meeting is about Dr. Myers announcing his retirement,” Kia said. “Hisforcedretirement. His wife isdemandingit. And I think we all know why.”
Carmen plopped a hand on her hip. “What did I tell you about spreading rumors?”
“But is it a rumor if it’s true?” The intercom system buzzed, and a woman’s soft voice came through a speaker, asking for a nurse’s assistance. Kia pressed a button and replied, “I’ll be right there.”
As she pushed away from the desk, she said, “The redhead with the freckles that started in accounting last month? You haven’t seen her around, have you?” She held up her hands. “I’m just saying.”
“Go check on the patient,” Carmen said.
The minute Kia was out of earshot, London asked, “Any truth to Dr. Myers and the redhead?”
The charge nurse folded her arms over her ample chest. “Really, Dr. Kelley?”
Her clipped tone had London rushing to apologize, but before she could, Carmen said, “Of course Myers was slipping her the banana, but I doubt that’s what this meeting is about. Myers has been doing that kind of thing for years.” Carmen leaned in closer. “This is about money.”
London nodded. That slipping-the-banana reference had robbed her of speech.
“I’ll let you know if I hear anything else,” Carmen said in a terse whisper. “You’ll do the same?”
“Of course,” London said. “You know I’ve got the nurses’ back.”
Carmen gave her two solid pats on the shoulder before pivoting on her heel and marching back down the hallway.
London’s Apple Watch buzzed with a reminder that rounds would be starting in five minutes.
She rushed to her office, which was basically a broom closet that had been converted into an office. But she was one of only a few residents in this hospital who had been given their own space, so she didn’t complain.
She rummaged through the drawer where she kept her various props for making surgical rounds, retrieving a red clown nose; a lapel pin featuring Olaf, the talking snowman fromFrozen; and her Spider-Man stethoscope sleeve. She attached the pin to her lab coat and stuck the rubber nose in her pocket, then gave her desk a once-over, making sure she had everything she needed just in case she didn’t have a chance to come back to her office before this morning’s much-speculated-about meeting. It was set to begin at eleven, which meant she needed to get to her rounds if she wanted to attend.
First on the list was Aubrey Charles. London had received the call to assist on the five-year-old’s emergency appendectomy last night as she was driving home from Drew’s hotel.
Don’t think about him.
The one thing she did not need right now was a reminder of Drew Sullivan and the things she’d allowed him and his talented tongue to do to her yesterday. Or a reminder of the things she’d done to him with her own tongue.
Great, now she was thinking about it.
“Glad to see you could join us, Dr. Kelley,” London heard the moment she rounded the corner.
Dr. Nigel Malone, the attending on-call for today, stood just outside Aubrey Charles’s room. Two first-year residents stood on either side of him, along with one of the registered nurses, Mya Townsend.
“Good morning,” London said to the team as a whole. She nodded at the attending. “Dr. Malone.”
He returned her nod with a sharp one of his own.
She’d learned when it came to this particular attending physician, it was better to just let his attitude roll off her back. London was convinced Nigel Malone spent his evenings studying TV medical dramas so he could emulate the one doctor who was always a jerk. The man was straight out of central casting.
“You assisted in the surgery last night, so you should run point,” Malone said.
