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

4. Emily

CHAPTER 4

EMILY

“ I brought you coffee, Dr. Berger,” Emily said brightly, handing him a cup.

He gave her a sour look. “There’s coffee in the break room,” he said.

“I know,” she agreed. “But this stuff is nicer.”

“So you thought you had time to stop for coffee? And risk being late?”

“Oh, no, I didn’t stop,” she clarified. “I made this at home. I’m a bit of a coffee fiend, so I keep a really nice drip machine and a great selection of beans. These are Peruvian! And of course, a stack of to-go cups.”

“You still risked making yourself late,” he admonished her.

She wasn’t late. In fact, she was early. But she didn’t dare point that out overtly. Instead, she just glanced at the clock on the wall and said nothing.

Dr. Berger sighed. “Go and join the other interns,” he said. “You’re working with me today.”

That assignment had certainly been in place before Emily had showed up with the coffee. Still, she couldn’t help feeling that it might have helped her case. Dr. Berger looked as grumpy as he ever did, but she watched from a distance as he took a sip of the Peruvian coffee she’d brought him and thought, at least he drank some !

“So this is the new strategy?” Sara asked, appearing by her shoulder. “You’re going to kiss his ass until he likes you?”

“It’s only coffee,” Emily told her friend. “Besides, I brought you some too.” She pointed to a carrying tray that had two more to-go cups in it.

“Can’t complain about that,” Sara said brightly, taking one of the cups. “This smells amazing, Em.”

“Whose rotation did you get assigned to today?” Emily asked.

“Dr. Nash again,” Sara said. “How about you?”

“I’m with Dr. Berger,” Emily said.

“Oh, whoa,” Sara whistled. “That’s practically a promotion.”

Emily laughed. “That or he wants to watch me closely so he can see if he has a reason to cut me from the program.”

“I’m sure it isn’t that!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Emily said firmly. “If that’s what he’s trying to do, it’s not going to work. All he’s going to get from watching me closely is evidence of why I belong here.”

“Cheers to that,” Sara said. “Well, good luck to you. I hope he doesn’t give you too much hell today.”

“He won’t,” Emily said, though she didn’t feel confident about that at all.

“The emergency department is one of the most stressful parts of any hospital,” Dr. Berger said as the group walked down the corridor past the nurses’ station. “That’s part of the reason why we end up cutting so many people here, and why you’re all doing rotations with doctors who don’t work in emergency. Not everyone is cut out for this.”

Emily noticed expressions of nervousness and anxiety crossing the faces of a few of her fellow interns, but she didn’t allow herself to show any insecurity or doubt at all. If Dr. Berger thought he was going to provoke that kind of reaction from her so easily, he was in for a big surprise.

“One of the most significant differentiators in the emergency department is that we never know what’s going to happen from one day to the next,” Dr. Berger said. “Right now, it seems calm and quiet, but we’re sure to get an alert from the paramedics at any moment letting us know that someone is being brought in. The biggest case we face each day will be one we didn’t expect to see. So as you face your first day in the emergency department, I want all of you to keep that in mind. The best thing you can do here is to be braced for anything.”

Emily nodded. She recognized how good that advice was. She had never worked in an emergency department before. She didn’t know what to expect — but then, according to Dr. Berger, knowing what to expect was a near impossibility, and there was definitely something reassuring about that.

The interns were tasked to review the charts from yesterday’s cases while they awaited some action. “I don’t see why this is necessary,” one of the men grumbled. “We know there are patients in some of these beds. Why can’t we start seeing them instead of just reading up on people who have already been released?”

“Dr. Berger must think it’s not to those patients’ benefit to have us nosing around right now,” Emily said.

“This is a teaching hospital,” the guy said. “People shouldn’t come to this hospital if they’re not prepared to deal with interns.

Emily stared at him. “What’s your name?”

“Chad.”

“Chad, are you suggesting that people who are in an emergency situation should be taking into consideration whether there will be interns at a hospital when they’re deciding where to go?” Emily asked him. “What if you needed emergency care? Would you be checking online to see if the nearest hospital to you was a teaching hospital, or would you just be driving in as fast as you could?”

Chad rolled his eyes at her. “If you’re going to be all sensitive, maybe you should be a nurse instead of a doctor,” he said. “Women make better nurses than doctors, everybody knows that.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s just a fact,” Chad said. “Don’t get your feelings hurt about it. I’m giving you good advice.”

“If you have to resort to tactics like that, you’re only revealing how pathetic you really are,” Emily said. “Do you think I don’t get what you’re doing? You know that half the interns are going to be cut, and you’d love it if some of us decided being doctors wasn’t for us and self-eliminated so you have fewer competitors to worry about.”

“Do you think I’m worried about you?” Chad snorted. “I’m not. There’s no chance I’d be cut over someone like you.”

“Well, then, it shouldn’t matter to you what I do,” Emily said. She picked up the file she’d been given to study and ignored Chad.

