4. Like An Equal
LIKE AN EQUAL
“Hi, Jaylen. I’m Dr. Gabriela Mills. This is Dr. Luca Brewer. But you can call me Dr. Gabriela.”
She didn’t want to introduce Luca that way. She didn’t know what he preferred and she wouldn’t step on toes and assume.
“Dr. Luca is good with me,” he said.
“How are you feeling, Jaylen?” The little girl had her eyes open, but Gabriela could see she was half awake while the cartoons were on. They were probably on all night to keep her company in the hospital.
Then she looked at the chart on her screen.
Ten-year-old with stomach flu and dehydration in the middle of the night.
Would have been released yesterday if she could have kept anything down, but no reason to do that when they could keep her comfy in a room here.
Didn’t look like the little girl had eaten yet either this morning.
“Better,” Jaylen said. “Is my mom coming?”
Gabriela looked at her watch. It was six. “Visiting hours start at eight. I’m sure she’ll be here by then, if not a few minutes earlier.”
They weren’t so strict that they wouldn’t let someone in to see their child if they showed up before eight.
“I miss her,” Jaylen said.
“I know, honey,” she said. “But you’ve got to get better before you go home. You don’t want to get sick again, do you?”
Jaylen’s head shook slowly. “What are you going to do to me?”
She put her computer on the table. “I’m just going to listen to your heart,” she said. “Nothing more. This is an easy visit.” She put the tips in her ears, then the bell to Jaylen’s chest, listened, then removed it. “Can you sit forward for me and breathe in when I tell you to?”
“Yes,” Jaylen said, moving forward.
She listened to the little girl’s lungs, then stepped back and returned the stethoscope around her neck.
“Everything sounds good. It says here you haven’t eaten anything though. Is that right?”
“I don’t want to throw up again or run to the bathroom.”
“I know,” she said, putting her hand on Jaylen’s arm. “But we can’t let you leave until we know you can keep food down. We gave you medicine. You’ve been drinking and haven’t thrown up all night, right?”
Jaylen nodded her head. “You know,” Luca said. “It’s really hard to do something when you’re afraid it’s going to hurt, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“But sometimes you have to try to know it’s going to be okay. Is there anything you really want to eat? I bet you’re hungry,” he said.
“I am.”
“We can get several things to try,” she said. “Did you see the menu? And you get to order just like takeout online. Pretty neat, huh?”
Gabriela reached for the menu that was hanging off the bed and handed it over.
“What’s that?” Jaylen was pointing at the black box.
“It’s a QR code. If you have a phone, and you put it in your camera window, then the menu will pop up on your screen to see specials for the day.” She pulled her phone out and showed the little girl how it worked. “See. For breakfast there is apple-stuffed French toast with whipped topping.”
“That sounds yummy to me,” Luca said. “I bet something like an apple pie.”
“I like apple pie,” Jaylen said.
“Well, if you want to order that, we can do it for you. They will bring it up soon and you can try it. Just a little at a time, see how it tastes and go from there. Maybe get some toast and juice with it just in case you want that instead?” she asked.
“Okay.”
“I’ll show you how to order it,” she said. She grabbed the remote hanging on the bed. “See. It’s set to your room and you go up here to where it says food and then you find breakfast, and scroll down for your choices.”
She placed the order for Jaylen, then left the room with Luca.
“That’s great,” he said. “I didn’t think there’d be that kind of technology here.”
“Oh, we’ve got a lot of technology because we can’t get staff. So anything we can do to replace a body, it’s being done. Horrible, I know.”
“It’s efficient,” he said.
They went to the other two rooms, checked on those patients, then returned to Jaylen’s after she’d eaten. Seeing that she looked better and kept it down, they met with Jaylen’s mother.
“If you don’t mind, we’ll head to the ER now. We’ve got about forty minutes before the office opens and you can meet some people there and look around.”
“Gabriela, what brings you to my ER in the morning?” her cousin Hudson asked when she entered a few minutes later. “You almost always avoid me.”
She laughed. “As we know, not always my favorite place to be, but I do my job. Hudson Mills, this is Luca Brewer, the new pediatrician. I’ve got the honor of showing him around for the day.”
“Nice to meet you,” Hudson said, reaching his hand forward. “I heard a rumor that you had an ER fellowship.”
“Not a rumor. Thought I’d end up there and was glad to have a backup plan.”
“It’s going to come in nice and handy on the weekends or nights,” Hudson said. “Now, when Gabriela or Dr. Raines is here, we just treat and then they take over. The initial setup is on me or another doctor in the ER.”
“But you can just let me come in,” Luca said. “I’m used to it. I spent a few years in an ER, but then transitioned to the office.”
“Is that where you want to be?” she asked. “Or would rather be?”
