3. Cole
3
COLE
I walked out of my last patient's room with a bit more weight on my shoulders than I'd have liked there to be. My tablet was tucked under my arm and my stomach was growling, but the only thing on my mind was the meeting I was supposed to have with the board later today to discuss the patient who was seeking some sort of compensation for my mistake. I had no way of knowing what they'd say, which put me on edge.
After dropping my tablet in my office, I headed down toward the cafeteria for some lunch. At least that much would distract me and help me keep my mind off whatever might happen. Not knowing the future was normally never a problem because I liked to live in the moment. But this time, fear of the unknown was goading me like an invisible monster under my bed.
The cafeteria was busy, so many familiar faces. I smiled and waved as I walked past a table where a few other doctors I knew were seated. Just a glance at their lunch plates made my stomach rumble again. The smell wasn’t as appetizing as the looks, but I knew the minute I bit into that pot roast, I'd be in heaven. My mouth was already watering.
The line wasn't too long, and I found myself standing there behind my friend Juan—also a surgeon here at Twin Peaks. He turned to smack my hand and bump my fist before giving me a shake. His unique handshake style always made me chuckle. It was like being friends with a teenager at times.
"Yo, man, how's it going?" Juan flashed me an award-winning smile, and I shrugged a shoulder as my eyes swept up to the menu board. Today's special was pot roast, carrots, and mashed potatoes with a roll and Jell-O for dessert. Yes, my mouth was watering.
"You know… I'm still alive, so that's something to be thankful for." The greeting was my familiar go-to phrase, and I typically meant it in a very positive way. Being thankful for things helped keep me grounded and looking at the positive. But today, it was heavy. If I really had caused that man's death, I didn't think I'd feel quite the same way.
"Hey, yeah… Breath in the lungs, blood in the veins… You got a lot to be thankful for." He winked at me and gripped my shoulder and squeezed it, then turned back to the counter and took a step forward.
"What'll it be, honey?" Marge, the cafeteria lady, with her hair net and white uniform, had thick, dark eyebrows that looked more like caterpillars, and I thought how ironic it was that they didn't have hairnets over them too.
"Oh, Miss Marjorie, I'll have the special, please. And can I get a black coffee for that too?" He wagged his eyebrows and smiled. Juan was on his best behavior with the lunch lady, just as if we were in high school again and she had the authority to take us by the ear and drag us to the principal. Even his manner of speaking changed when he spoke to her, or maybe he only used his laid-back jargon with me because we played basketball and golf on the weekends and I beat him at everything and trash talked the whole time.
"Keep your butter to yourself," she said, playfully scowling. She turned to walk away and put his order in, and Juan picked up a tray and set it on the line and moved forward to wait for his food, and I stepped up to the counter and turned to him.
"Butter to yourself?" I asked, and he snickered.
"I like to butter the ladies up so I can keep them smiling… You know, it keeps everyone in a better mood, and if I can make her mood better now, then when she gets to an old curmudgeon like you, maybe my happiness will rub off onto you." His added wink—a signature Juan move—had me rolling my eyes.
"You have no idea…" I sucked in a breath to fill my lungs, hoping to release some of the tension in my chest, and Marge returned with his plate of food. Juan loaded his goodies onto his tray and Marge turned to me, but before she could ask, I said, "I'll have what he's having, but hold the coffee. Thanks."
Five minutes later, we were meandering around the cafeteria looking for a few empty chairs. We lucked out and found a full empty table all the way at the back of the room closest to the vending machines. I was glad we wouldn't have to immediately share a space with anyone else. I was too stressed out to sit around and small talk with coworkers, and Juan knew enough to leave me alone if I was grumpy.
I sat down and opened my cutlery pack, taking the salt and pepper and sprinkling them over the food. My first bite was so good I groaned in pleasure, more so because I knew this food was going to take away the gnawing ache in the pit of my stomach. Hospital food was rarely any good, but however they made this, it was at least palatable.
