Chapter 9
“Let me get this straight,” he gave the miscreants his most severe expression. “We had a problem in the OR over a basketball game.”
His particular targets weren’t any of his anesthesia residents but one of the third-year general surgery residents and an advanced practice lady paramedic from Rescue Alpha.
To be clear, Rescue Alpha was made of only female former firefighters for reasons that predated Roan’s tenure.
They rotated in as short procedure CRNAs and surgical techs/extenders.
According to the information he had received, they trained extensively to perform emergency c-sections, amputations, chest tubes, and escharotomies.
Roan was involved because the argument had occurred while she was acting as the CRNA.
“Yes, sir,” the woman, nearly six feet tall and in her earlier thirties, didn’t waste words as the male resident simultaneously said, “No.”
“So, Ms.—” he checked her badge, “Amber. According to the circulating staff, there was a conversation occurring about the city basketball tournament, and it devolved into—” He quoted the way it had been documented, “—casting aspersions about his heritage and his hobbies,” he said, watching her face, which remained blank.
“Sir,” she began.
Unexpectedly, the resident, who was two inches shorter than paramedic Amber, said, “It’s my fault. I'm the one who started the fight. Though she deserved it.”
Roan faced the resident, third-year Dr. Salke, whom he’d occasionally seen in surgery. “Your fault, but she deserved it?”
“No,” the resident said as the paramedic said, “Yes.”
Salke moved to block her partially from Roan’s irritation by griping, “The firefighter team Guns and Hoses are playing the Cardiac Bypasses tonight in the championship. She said her team was going to win and that mine had a stupid name.”
He’d worked late last night to get off early today to spend time with Clarissa post-call, and they were going to put his schedule in jeopardy over an argument over the names of teams in the city basketball tournament?
Amber must have felt the same because she rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say that.”
Roan’d bet she hadn’t said anything remotely that tame.
Some of the female paramedics gave a lot more military vibes than he had anticipated.
If it had been in the Navy, the note would have been using quotes verbatim.
He’d guess it would have read, “She called him a motherfucker and told him to go suture his dick in a tree.”
Salke wasn’t deterred. “She used relatively strong language. I, however, may have escalated the situation.”
“No, you didn't.” She tried to maneuver past him without success.
Salke was going to bat for her while digging his hole deeper. “Yes, I may have implied that her name, Amber Raine, could be exhibiting the wonders of her body.”
“You told her you wanted her to be an anatomy specimen and wear her head as a hat?” Roan’s dry observation made the nurses chuckle, as he could only pray he wasn’t about to have a sexual harassment suit on his hands.
There was no way HE was glancing down to determine the type of physique Salke would have commented on.
“Wrong genre. Less of Saw and more Eyes Wide Shut,” Salke admitted.
“He told her she had a great stripper name!” a nurse called out from the back of the crowd.
Even better. Roan rubbed his temples. “Salke! Is this true?”
“From a certain point of view.” Salke was bright red.
“Ignore him. I’m the one at fault. I always make jokes that I could either swing on the fire pole or the stage with my name. He called my bluff.” Amber shrugged.
“No more. No calling bluffs. No pole dancing, stripper name, or sexual humor is allowed in the OR.” He gestured with his clipboard at the two offenders.
“Both of you are pulled off service until further notice. I’ll talk to your superiors about when you’re allowed back in.
In the meantime, work it out—which means, Salke, you’re more at fault than her. ”
The two miscreants fled in opposite directions, and the crowd quickly dissipated to gossip about the debacle out of his hearing.
His first order of business was to locate Dr. Kandal.
Per his morning schedule, she was in a procedure in OR 12 for another hour.
She didn’t have any procedures scheduled for an hour after that, while he, Drew, and the anesthesia residents were supposed to meet in the shared surgery/anesthesia conference room for cranial facial complex case review.
It would be best if Kandal’s case didn’t run over.
They were past the halfway point of the month, and he’d been getting into a rhythm of how to maximize his time with Clarissa.
On her call night, he’d take on extra cases to keep his skills up to date and do extra administrative paperwork.
It gave him an extra cushion to make their evenings together more special.
