Dr. Grump’s Surprise Baby (Bossy Bachelors #2)

1. Emily

CHAPTER 1

EMILY

O h my God, I can’t believe I’m going to be late on my first day!

Emily Swinton leaned out the window to look at the road ahead of her, as if catching sight of the obstacle might somehow help her to clear it. Her GPS was informing her that the traffic slow-down was due to a collision that hadn’t been cleared from the road, something Emily would ordinarily have felt a lot of empathy for. But did this have to be happening today ?

It was the first day of the next phase of her career. The first day of her internship under the great Dominic Berger, famed ER doctor and diagnostician.

This shouldn’t be happening. She had left her apartment early. She had planned this day down to the minute, and her plan should have gotten her to the hospital with plenty of time to spare.

Unfortunately, it seemed that a wrench had been thrown in the gears.

Up ahead, she saw an exit. Heart pounding, she grabbed her phone and tapped the button to request an alternate route to her destination.

Yes! She could take the exit! Getting off the highway would make her journey a bit longer, but it shaved seven minutes off of her projected arrival time, putting her at the hospital at exactly the time she was due to arrive. If she could get lucky with green lights and keep her speed at the max allowed by law, if she could find a decent parking spot… there might still be a chance.

Exactly thirteen minutes later, feeling nauseous with anxiety and nothing like the way she would have wanted to feel on her first day, Emily tore down the hall of Chicago Grace Hospital toward Dr. Berger and a group of interns in scrubs. She skidded to a halt at the back of the group, expecting a dirty look and possibly a reprisal later, hoping that her explanation about what had happened would be enough to win Dr. Berger’s forgiveness.

Even though she had expected it, the look he fixed her with froze her blood in her veins. “And who might you be?” he asked her.

“Emily,” she said. “Emily Swinton.”

“You’re late, Emily Swinton.”

“I know. I’m so sorry. There was a traffic?—”

He held up a hand. “I don’t have time for this,” he said. “And neither do our patients. Do you understand that this is an emergency room? People who come here are often in life-or-death situations. They don’t want to hear that their doctor was running late because she couldn’t find her mascara.”

“Hang on,” Emily objected. She would take the scolding for being late, but this wasn’t fair. “I wasn’t doing my makeup, Dr. Berger, I was?—”

“I really don’t want to hear it,” Dr. Berger said. “We’ve all waited long enough for you today, and I’d like to get on with our rounds, if that’s all right with you.”

Emily blushed. Even though he was being exceedingly unfair, he did have a point. This wasn’t the right time to get into an argument. Now she had made a second bad first impression.

We’re not off to a great start .

Even though it was the last thing in the world she wanted to do, she stuck to the back of the group as Dr. Berger went through his rounds. She had always imagined that she would be at the front today, showing active interest in everything he had to teach them, asking questions, maybe even engaging with patients. But when Dr. Berger presented a case he was having trouble diagnosing, another intern asked one of the questions Emily had about the patient’s symptoms, and her other question simply went unasked. She felt too intimidated, after the way the day had started, to speak up. And when there was an opportunity for one of the interns to do a blood draw, Emily didn’t put her hand up, even though she knew she could have handled the procedure with no problem.

She would allow herself one day only to hang back like this, she decided. Starting tomorrow, she was just going to have to get over the way this morning had made her feel. She was going to have to find a way to put this behind her. It was all right that Dr. Berger was upset with her today — she could understand that. But she wasn’t going to create a reputation for herself based on the fact that she had disappointed him one time, and she wasn’t going to fail to be the kind of doctor she knew she was capable of being just because of this bad start.

When rounds were over, Dr. Berger turned to the group. “Nurse Katie will show you to the locker room,” he said. “Get acclimated. Once you’ve done that, pick a nurse to shadow for the rest of the day. They all know to expect you. I’ll see you again tomorrow.”

A couple of the interns grumbled at the realization that they were going to be handed off to nurses instead of spending the whole day with Dr. Berger, but Emily didn’t mind. It made sense that he was too busy to give them much of his time.

But as they began to follow Nurse Katie away, Dr. Berger beckoned to her.

Swallowing her anxiety, Emily stopped in front of him.

“Come to my office before you go home this evening,” he said in a low voice.

Knowing that she wouldn’t be able to relax for the rest of the day, Emily nodded.

“Can you believe we’re going to be interning under Dominic Berger ?” the girl next to Emily enthused with a giggle. “It feels like working for a movie star.”

Emily laughed. She wouldn’t have put it in those terms, but she did understand what her new fellow intern was so excited about. Dr. Berger was the best in his field. Emily had read his papers in college and studied his diagnostic work for years. She hadn’t exactly written her thesis on him, but he had certainly come up in the notes. “I know what you mean,” she said. “I’m Emily Swinton, by the way.”

The girl smiled. “Sara Flaherty,” she said. “Are you new to Chicago, Emily?”