"So, what gives? Usually, you're pretty upbeat. Somethin' botherin' you today?" Juan shoved a huge bite of food into his mouth and chewed, and I sighed and again lifted one shoulder in a shrug.
"I don't know." I sighed and glanced around. No one was close enough to hear us talking if I kept my voice at a normal level, and between the ovens and fans and the number of conversations going on in here to begin with, I figured no one would try eavesdropping. "I have a meeting with the board this afternoon."
Juan paused his chewing for a second and I saw the flash of recognition. It was every doctor's worst nightmare—a mistake on the job that might cost them their career. I didn't believe the mistake was mine, but I had to walk through this process anyway. If a patient sued the hospital, they wouldn't take it lying down. They'd get to the bottom of it and find out who did what, and that person would get the hammer.
"Ah…" His grunt of solidarity was about as much comfort as a wet blanket on a cold day, but I didn’t really think there was anything anyone could even say to help take this weight off. The board was on a witch hunt and I was the first target because it was my operating table.
"Yeah, so the patient didn't die, but he might sue anyway. I still think the mistake was clerical, but there isn't any way to prove that without seeing all of his records before and after, which were of course immediately sealed and moved off the servers." I wished I'd done a better job going over his case more thoroughly, but I hadn't. Not only was it an emergency situation, but his previous doctors hadn't forwarded the charts over to us until an hour before my first incision.
This was the perfect sort of case to push for uniform health organization. It made so much more sense to organize patient files in a singular central database the way other countries did it. Americans deserved to have all their data at their doctor's fingertips the instant they walked through any practice's front door. It would possibly have saved this entire situation.
"Well, all you can do is take your lumps, man. The truth is like a lion…" Juan was always saying things like that… Things I didn’t quite understand that he eventually spelled out for me. He looked me in the eye as I raised my eyebrows, and I didn't even have to ask him to explain. "You don't have to tell someone when a lion walks into the room. The truth will come out, and everyone will see it. So just sit tight and ride the waves."
Now that was an idiom I understood completely. Except, this wasn't a calm ocean and I wasn't on a surfboard. I was on the edge of what I believed would be a tempest, and looking into the storm wall had me shitting my pants.
"Thanks…" I looked down at my plate and felt a little less hungry after talking about that, but I continued to eat. Silence fell over the table, but the din of silverware clinking on plates and the chatter of happy voices surrounded us. My food was almost gone when I looked up at the vending machines not ten yards away and saw the shapely form of the gorgeous woman from the parking garage last week.
A smile crept over my face as I checked her out, and I wasn't shy about staring. Her back was to me. She wore green scrubs today, form fitting. They hugged her ass and showed a faint outline of her panties underneath, and I felt the same stirring inside my gut as I watched her bend to take her soda out of the collection tray.
Juan whistled under his breath and it caught my attention. I glanced at him to see him nodding and grinning. "Yes… I agree."
My chuckle vibrated my chest, loosening me up. It was the lightest I'd felt all day, and I wasn't sure how to feel about that. If Kate were here, would I have felt this way? And was it cheating even if she'd been gone this long? My heart felt like it might be, but my dick twitched and craved something I'd been lacking for too long.
"Yeah, but she's really young. Probably just fresh out of college." I cringed at Juan's comment and looked away.
Twenty years was a huge age difference, though I doubted she was genuinely straight out of college. Besides, age was just a number after twenty-one, right?
My eyes snuck back up to where she was just standing, but she was gone. I briefly felt a tinge of disappointment, but it vanished and turned to frustration when a board member walked up to get his soda. The yo-yo was exhausting, but at least the high point was refreshing. I wasn’t sure if Juan was right, but I didn't figure it mattered. There was no way she'd look my way twice. I was old and probably out of touch to her generation. And with the idea of a scandal looming, it was probably a good idea for me to not even try.