She was trying to find out as much as she could about her new colleague without drilling him for information.
Like why it appeared he’d just removed a wedding band from his finger.
Unless he didn’t like to wear it to work.
Lots of men or women did that. But the way those marks were on his finger, something said it might not have ever come off until recently.
Like today.
If she had to guess his age, she’d say late thirties, maybe early forties. She wasn’t good at guessing men’s ages, but he didn’t have much gray hair either.
All she knew was that he was very good looking with his short brown hair, cut close on the back and sides, a little longer on top.
A modern style to give him more youth than age.
He was nice. He was friendly. Outgoing.
The three kids they met with this morning weren’t scared by him, and their last patient had a nice conversation about football before she let Luca handle the exam.
There was no reason he couldn’t. She wasn’t teaching him anything. He had more experience and education, even training, than her.
The fact that he didn’t seem put off she was the one showing him the ropes went a long way with her.
Too many times in her life she’d been judged or dismissed for being a woman, coming from money, or just being laid back.
But not Luca.
He treated her like an equal.
She didn’t think it was forced either.
“I thought I’d like the ER,” he said. “I went for pediatrics, and then during my residency did the ER fellowship. Halfway through I knew it’d burn me out. But it gave me options. I filled in at my last job when needed.”
“You’ll be doing it more here,” Hudson said. “We are normally all hands on deck.”
“But in my case,” she said, “Hudson is doing the initial exam and setup unless it’s something mild. Like I would have handled Jaylen’s case if I were in the ER when she came in.”
“How’s she doing?” Hudson asked. “She came in at ten last night. We ended up putting her in a room to stay overnight. No reason to call you in or send her home to come back if she still was vomiting.”
“I appreciate it,” she said. She turned to Luca.
“That’s one good thing too. You will rarely get called in when you’re working, unless it’s a patient on the floor admitted with a problem.
Those eight hours you get, by the time you leave the hospital, go home and climb into bed and then get ready to come in the next day, I’m lucky if I get five, maybe five and a half hours of sleep. ”
“Normally by your last day, your hair is up in a messy bun and you’ve got a large cup of coffee in your hand as you walk around.”
“Shhh,” she said, shoving Hudson’s arm playfully. “Don’t say that in front of the new guy.”
“He’s bound to figure it out if he’s on your tail all day. How many cups of coffee have you had?”
“Just two. I’ll get another before I start. Come on, I’m not the only one with that bad habit, right? Whose side are you on, Luca? Team coffee, or team I’m going to muscle through it until I drop?”
Luca burst out laughing when she tried to mimic a dude’s voice.
“I’ll go with team coffee if you don’t talk like that again.”
“Wow, Gabriela. You might have met your match here,” Hudson said.
“Sweet. Someone who isn’t offended by my personality.”
“It takes a lot to offend me,” he said. “Do you know the things a teenage boy says to you when they are trying to act cool?”
“Oh yeah,” Hudson said. “Gabriela doesn’t get that.”
“No, I get the snotty teenage girls who act like they are an adult and I’m lame. I’m not lame. No one thinks I’m lame. I’m the cool one of the family.”
“We let her think that,” Hudson said. “And here comes my replacement, so I can get home and kiss my kids before I get some sleep. Nice to meet you. I’ll be seeing you soon, I’m sure.”
Luca nodded and the two of them left the floor while she showed him where some supplies were kept, the break room again, and then moved down the hall from that building to the pharmacy where she waved at her sister-in-law through the glass, then opened the door.
“Gabriela, what are you doing here?”
“I’m showing our new pediatrician around.” She snagged Luca’s arm and pulled him in. “Luca Brewer, this is my sister-in-law, Justine Mills. She’s married to my brother, Garrett. I only have one brother, which I’m sure you know.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, putting his hand out. “I’ve got a rough idea of who is who with those I’ll be dealing with. I didn’t know your family touched the pharmacy though.”
“I think our family has touched every single department in one form or another in history,” she said, laughing. “We spread like a disease.”
“Oh my God,” Justine said. “Get her and her warped sense of humor out of here.”
She laughed. “Sorry. This happens on day five when I don’t have enough caffeine yet.”
“Then let’s get you that coffee,” he said. “How many do you normally drink on day one of your rotation to day five?”
“I think it’s double by the end. I’ll only have one more this morning, then I’ll have soda with lunch. I know it’s horrible, but it’s just a change. Another coffee after dinner to get me through. Any vices you want to share?”
“No,” he said, smiling.
He had kind eyes.
And a wicked grin to match.
She shouldn’t be thinking of those things and could only blame it on her exhausted mind.
“No, you don’t have vices, or no, you don’t want to share?”
“I’ll let you guess,” he said.
“You’re going to be fun to have around,” she said. “Let’s go meet the rest of the office before our patients get here for the day.”