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“Everything all right in here?” the woman asked. I quickly scanned her name tag. Dr. Elizabeth Castigan, MD.
“Um, yes. Just a little, um… vomit accident and I needed a new top,” I explained.
“Party too hard last night?” Mark asked. “You know you’re not supposed to come to work hungover.”
Mark laughed at his joke, but I was mortified. And the new doctor clearly wasn’t amused.
“I don’t come to work hungover,” I assured Dr. Castigan. “One of the kids threw up on me. He swallowed his medication wrong. It’s… it happens.”
“Likely story,” Mark chuckled. “Dr. Castigan, meet Zoe Laster. Zoe, Dr. Castigan is one of the new attending physicians here and you’re going to be working with her. So… good luck.”
Mark winked at me, still thinking we were in on some fun little joke, and left me alone with Dr. Castigan. She reached for my hand, but suddenly remembered mysituationand reconsidered.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I… I look forward to working with you, Dr. Castigan.”
“I won’t lie to you, Ms. Laster, I expect a lot from my nurses,” she said. “I won’t hold this first impression against you, of course. But know that I’m going to demand professionalism from you. At all times.”
“Of course.”
“I’ve spoken to several people about you and they have wonderful things to say about your compassion and your bedside manner.”
“That’s good. Thank—”
“But I also know that you’ve got a… areputation.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Social media is quite unforgiving,” she said.
“Oh.”
I swallowed hard. I wasn’t too active on social media anymore, but I’d had my Facebook account since college and it was easy to Google someone. Party Zoe was immortalized. Thanks, internet.
“I understand,” I told her.
“Good.”
She walked to the shelf and pulled down one of the boxes, easily finding a scrub top in a size large. She handed it to me and walked out of the supply room without saying another word.
After that disastrous encounter,I rushed to Blue Creek Elementary school as fast as I could, eating a still-partially-frozen burrito as I drove. I could only hope that I didn’t still smell like vomit. Despite my best efforts, I was still going to be ten minutes late for this emergency parent-teacher conference with my son’s teacher.
And it wasn’t helping that my phone was blowing up.
I saw who it was and rolled my eyes. Mark. Ever since my divorce, Mark, had decided that we should be each other’sperson. He was recently divorced too, after being married for close to a decade. I wasn’t sure if he was texting me because he was interested in me or because he had no one else to talk to. But, any way I sliced it, his texts were… a little much.
Mark: How many divorced people does it take to change a lightbulb?
Mark: One. And they can get it done in ten seconds because they don’t have a nagging spouse slowing them down.
I wasn’t amused, so I didn’t respond.
But, by the time I’d hit a red light and checked my phone, there was another message.
Mark: ???
Zoe: Very funny.
I added a few laugh-cry emojis to really seal the deal.