It wasn’t until then that she became aware of the fact that Dr. Berger was standing nearby, watching the two of them and listening to their every word. He had heard the whole conversation.

What had he made of it?

Emily knew Dr. Berger didn’t think Chad was right. He had worked with plenty of prominent women. He’d co-authored papers with several of them.

But what would he make of the fact that she had stood up for herself? Would he admire her for it, or would he think she had gotten bogged down in something petty?

As she watched, he turned away from her, giving no sign as to what he thought of everything he had overheard.

Well, she couldn’t do anything about it now. Emily opened the file and began to read.

The emergency department was quiet for the first few hours of the day, and Emily was just beginning to wonder whether it might not be a bit of a throwaway day when a call came in from the paramedics.

“Inbound,” Dr. Berger told them. “Nine-year-old female struck by a car while riding her bike. The parents are coming separately. She was with the babysitter when it happened.”

Emily’s heart went out to the babysitter. What a terrible thing to have happen while you were in charge.

When the ambulance arrived, the interns all crowded around Dr. Berger to watch him work — all but Emily. She made a judgment call, knowing that it might be wrong. If it was, she’d take the consequences. Someone needed to talk to the babysitter.

The girl was in her mid-teens — maybe fourteen or fifteen years old — and she was shaking badly. Emily sensed that she might be going into shock. She guided the girl over to a chair and grabbed a cup of water.

“What’s your name?” she asked gently.

“M-Maggie.”

“Hey, Maggie. I’m Emily. Did you see what happened?”

Maggie nodded. Her eyes were unfocused. “Is Kenzie going to be okay?”

“I think she will be. Dr. Berger is a really good doctor. You did the right thing by calling the ambulance. You did everything right, okay?”

“I didn’t know she was playing in the street. I should have been watching…”

“That’s not what the paramedics say,” Emily said gently. “They spoke to the driver. Kenzie wasn’t playing in the street. She was riding her bike in the driveway. I bet that’s what you told her to do, isn’t it?”

Maggie nodded. “I was just getting some sodas, and then I was going to come out and sit with her…”

“The driver says she was in the driveway, and then an animal ran in front of her and she steered out into the street to avoid it. A cat or something. It was just an accident. It wasn’t your fault, okay? Drink that water.”

Maggie squeezed the cup but didn’t take a drink.

“Maggie,” Emily said. “I need you to take a drink of that water right now.”

The command worked where the request hadn’t. Maggie took a sip of the water. Emily rubbed her hand in slow circles on the girl’s back to try to keep her grounded. “I’m going to check your blood pressure, okay?”

Maggie nodded, apparently too disoriented to question that.

There was a cart nearby with a blood pressure cuff. Emily pulled it over and wrapped it around the girl’s arm. Her blood pressure was low, but not dangerously so. “Stay right here, okay?” Emily said. “I’m going to grab you a cookie.”

Maggie buried her head in her hands.

Emily went to the nurses’ station and grabbed a couple of the chocolate chip cookies that were kept there. She hurried back to Maggie’s side. “No nuts in these, but they do have chocolate,” she said. “Are you okay to eat chocolate? No allergies?”

“No,” Maggie said, and Emily handed over one of the cookies.

Chad came around the corner. “That was intense,” he said to the room at large. Then he caught sight of Emily. “What happened? You get squeamish?”

“No,” Emily said. She didn’t feel any particular need to explain herself to Chad.

“Well, you missed all the action,” Chad told her as Dr. Berger came around the corner.

Emily ignored him. She rose to her feet and went to Dr. Berger. “Doctor, is the little girl going to be all right?”

“Broken ribs and a concussion, but no internal bleeding. She should be fine.” Dr. Berger gave her an appraising look. “And where were you?”

“The babysitter who came in with her was showing signs of shock, so I checked her over and made sure she was all right.”

“And is she?”

“I think she’s fine, just a little shaken up. That’s her over there, if you want to check for yourself.”

Dr. Berger nodded. “That was smart,” he told her grudgingly. “No one else caught that. Good job, Dr. Swinton.”

Emily felt as if she had just been handed an Academy Award. She knew she had taken a risk by not following the rest of the interns when the patient had arrived, but she also felt sure she had done the right thing. It was icing on the cake to realize that Dr. Berger saw it that way too.

Maybe, just maybe, she had begun to make up for the mistake she had made on the first day.

She glanced over at Chad and saw that he was looking at her with something like disgust on his face. She wasn’t surprised. Of course he would hate to see her doing well, getting any sort of recognition.

She smiled at him.

He scoffed and turned away from her.

“Is there anything in particular you’d like me to do right now, Dr. Berger?” she asked. “Otherwise, I can go sit with Maggie, maybe help her reach out to her parents. She’s just a kid herself. I don’t think she should be alone right now.”

“That’s a good idea,” Dr. Berger agreed. “You go ahead and do that, at least until the next patient arrives.”

It occurred to Emily as she sat down next to Maggie again that Chad would probably think this was nurse work.

But that just showed how little he knew.