To his surprise, Kandal came out thirty minutes early, leaving her resident to close.
She glanced at his face and immediately asked what the hell happened in Spanish. “Vale. ?Qué demonios ha pasado?”
He unleashed an entire rant in Spanish before switching to English. “I temporarily suspended them. “This was so much easier in the Navy, when everyone had to just follow orders. Very clear.”
Kandal laughed. “You're missing half the fun.”
“Explain to me how I ended up with these firefighter paramedics? I’ve never seen any program like this before. Is this a one-off thing since they don’t have another class of trainees?” he complained. No one had told him when he applied for the job he’d also have to handle this.
“This the first year of the pilot Rescue Alpha program. They’re working out the kinks for next year’s class.
All the ladies committed to this year as paramedics and have to do a certain number of ER, OB, and surgery shifts,” Kandal told him.
“They have their uses, like coming to the rescue during the Veteran’s Day Blizzard. ”
He hadn’t noticed much about their involvement back in November, since anesthesia hadn’t needed them in the OR that day. Roan had been running an emergency case in OB at the time, which had ultimately led him back to Clarissa.
Didn’t mean these paramedics were a match made in heaven for anesthesia. As evidenced by Paramedic Amber, being the background voice of reason as anesthesia wasn’t one of her strengths. “Some of them would probably be better off as firefighters.”
“I agree, and it’s another excellent reason you don’t have to train new ones till next year.
No one is sure how much turnover there will be.
Maybe the next set will be less prone to this type of verbal diarrhea.
” She tilted her head at him. “About the suspensions. You are within your rights to punish them both. However, considering that this is more of a squabble that occurred between the equivalent of a fourth-year med student and an intern, would you have suspended them for the same behavior?”
She had a point, particularly for the paramedic. “Then I was too hard on them? The punishment for the resident is technically yours, and he wasn’t a newbie. Rather unprofessional for him.”
“Are you spending too much time behind a desk?” She reminded him that she was the head of the division of general surgery and maintained a busy surgery schedule. “Have you not attended surgeries with Glazier and Steadman?”
Once again, she had her finger on the pulse of the MetroGen OR. Alex Casserty wasn’t alone in his belief that Glazier was Ortho-Satan. He and Steadman had no qualms about rather unprofessionally shredding anyone who earned their ire. “When compared to those shining examples, these two are good?”
“Good is kind of a stretch,” Kandal conceded before continuing.
“Communication problems are kind of a given. Salke’s been in school his whole life and is a tiny bit of a nerd.
He’s got a degree in aeronautical engineering.
She was a firefighter who used to be surrounded by roughneck guys.
Their ability to interact is more like a jar of jam having a conversation with a building.
Technically, they’re both nouns that contain glass, but that might be all they have in common. ”
“I don't even know how to respond to that.” He stretched his arms across his chest, loosening up the tightness. “You recommend I lighten up the punishment. Give them another chance?”
“Let them work it out on their own. They’re adults,” Kandal said.
As Salke was more her charge than his, she did get a bigger say in the discipline. They shared the paramedic, and it would be ridiculous to punish her more than the surgeon. “Fine. Give them another chance after he apologizes to her. I’ll find them after my ENT conference.”
“You do that.” Kandal wandered off in a different direction, so Roan headed over to prepare for the conference. In addition to the surgery teams, Crozier and a few of the residents would be attending for their education and possible future participation.
Roan entered the conference room to find the lights were off, so he flicked them on. “What’s going on here?” Paramedic Raine appeared to be strangling Dr. Salke on the long table.
Before he could act, Dr. Salke waved his hands and yelled, “Captain, stop! It's not what you think.”
Based on the fact that Dr. Salke had a bite mark on his neck and lipstick across his face, Roan determined Salke wasn’t in danger. “This is how you work things out?”
Raine released him and smirked, arms crossed over her chest. Salke pointed to two cups of coffee sitting on the table. “I bought her ‘I’m sorry’ coffee as a peace offering.”
“And you're buying me dinner. Again.” She stood up, nonchalantly walked past the table, and grabbed both coffees. “Bye, boyfriend. I win.”
