3. Emma
3
EMMA
I saw Sarah sitting in the atrium at a table in front of her laptop as I headed to the cafeteria for a break. I liked to spend my office hours in the atrium too. It was a wide-open space with soaring ceilings and some life-sized trees—the closest thing to the great outdoors that I got to experience during the work week.
I think the atrium was designed to help calm and soothe the patients and their families. The cold, harsh, brutalistic boxes of modern medicine were on the way out. Comforting, warm, welcoming hospital environments were a continuing trend. Personally, I preferred the park-like atmosphere over the harsh plastic and metal waiting rooms from when I was a student and resident.
Hospitals were big, scary places. The average person’s blood pressure went up simply by walking through the front doors. It didn’t matter if they were a patient or a visitor. I liked the trees. I didn’t get out in the fresh air often enough, not that there was fresh air in the city. But the atrium made me feel as if I were outside in perfect weather.
I entered the cafeteria and, after spotting Sarah, I decided to grab a snack instead of the coffee I had originally planned for. The hospital had recently finished a remodel of the central cafeteria, providing fresher meals with international flavor stations. One could still get a pasty white bread and egg salad sandwich wrapped in plastic from the giant refrigerator section, but they now also had fresh sushi.
I paused to watch the sushi chefs roll their offerings and selected a small plastic tray with a spicy tuna roll and crunchy top. I grabbed two sets of chop sticks and two large Diet Cokes from the glassed-in refrigerators and paid before heading back out to the atrium.
“You’re interrupting,” Sarah said as I stepped up to the table she was working at.
I slid the sushi across the table. It stopped short of her laptop. “But I come bearing offerings.”
I placed a bottle of Diet Coke next to her. She glanced at the cold bottle, condensation starting to bead on the surface, before she looked up at me.
“You brought snacks?”
“I did,” I said gleefully as I took a chair.
I unwrapped the cheap bamboo chopsticks while Sarah popped open the lid to the sushi tray. She made nom-nom sounds as she extricated a slice of spicy tuna roll with her fingertips before popping it into her mouth. She closed her eyes, and I knew I was her hero of the moment.
I handed her one pair of chopsticks while reaching for a piece of sushi with mine. I wasn’t as enamored with it as she was, but it hit the spot. It felt like a decadent snack in the middle of the afternoon instead of the healthy and wholesome bite of food that it was.
“Reports?” I asked, nodding to her laptop.
“Too many to count,” she said. “There’s never enough hours in the day to get everything we need done. Administration wants reports twice a day, yet they don’t provide enough staff so we can take adequate office time to write up our notes. Forget about having enough time to make rounds and see all of your patients.”
Dr. Sarah Martinez was one of the resident hospitalists. After I patched up my patients, I handed them over to her wonderful staff of nurses and doctors. While I would always check on a patient at least once after surgery, twice if I had time, Sarah and her staff were the physicians on hand whenever a patient needed to speak with a doctor. She spent most of her day walking from floor to floor checking in on each patient at least once a day.
“Tell me about it,” I moaned.
“I heard there’s a new doctor in your department,” she said in a sing-song voice.
I narrowed my eyes at her. I knew that voice. That voice meant, You need to go out, enjoy yourself, and get laid.
“Uh-huh,” I said dubiously.
I trusted Sarah implicitly, except for when she used that voice. That voice meant she wanted to cause trouble—typically, the good kind, but for me, not herself.
“That was the voice you used when Kevin first started working at the hospital,” I pointed out. I very much did not trust anything that had any connection to Kevin. He was my ex for a reason.
“There’s a new, cute doctor,” she had said back then. She’d been right. Kevin was objectively attractive. He was also objectively a jerk.
“Yeah, we got a new guy. Started yesterday,” I said as I popped another piece of sushi into my mouth.
“Have you met him?”
I nodded.
“Well?” she asked, expecting more than just a nod.
I pointed at my mouth, deliberately overacting to emphasize that I had a mouthful of food and wasn’t going to talk. We both knew that was just a ploy. I frequently would talk with food in my mouth. It was disgusting and rude, but I still managed to do it if I had something to say. Right now, I didn’t want to say anything about Dr. Marcus Walker.
Sarah was relentless. “Well?” she pressed.
I swallowed the bite of sushi and shrugged. “Yeah, I met him.”
“And?”
“And what?” I asked, feigning ignorance.
“You know what. What’s he like?”
I sighed. “He seems fine. Professional. Smart.”
Sarah wasn’t buying it. “That’s it? You’re being cagey.”
I shook my head, trying to look nonchalant, but the image of Dr. Marcus Walker’s tattoo flashed in my mind. His tribal tattoo, peeking out from beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt, had no business invading my thoughts. Yet there it was.
Sarah pointed her chopsticks at me, her expression triumphant. “That look.”
“What look? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said quickly, hoping I wasn’t blushing. I was a professional in a high-stress medical field. I was too old and too jaded as a human to be blushing. But my physiology laughed in the face of logic. I pressed my palm against my cheek to see if it was warm.
“You know exactly what look I mean. The one that says you’ve already noticed he’s hot. Don’t worry, you’re not flushed.”
I groaned, reaching for my Diet Coke. “Fine. Yes, he’s objectively attractive. And yes, he’s older, with mostly gray hair at the temples. But that’s it.”
Sarah tilted her head. “Not gray. Silver. There’s a difference.”
“Whatever.”
She grinned knowingly. “How old do you think he is?”
I shrugged. “Mid to late forties, maybe?”
“Not too old, then.”
“For what?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her.
“For you.”
I choked on the sip of Diet Coke I was taking and coughed, glaring at her while she laughed.
“Don’t even go there,” I warned. “We’re colleagues. That’s it.”
Sarah raised her eyebrows but didn’t press further. She didn’t have to. I knew her well enough to know she wasn’t letting this go anytime soon.
The truth was, I’d already spent more time than I should have thinking about Dr. Marcus Walker. Between the tattoo and the way his salt-and-pepper hair complemented his sharp jawline, he was… distracting.
But I wasn’t about to admit that to Sarah. Not yet.
I had precious little free time during my work week. My apartment, selected specifically for its location in proximity to Manhattan Memorial, was a brisk walk of several blocks.
Every day, I would walk to work, and every night, I would bemoan the walk home on sore feet.
Typically, I would stop into a bodega or a pizza-by-the-slice window for a less-than-healthy dinner that I would eat while sitting in a semi-vegetative state in front of a mindless television program. I’d take a shower and go to bed, only to repeat the process the next day.
But last night, that vegetative state was interrupted. Visions of Marcus’s tribal tattoo kept invading my thoughts during a time when I very specifically didn’t want any.
Turning off for mindless activities was vital for my rest and recuperation. I needed to be able to disengage from work, even if for a few meager hours, or this lifestyle I was living would overwhelm me and swallow me whole.
As we finished our impromptu snack, my phone buzzed on the table. I glanced at the screen and saw a text from the charge nurse.
New patient in trauma, ETA ten minutes.
“Duty calls,” I said, standing and grabbing my trash.
Sarah nodded. “Same here. Let’s grab margaritas Friday night. We’ll talk more about Dr. Silver Fox then.”
I rolled my eyes but couldn’t hide the small smile tugging at the corners of my lips. “We’ll see.”
As I walked back toward the trauma department, I tried to push thoughts of Marcus out of my mind. I had a job to do, patients to focus on, and no time for distractions.