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

2. Emily

CHAPTER 2

EMILY

“ C ome in,” said a cold voice in response to Emily’s knock.

It made Emily feel as if she had swallowed a chunk of ice. She’d heart stories about Dr. Berger, of course. When you made a study of a man’s career the way she had, you couldn’t help but hear those stories. How he was constantly angry, never warm, wonderful in every way except for bedside manner. She had expected it, to a degree. But she hadn’t known that it would be like this.

She went into the office.

It was sparse. She would have imagined that he would have photos, or at least some sort of personalization to make the place his own, but he didn’t. He’d hung his degrees, framed, on the wall behind him, and he had a bookshelf full of diagnostic manuals, but that was it. Even the pens in his pen holder were all identical, as if he was allowing someone else to supply them. In fact, she was sure he was — they were all the sort of click-top pens that drug manufacturers gave away to hospital workers. He must have just grabbed a box of those.

For some reason, that surprised her more than anything else had so far. When she was established, she knew she would want to select pens of her own. Apparently he took no joy in little things like that.

He looked up at her. “So,” he said. “Dr. Swinton.”

She had the strangest impulse to say yes, sir. “Dr. Berger.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. Emily took a deep breath to steady herself. On top of everything else that made this difficult, he was very handsome. She hadn’t been prepared for that. The scowl on his face should have worked against his angular jaw, deep brown eyes, and the dark wavy hair that swooped across his forehead — but it didn’t. For some reason, it only made him more attractive to her.

“Sit down,” he said.

She sank into the chair opposite him and folded her hands in her lap. Above all, she couldn’t let him see how attracted to him she was. He already thought she was flaky, that she was the kind of woman who would be late on her first day because she was worrying about her makeup. It definitely wouldn’t help matters if he discovered she was someone who had a crush on her boss as well.

“Not off to a very good start,” he told her.

She nodded. The best thing to do here would be to take his criticism in stride, admit that she had been wrong, and hope they could move on. “I’m very sorry I was late,” she said. “There was a traffic accident. I know it’s no excuse — I should have left home earlier so I wouldn’t be impacted by traffic. I can assure you that I’ve learned my lesson.”

“You mean to say that I can expect you never to be late again?”

“That’s what I mean,” she agreed, feeling a twinge of anxiety in her chest. Now that she was making this promise, she really couldn’t be late ever again. She never intended to, of course, but accidents happened. What if she was overpromising?

“Well, I hope you’re right about that,” Dr. Berger said. “I’ll give you one more chance — I don’t want to write you off based on what happened today — but you have an uphill battle with me, Ms. Swinton.”

“I’m determined,” she told him, squaring her shoulders. “You’ll see, Dr. Berger. I’m a good bet. This has been my dream for a very long time.”

“A lot of people dream of careers in the medical field,” Dr. Berger said. “That doesn’t mean they’re right for it. This job takes a lot of skill and a lot of hard work, and not everyone has what it takes.”

“Well, I do have what it takes,” Emily said stubbornly.

He peered at her. “Why do you want to be a doctor?”

“What?”

“What’s your reason for being here? Everyone has a reason — something that makes them want to pursue this line of work. No one gets into it by accident. It’s too difficult for that. So tell me, what brings you here?”

She opened her mouth, thinking she was going to tell him — and then closed it.

The story was too personal, and given the way things had been going between the two of them, she simply didn’t feel ready to share it. Not yet.

“It’s what I’ve always pictured myself doing,” she said simply.

“If you’re in this for the money, you may as well quit now.”

“I’m not in it for the money.” She was stung. “And that’s the second hurtful assumption you’ve made about me, Dr. Berger. I know I made a mistake today, and I take accountability for that. But that doesn’t mean you can just assume I’m careless and not up to the job. I appreciate you holding me responsible for being late today, but I don’t want you to think I’m someone I’m not. I’m not just here because I want to make money. I want to help people. I would do this job even if it paid next to nothing.”

Dr. Berger studied her. Emily had the feeling he was trying to decide whether or not he believed her.

“You may as well know something right now,” he told her. “Something I told the rest of the group before you arrived.”

“All right.”

“With every new intake, at the end of the first three months, I cut half of my intern class,” he said. “The ones who make the cut go on training with me, but the others have to leave this hospital and find somewhere else to get their training. This is a prestigious place to intern, and I have a long list every year of candidates who want to study under me.”

“I know I was lucky to be chosen.” Emily felt uneasy. “You’re saying that in three months…”

“I’m saying that in three months, you might be finished here,” Dr. Berger said. “And I’m saying that if I were making the decision today, you would be one of the interns I cut.”

Emily felt sick. She had always known something like this was a possibility, of course — interns got cut. That was a reality of training for this career. But she hadn’t imagined that Dr. Berger would go into the year planning to cut half of his interns. She had assumed it would happen to those who didn’t keep up with their workload or proved not to have an aptitude for medicine. This seemed far too harsh.

