5. Liam
CHAPTER 5
LIAM
I f Emma’s plan was to ignore me all during lunch, then she succeeded completely. I think she must have gone up to her room because she was nowhere to be found in the dining hall. Shame she missed out. The food was great.
But lunch is over far too soon, and despite really not wanting to, I have to go back to the training. At least we managed to escape story time earlier. That’s something.
I take my place in the conference room, just two minutes before we’re due to pick back up again. Emma slides into the room and slumps down beside me a few moments later. So we’re even now, I guess, for who showed up first.
“Good lunch?” I ask. She just grunts. I’ve hardly ever met anyone so unwilling to engage in conversation as she is.
Even if she’s angry with me, it still feels like she should at least make some effort to engage. I’m trying my best here, and she keeps sabotaging my efforts.
It doesn’t help that she’s gorgeous, either. It’s like she has no idea how stunning she is. Maybe she doesn’t know. Maybe no one’s ever told her, but they should have. Maybe that’s what is making her so grumpy. She doesn’t have anyone to be nice to her.
I would redouble my efforts, change tack and try my best to be sickeningly friendly, but we started on this course of action now. I can’t be the one to give it up first.
Bruno comes around to us, grinning. “Hello, you two,” he says, and I feel Emma stiffen beside me. “This morning, the banter was great, but please remember, we are trying to work together here. In fact, working together is going to be more important than ever this afternoon.”
“What do you mean?” Emma asks, her brow furrowing.
“I have here this envelope,” he says, holding it up with a flourish.
“What is this?” I ask, not in the mood for more of these silly games.
“Well, this morning went so well,” Bruno says, and I do my best to hide my disbelief, “that we’re going to be doing some more team building this afternoon.”
“Oh, goody,” I say. “That’s just going to be so much fun.”
Bruno hands us the envelope and then makes a quick exit.
I open the envelope and don’t hold back my groan when I read what’s written on the paper: Conflict resolution.
As I say the words, Emma’s face falls too.
“The task,” I say, reading off the page. “Together, you will discuss ways you might deal with the conflict you’re given and come up with a presentation for how you would deal with the situation. Remember, you’ll be ranked on creativity, efficiency of the solution, and how well you work together as a team. Remember too, that the rankings are only for fun. The most important thing is developing your skills as a communicator and medical practitioner.”
I flip the sheet around to point to the sentence at the end. There’s a smiley face, just in case we weren’t feeling patronized enough.
“What’s better than a smiley face?” Emma says, not smiling.
I suck a breath in through my teeth and continue. “Your scenario. You just received X-rays for a patient who has come in because of a broken arm. The break looks normal enough. However, you notice something else in the X-ray imaging that doesn’t seem to make any sense. Upon further examination, you find it’s a tumor. Come up with two conflicting ways to deal with the problem and tell the patient, then find a compromise between the two methods to present.” I fold the paper.
“Easy stuff,” I say before Emma can get a word in. “You don’t tell the patient right away.”
“Of course you tell the patient right away.” She glowers at me and then explains her reasoning. “You present the facts just as they are. You show them the imaging and tell them that you would be happy to run some more tests to try and confirm what it is that you’re seeing.”
“No,” I scoff. “That’s the worst way to do it. What you don’t want is to tell the patient and start getting them worried about the tumor. We don’t even know if that’s what it is.”
Emma folds her arms. “Don’t you think it’s better for the patient to be presented with all the facts? And to get their permission before running any further tests.”
“You’ve got all the stuff there, though,” I say. “You’ve had imaging done. Presumably, there’s blood work to look at if they’re in for an X-ray. It’s not like you just looked at them and you don’t have any resources.”
“Yeah,” she pushes. “But wouldn’t you want to know if doctors were doing something else with your body?”
“You make it sound so dramatic,” I say, then double down at the look she gives me. “I would want them to present something with certainty, not worry me about something that might not even be true.”
Emma purses her lips. I can tell it’s taking all her strength to not start yelling at me about why I’m wrong. She’s not going to change my mind, though.
“Okay,” I say. “So we disagree. There’s the conflict. That’s step one. Why don’t we just focus on making a compromise instead of arguing about this?”
She huffs. “Fine.”
I bite back the part of me that wants to say, But I’m still right. Instead, what I say is, “So, let’s break this down.”
We spend the next half hour laboriously writing down each of our plans and realizing that there’s very little middle ground between someone who wants to tell the patient everything and someone who doesn’t want to tell the patient anything.
As we bicker, a flush rises in her face, and it draws my attention back to her eyes. Her skin is olive smooth, and the more passionately she debates with me, the more fired up she gets and the more gorgeous she becomes. It’s not fair, really, to be fighting with such a beautiful woman.
Under any other circumstances, I would try to take her out for a drink. But I already tried that, and it didn’t end the way I might have wanted it to.
By the time Bruno comes around and tells us we should be wrapping up on our presentations, we still barely have a compromise. We’re the fourth group to go. Because we didn’t speak this morning, there’s no way we’ll be able to wiggle out of it this time.
The groups ahead of us give the most mind-numbingly boring talks it’s possible to give. They’re clearly not doctors who present papers very often, because they mumble into their notes and avoid looking at the crowd. Fortunately, I’m an excellent public speaker, so when it’s our turn to go, I grab our piece of paper, get to my feet, and smile winningly.
“Hello,” I say to everyone, charming them immediately. “So our scenario was one of disagreeing on what to tell a patient in the event of what could be bad news. I advocated for running more tests and finding facts before going to the patient, a method we ultimately used most of.”
“But,” interrupts Emma, “I advocated for patient transparency and trusting patients to have autonomy over their decisions.”
“Still,” I say. “We decided ultimately that this autonomy—” I glare at her, interrupting myself because I can see she wants to cut in—“was best exercised when in possession of all the facts.”
“We also,” she continues, “wanted to avoid practicing unethically. So we decided that, though more tests were necessary, it was best to ask the patient before doing them in order that we could give the patient the very best care possible.”
I open my mouth to say more, but before our presentation can descend into arguing again, Bruno smiles. “Thank you very much for that,” he says in that most diplomatic of voices. “An interesting solution presented by you both.”
“But we’re not done,” I say.
“Three minutes per team. That’s the rule.”
I frown. I don’t remember him stating that as a rule. But Emma is already leaving the stage, making me scramble after her.
The presentation over, we both slump back down in our seats. “Thanks for ruining that,” I hiss.
“Me ruining it? You went completely off script!” she hisses back.
She leans in close to me as we speak, close enough that I catch the scent of her perfume. Again, it’s that lovely floral smell, one that makes me feel like I’m in a garden.
The rest of the presentations are beyond dry, full of people who are soft, gentle, and good and act like being a doctor is some God-given duty rather than something they have to work hard to succeed at. I never like those types. They never seem to understand why I work so much.
Once the final group finishes, I sigh in relief. At least this day is over. Only three more to go.
Bruno takes his sweet time uploading the leaderboard and even longer getting the projector to fire up. When the picture finally fades into view, everyone in the room leans forward to try and find their names.
“The bottom?” says Emma, incredulous. “We’re at the bottom?”
Lo and behold, she’s right. I’m sure the points system is entirely arbitrary, but we’re not just losing. We are behind by a significant margin.
“This is all your fault,” she snaps and gets up without another word so she can storm out of the room.
I throw my hands up and groan. Three more days.