“I am. I actually came here hoping to work with Dr. Berger,” Emily admitted.

“I’m sure you’re not alone!” Sara said. “I might have done the same thing if I hadn’t grown up here. Have you met him before?”

“Never. But I’ve read so much of his work that I feel like I have.”

“I’m surprised you’re just an intern,” Sara said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well… I was up late last night studying the profile sheet of everyone we’re interning with,” Sara admitted. She blushed. “Now you must think I’m a huge nerd.”

“I think it’s good to be a huge nerd in this line of work,” Emily assured her. “That kind of attention to detail could save a patient’s life one day.”

Sara beamed.

“But what was in my profile that makes you surprised I’m an intern?” Emily asked.

“Well, it’s just that you’re a few years older than the rest of us,” Sara explained. “Everyone else in our group is twenty-five and twenty-six, but you’re twenty-nine.”

“Ancient, right?” Emily chuckled. “I started med school a few years late.”

“Oh, how come?” Sara asked keenly.

“Personal reasons. Family stuff.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Sara blushed. “I wasn’t trying to gossip. I overstepped, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t know it was personal,” Emily said. “You were being friendly. It’s all right. Tell me about you, though. What got you into medicine?”

Sara brightened and began to share her story as the two of them finished changing into their scrubs. More people began to trickle into the changing room to get ready as well. It didn’t seem as though any of the other interns had been quite as eager for this day as Emily and Sara had been, and Emily had a feeling that Sara might be her closest friend within this group. Even so, she was looking forward to getting to know the others as well, especially since she didn’t yet have a group of friends in Chicago.

Sara leaned close. “Are you all right, by the way? The way he called you out when you showed up late… I would have died. I’m so sorry.”

“It was embarrassing,” Emily agreed. “But it’s my own fault for being late.” She was glad that Sara, at least, didn’t seem to be judging her for that. “There was traffic,” she explained.

“I know,” Sara said. “I saw the report. I have an app that lets me know which roads around here are congested on any given day.”

“There’s an app for it?”

“Yep. I guess you wouldn’t know about that, since you’re not a Chicagoan.”

“I wish I had! I would have found a different route to work!”

“Well, I’ll give you the name of the app and you can download it,” Sara said. “Then you won’t have that problem again.”

“Thank you,” Emily sighed. “Today was a real mess. I don’t want to disappoint Dr. Berger.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll forget about it in no time,” Sara said. “It wasn’t your fault you were late!”

“No one else was,” Emily pointed out.

“Well, you’re not from around here,” Sara said. “It makes sense that you would struggle on your very first day of work in a new place. Surely Dr. Berger understands that.”

“I get the feeling he’s not in the business of being understanding about things,” Emily said. “Besides, he had a point. Patients can’t wait around just because I haven’t figured out traffic patterns yet. I have a responsibility to be here on time. Although I will say, he shouldn’t have made that crack about me looking for my mascara.”

“You aren’t even wearing mascara,” Sara said.

Emily laughed. “Good point,” she said. “Though I wouldn’t expect him to notice something like that.”

“If he’s going to comment on it, he should know what he’s talking about.”

Emily smiled. “I appreciate you,” she said. “But I can’t ignore the bottom line, either. Regardless of anything else that was going on around me, I just plain should have been here on time. That’s my responsibility. And I’m sure that’s what Dr. Berger is going to say when I talk to him about it.”

“You’re going to talk to him about it?”

“Yeah, he asked me to stop by his office before I go home.”

Sara groaned. “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes,” she said. “That sounds awful.”

“I wanted to be noticed on my first day, but definitely not for something like this,” Emily agreed.

“It could be worse,” Sara said. “One of the guys I went to med school with just messaged our group text — someone in his intern group spilled a tray of needles on his first day.”

“Yeah, that would be worse,” Emily agreed. “But I was hoping my first day would be a whole lot better .”

“It’s only one day,” Sara consoled her. “I’m sure things will get better from here. Hey, do you want to exchange phone numbers? I’d love it if we could stay in contact. Maybe I can give you traffic updates!”

Emily laughed. “You know, I wouldn’t have believed that it would be possible for me to laugh about this today,” she said. “I’m glad you took the time to talk to me, Sara.” She held out her hand for Sara’s phone and put in her contact information. “I’m glad we’re both assigned to Dr. Berger,” she said. “Having someone I get along with here is going to make things a whole lot easier.”

Sara punched in a quick text message so that Emily would have her contact information as well. “Good luck talking to him tonight,” she said sympathetically. “No matter what happens, you’ll get through it. And in a few weeks, this will all be a funny story you tell at parties.”

Emily hoped her new friend was right, but even so, she couldn’t help feeling a mounting anxiety as she made her way to Dr. Berger’s office a few hours later, knowing that she was going to have to face the music.