But what could she do? She couldn’t tell Dr. Berger that she thought his policy was too harsh — she might as well say that she was worried she would be one of the interns who got cut, and that wasn’t what she needed to show him. She needed him to see that she was confident this wouldn’t affect her. She wanted him to feel that she believed that even if he cut all of the interns except one, she would be the one to survive.

On a good day, she might have genuinely felt like that. Today she was having a bit of trouble finding her way to those feelings.

“Thank you for letting me know,” she said eventually. It seemed like the only thing she could possibly say in response to what he had told her.

But she felt as if he had put a target on her back.

“That’s all,” he said. “That’s why I had you stop by. I wanted to make sure you heard that from me.”

“Consider me informed,” Emily said.

“Good,” Dr. Berger said. “Make sure you’re on time tomorrow, please.”

He didn’t have to worry about that. After what had happened today, Emily knew she wasn’t going to take any more chances. If anything, she’d be showing up an hour early tomorrow, just to make sure that nothing like this happened again.

The first thing Emily noticed when she arrived at work the following day was that Dr. Berger was already there — and he didn’t look as if he had just arrived, either.

Of course, it was normal for doctors to work strange hours. But it made her wonder. He hadn’t looked as if he was going home any time soon when she’d left last night. Was it possible he had been here all night? She’d heard stories about what a workaholic he was…

Sara came up alongside her. “We’re supposed to shadow Dr. Nash today,” she said.

“We’re not with Dr. Berger?”

“He’s got the group split into three. He’s only taking a third of the interns.” Sara pointed to a list posted on the wall.

Emily studied it. It looked as if the people who had been chosen to go with Dr. Berger today were those he considered to be the best — the ones who had been the most vocal and active during yesterday’s rounds were all on that list. She felt a hint of despair. How was she going to make up for her mistake yesterday if she wasn’t able to get any more face time with Dr. Berger?

There would just have to be something she could do to make this up, that was all. In the meantime, she would work as hard as she could and make as good an impression as she could on everyone at the hospital. It was all she could do.

Dr. Nash turned out to be a good-natured man in his early forties. He led them around the pediatrics ward and introduced them to his patients, and by the time they were an hour into their day, Emily couldn’t help feeling glad that she had been put on this rotation. She wanted to learn under Dr. Berger, but there was simply no denying that Dr. Nash was easier to get along with. He was cheerful and friendly, and his patients seemed to like him a lot.

“All right,” he said. “Why don’t we split up and get vitals on the patients in each of these rooms? Ask them how they’re doing and answer any basic questions you can, but be careful not to overstep your knowledge base. I’ll come around to each room one by one.”

They nodded. Emily’s pulse accelerated — this would be a chance to care for a patient by herself, something she had never done before. It was true that she wouldn’t be doing very much, but even so, it was a big step.

She paused outside the door, took a deep breath, and picked up the clipboard that hung on the outside. The patient inside the room was named Daniel, and she felt a clench in her stomach when she saw that he had been diagnosed with leukemia. She scanned the clipboard. His prognosis was good, but even so…

Well, it was time to do her job.

She opened the door and went into the room. The boy inside was sitting up in his bed, legs crossed, playing with a video game.

“Hey, Daniel,” she said, giving him a bright smile. “I’m Doctor Swinton.”

“I haven’t seen you before,” he said.

“I’m new,” she admitted. “I’m an intern here.”

“Great, they gave me a new doctor?”

“You’ve been seeing Dr. Nash, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, he’s on his way, so nothing to worry about there. He just sent me ahead to get your vitals, if you don’t mind.” She held up her stethoscope. “You don’t even need to put down the video game, okay?”

“I can keep playing?”

“Hey, I wouldn’t want you to lose your progress!” she laughed. “What are you playing?”

“Power Invaders.”

“I don’t know that one.”

“Do you play video games?”

“Not very many,” she admitted. “Maybe you can show me how it works. But first, I need to get your vitals down on my clipboard. Otherwise, Dr. Nash is going to think I wasn’t doing my job, and he’ll probably tell me that I have to make you turn your game off when I do this next time.”

“Yeah, okay,” Daniel said.

“Do you prefer Daniel or Dan? Or Danny?”

“Daniel’s fine. Danny is a kid name.”

“Fair enough.” She noted down his blood pressure. “How long have you been here, Daniel?”

They fell into easy conversation about his treatment so far, what he liked and disliked about the hospital, which nurses were his favorites and which ones had a hard time finding a vein when they needed to do an IV. By the time Dr. Nash arrived, the two of them were laughing together as if they’d been friends for years.

“Well, I see everything’s going well in here,” Dr. Nash said, smiling at the two of them. “Dr. Swinton, why don’t you keep notes for me while Daniel and I have a quick conversation, and then you can come along with me to talk to his mother.”

Was everyone getting the opportunity to speak to the patients’ parents? Emily felt a surge of relief mingled with pride. Maybe something had finally gone her way. Maybe someone had finally recognized that she was good at what she did.

Now she just needed Dr. Berger to see in her what Dr. Nash already seemed to.