Her boyfriend's lovelorn eyes followed the movement of her hips out the door. “Okay, suspend me as long as you want. Worth it.”
“I hope it was,” Roan growled at him. “You do realize that you’re not coming out on top in this? In the OR or getting her to respect your opinion.”
“Well, I still think the Cardiac Bypasses are going to win. Right now, she thinks I conceded the field.” Paramedic kisses must have resuscitated his backbone.
“Get out of my sight. I’ll discuss this with Kandal,” Roan seethed, and for the second time in an hour, Salke made tracks. “If she ever lets you back in the OR, you will NOT assign yourself to any surgery with Paramedic Raine in attendance.”
It should have been no surprise Kandal was waiting outside with the largest shit-eating grin and one of the coffees Raine had taken with her. “Guess they worked it out on their own.”
“Word travels at light-speed on this floor. The CIA doesn’t have this many sources,” he grumbled.
She took a swallow of the coffee. “Ah, I have two advantages you don’t. One, my nurses report everything back to me in almost real time. Second, make out sessions on that table is a surgery romance tradition.”
“Couldn’t you have warned me about the table or that the two of them were dating?” The sheer number of dalliances going on in the hospital was absurd. The Navy didn’t tolerate behavior like this.
Then again, they had a bit of an easier time, with a good eighty percent of the staff being male. Besides, he couldn’t exactly complain about hospital dating if he was dating Clarissa.
“Why? This is more fun. They aren't in the same department. Lucky them, they don't even have to fill out a form.” Kandal kept drinking the coffee unperturbed.
He hesitated, wondering if she had been one of the members of the physicians’ council that had approved his relationship with Clarissa. It was possible, but he’d have expected her to play that card already.
“I hate you,” he told her without venom.
“You love me. Unless the hospital is swallowed by the earth, the MetroGen gossip machine with have plenty of sneaky medical romance for all eternity to feed the beast.”
This woman was infuriatingly correct, since MetroGen could have been the physical manifestation of Dante’s second circle of hell for lust. An unrelenting whirlwind.
There were more than enough relationships to keep the building airborne.
Best he not add to that storm, especially if he was dating Clarissa and fake dating Willow, who already had a boyfriend.
Roan reached out a hand for her coffee. “Who do you think's going to win?”
“Paramedic Amber, duh.”
“I meant the game. I hear there’s a betting pool.” Roan did enjoy flipping it back on her as he tried the coffee. Not his level of black but potentially passable.
“Oh, the Cardiac Bypasses. Absolutely,” she answered without hesitation.
“Really. You’re that sure?” He wouldn’t be shocked if she had inside information he didn’t. It would probably be more useful to Drew Crozier, who had turned out to be a big basketball fan to the point that he was running a March-Madness-esque bracket.
“Yep. They’ve been holding back their secret weapon,” she confided and checked her watch. “He should be closing any minute.”
Roan skimmed the schedule and settled on the surgery she’d left. “Judah Weiss?”
He was a quieter, short, thoroughly Jewish third-year surgery resident who wore glasses. Not exactly a basketball dynamo, though.
“Possibly. You’re learning.” She took the coffee back and made no move to leave.
“And you’re waiting to attend the craniofacial conference,” he realized. According to his notes, they were discussing the anesthesia plan for a resection of an oral tumor that would require a highly delicate and complex dance in the OR.
“Yes. Didn’t you read the list of attendees?” Kandal winked.
“ENT, Plastics, Neurosurgery.” That meant teams led by Stella Magi, Daniel Steadman, and Alex Casserty in one room. He stole the coffee again and made a wry comment. “Should we invite Ortho too? I take it you’re the buffer in case it gets tense?”
“Don’t take me for a magician. It’ll be tense. Preventing bloodshed is my main goal.” Kandal pointed at the three different groups forming further down the hallways in their respective specialties. “Especially since I promise you, and my nurses, that NO ONE knows who the baby daddy is.”
“You know what? I’m going to my office to get coffee for my team, because if we have to put up with your manufactured drama, we deserve our own cups.” Roan left her there, vowing to do his best to never let himself or Clarissa be the main event for any OR drama.